Taking on “Rich”

21 Jul Taking on “Rich”

22 July 2025

By David Allen, Development for Conservation

Apparently, I hit a nerve last week. I received five responses, two of which were public. One was positive. Four took issue with my use of the word “rich.”

How can I thank you guys enough for your thoughtful comments? I send this post out every week and never really know whether it’s landing. So, to you five especially this week:

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Here’s what I said that got everyone exercised:

I think we spend way too much time imagining finding “rich” people in our communities and approaching them to give. The chase itself becomes self-defeating: “I can’t help raise money because I don’t know any rich people.” Half the households in the U.S make $80,000 or more – rich by almost any world standard. We don’t need to be looking for rich people – they are all around us.

There are four sentences there. Each one is demonstrably true on its face. The first two are true from my direct experience. The third I took from US Census data. And the fourth was admittedly cavalier, but taken in the context of the first three, still true. Here’s a less cavalier, equivalent statement:

We don’t need to be waiting for rich people – we need to be approaching the people all around us, not worrying about whether they are rich; (only that they are interested in and concerned about conservation).

This point was in the very next paragraph:

We should be starting in a different place. We should be looking for people who care about conservation. And many of them already give us money.

So, ironically, in a post about not getting hung up on “rich,” some readers got hung up on the word “rich.”

OK – so let’s take that on. What is “rich” anyway? I would welcome your own thoughts – civilly please – but here’s a couple of conversation starters:

1. Rich is a relative term. Rich does not have a specific threshold, but rather is used to describe someone’s income or wealth. But it only has meaning in contrast to someone else’s income or wealth. There isn’t a line above which someone is “rich.” No arbitrary standard.
2. The way many people use the word “rich” is in contrast to their own income or wealth. Someone is “rich” when they make more money than “I” do. Or that the people in my circle of friends do.
3. Someone not being “rich” often becomes a reason for not asking them to give at all. But IMHO, it has less to do with them not being “rich” and more to do with me not wanting to ask my friends for money.
4. Rich does not necessarily correlate with “generous.” And it doesn’t correlate with “interested in and willing to support conservation work at a high level” at all. Searching for rich people to ask for help won’t help.

There are other definitions of the word “rich” of course. Chocolate cheesecake can be rich. Coffee can be rich. An oil painting, a voice, or a mature forest can all be described as rich.

And a life can be rich regardless of income or wealth. When we focus only on rich related to money, we can lose track of how privileged we really are, especially in the U.S.

I want to give some context to the $80,000 also. In 2010, the Princeton economist Daniel Kahneman published a study that concluded that more money contributed to more happiness all the way up to $75,000. The year before, in 2009, Gretchen Rubin published The Happiness Project. An art exhibit based on Rubin’s book toured in the mid-2010s and made its way to Chicago where I saw it. The exhibit, not Ms. Rubin’s book, quoted Kahneman’s Princeton study and extrapolated that $75,000 would have been very close to $80,000 by then.

Fast forward to earlier this year, when I learned that the median household income in the U.S. in 2015 was $56,000 and was $80,000 in 2024. Half the country should be happy now, I thought. (Not-so-fast, I quickly corrected. That same $75,000 in 2010 would now be worth $104,000!)

Which of course missed the larger point. The median income has increased by 42% in nine years. The median is not driven by the wealthy getting wealthier like the average is, and this is a stunning result.

I’m the first in line to admit that I am vulnerable to being out of touch. But I’m not wrong on this point: Many Board members and even staff are still operating as if $100 was an enormous number. They are reaching for arms-length solutions because actually getting to know donors is too scary. And they are sending letters and emails that never actually ask. They are waiting for “rich” to appear. And in some cases, they are losing local philanthropic market share. The world is passing them by.

One commenter summed up the post’s point very well:

We should meet each person where they are at; enjoy their passion for conservation; and help them give at a level that brings them joy. We should make less assumptions and ask more questions.

And to that I would add that we should offer them opportunities to make a difference instead of needs. But let’s not get all the way there and then chicken out asking for money.

That would be …

Cheers, and have a great week!

-da

PS: Your comments on these posts are welcomed and warmly requested. If you have not posted a comment before, or if you are using a new email address, please know that there may be a delay in seeing your posted comment. That’s my SPAM defense at work. I approve all comments as soon as I am able during the day.

Photo by kareni courtesy Pixabay