The 21st century has been very good to the wealthy. While the American middle class has shrunk, the wealthy have seen their worth skyrocket, with billionaires reportedly increasing their wealth by 70 percent during the pandemic, leading to the greatest income inequality since the days of the robber barons of the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. Due to the George W. Bush and Trump tax cuts, much of the one percenters’ gains in wealth will be untaxed, and not subject to taxation as it is transferred to their children.

The past few years have given the wealthy so much more money to shower on themselves and, for some, to give money to favored charities. As a person who has spent most of my life in the nonprofit sector, it’s great that some of this tremendous wealth is given to worthy charities, and I certainly support such giving. But I have a few concerns about how this happens.

Many academic institutions have benefitted from this largesse. Trustees of academic institutions seem very willing to sell their brands and their histories, and many extremely wealthy people seem to be looking to buy their place in history by appropriating the brands of well-regarded institutions. These include universities like Harvard, Yale, and Tufts. Wealthy donors are seeing what they can “buy” and negotiating with the stewards of academic institutions on a price. These donations are tax deductible for the donors, which means that they pay less in taxes because of the donation, and that means other taxpayers pick up the difference.

We need to review the benefits that accrue to the donor. If you go to a gala held to support a nonprofit, you get a statement that tells you what part of the donation is allowed for tax deductibility. For example, a $200 ticket to a dinner may result in a statement that says that $150 of it is tax deductible because the food benefit is valued at $50.

This idea needs to be brought into the intangible benefits of donations. Patrick Radden Keefe’s book “Empire of Pain,” on the notorious Sackler family, which gave us oxycontin and fed the opioid epidemic, discussed the philanthropy of Arthur Sackler, the patriarch of the family. Keefe wrote: “Philanthropy wasn’t charity, as (Arthur’s) lawyer Michael Sonnenreich insisted. It was a business deal.” Arthur’s donations resulted in the naming of schools, institutions, and buildings, or parts of them, for which he benefitted tremendously. He was building his brand, impressing powerful people, and getting prestigious awards from institutions who had received donations, all of which gave him more power. Many institutions have now removed the Sackler name from their buildings, but many have not.

When a person gives some millions of dollars and then requires naming rights by the institution, that person is getting a great value – improving the donor’s brand. Brands have great economic value. Corporations spend millions of dollars promoting and protecting theirs. Mass General Brigham spent $150 million in their re-branding name change from Partners Health Care. Donations that require naming should have their tax deductibility reduced by the value of that branding.

I’m not opposed to donating money for the naming of buildings, just their tax deductibility, or a portion thereof.

Which brings me to a second area of concern – the current trend of not just putting your name on a building, but re-naming institutions in exchange for money. Gerald Chan, who owns a good chunk of Dorchester, paid $350 million to have the Harvard School of Public Health renamed for his father, T.H. Chan. I suppose a private institution like Harvard can do what it wants with its property, though it certainly gives the impression that Harvard’s nearly 400-year-old brand is for sale to the highest bidder.

But Chan recently paid $175 million to have the University of Massachusetts Medical School renamed the UMass Chan Medical School, and its graduate schools renamed the T.H. Chan School of Medicine, Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing (renamed for Chan’s mother) and Morningside (his foundation) Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

In a Boston Globe article at the time of the donation (“UMass Medical School to be renamed with $175 million gift from Chan family” 9/7/21), Chan admitted that he hadn’t previously “given much thought to UMass Medical,” and referred to the school as “an undervalued asset,” which probably explains why he was able to have four institutions renamed for half the donation that Harvard received.

I don’t know Gerald Chan. He may be a wonderful person, but the notion that every time the University of Massachusetts Medical School and its affiliated colleges are mentioned requires his names to be noted should be an outrage to Massachusetts taxpayers, who paid to create and build the medical school, and undoubtedly paid some of their federal taxes to subsidize Chan’s donation to UMass.

And this brings me to Bill Cummings and the Cummings Foundation. Cummings is a real estate developer who became a billionaire and signed the Giving Pledge, agreeing to donate most of his fortune to charities. Cummings’s foundation donates $25 million per year to local nonprofits. That’s a wonderful thing, but I have a concern with his recent donation to the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology.

The Institute, also known as “BFIT”, is a college that grants certificates and associates degrees largely to students of color (83 percent are Black or Latino), providing a fantastic education that has benefitted thousands of local residents.

BFIT was created in 1908 with $400,000 in funds from the will of Benjamin Franklin, who left money for the cities of Philadelphia and Boston to support people who want a career in the trades. Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, founded the University of Pennsylvania, and was a world-renowned scientist, inventor, and diplomat who negotiated the 1783 Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War. Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology is the only college in Boston that honors our internationally renowned native son.

When BFIT decided to sell its school building in the South End and build a new state-of-the-art campus in Roxbury, Cummings was approached for support. His donation of $12.5 million prompted changing the school’s name to the Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology. It’s the fifth college or school named for Cummings in exchange for a donation (the others are Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, Cummings Institute of Global Health at University of Global Health Equity, Cummings School of Nursing at Endicott College, and Cummings School of Architecture at Roger Williams University.)

As Adrian Walker noted in his 2/22/22 column in The Boston Globe on this transaction, “That kind of donation might be a rounding error for such well-heeled neighbors as Harvard, MIT, Boston College or Boston University.” Around the same time, Boston College High School announced a $49 million grant to create a wellness center at the campus from the Patrick Cadigan Family Foundation. The wellness center building will be named after Cadigan. But despite this gift, four times the Cummings donation to BFIT, BC High is not changing its name to the Boston College Cadigan High School.

While my message is that colleges and other institutions should not be renamed in exchange of money, it strikes me that the BFIT renaming is for a very low price in today’s renaming marketplace. Would Cummings not have given the gift if BFIT’s trustees wanted to preserve its name honoring Benjamin Franklin? Upon further reflection, would Cummings be satisfied with his name on the new campus building instead? Would Chan?

There is a view that true philanthropists don’t expect personal benefits from their charitable transactions. The Jewish religion sees it from a moral perspective. Jewish philanthropy is generally guided by what is called Maimonides’s Eight Levels of Charity. The higher levels are relegated to charity that does not require recompense. The righteous give in secret, according to the philosopher. I think of Ned Johnson, recently deceased billionaire head of Fidelity, who wouldn’t allow anyone to say that a donation came from him, or McKenzie Scott, former spouse of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, now giving away billions without any quid pro quo expected or required.

We’ve allowed the creation of a class of very rich people and very needy nonprofit/public sectors. People I’ve spoken to about my concerns about branding being a value that should reduce the tax deductibility of a donation, or that we should not be renaming institutions for money alone, have acknowledged that they hadn’t thought about these issues. Maybe it’s time.