Imagine someone transferring a substantial sum to their adult daughter so she can afford a flat. Someone else funds the work of a charity. A third person gives money to someone whose life interests them and for whom they want to make something possible. All three bank statements could record the same thing: money was transferred. Yet entirely different thoughts may lie behind the decisions.
What interests me is less whether the giver feels particularly noble. That is hardly something an outsider can establish reliably anyway. The more interesting question is what people want to achieve by passing their money on. Some think primarily about the recipient. Some feel a responsibility. Others want to see something that would not have existed without their help. And some have simply decided that they would rather see a particular sum in other hands.
The greater the wealth, the more visible such decisions may become. They are no longer just birthday presents or occasional help. Family relationships, public expectations, ideas of fairness and personal history can enter the picture. That does not, however, give us a universal psychology of large gifts. Research primarily examines donations to organisations, private transfers within families and individual decisions in experiments. These different situations need to be kept distinct.
One gift, many possible reasons
For a literature review published in 2011, René Bekkers and Pamala Wiepking examined more than 500 academic studies of charitable giving. They grouped the mechanisms studied into eight areas, including awareness of need, solicitation, costs and benefits, altruism, reputation, psychological benefits, personal values and the expected effectiveness of a contribution.
This is not a questionnaire that discovers eight neatly separate compartments inside an individual. It is a framework for explaining various influences on charitable giving. Nevertheless, it shows why a single answer to “Why?” rarely suffices. Someone giving money can recognise a specific need, respond to a request, act on a conviction and feel pleased afterwards. These reasons do not exclude one another.
They offer useful guidance for private gifts and transfers of wealth, provided we remember the context. An organisation can solicit donations and report publicly on results. A sister might never explicitly ask her brother for help, but simply describe her difficulties. A previously unknown private individual might receive an offer with no charitable purpose attached. The outward action looks similar. The relationship and expectations differ considerably.
Wanting to make something possible for someone
The most obvious motive is wanting another person to be better off. That requires no complicated theory. Someone who sees that a person close to them cannot afford training, a particular treatment or a long-held wish may enjoy opening up that possibility. We can also wish strangers well without expecting anything in return.
In economics, altruism means taking other people's welfare into account in one's decisions. It is initially an analytical concept, not a medal for exceptional virtue. In practice, concern for someone else and personal pleasure can coexist. We do not need to surgically remove the feeling of having helped from an action before taking it seriously.
The literature on charitable donations also shows, however, that people are more likely to give when they perceive a need and believe their help can actually make a difference. This is one of Bekkers and Wiepking's central mechanisms. Someone who understands a specific situation may be more ready to decide than someone presented only with an indistinct problem. That provides no reliable prediction for a particular private gift of millions. But it helps explain why the question of purpose often precedes the question of amount.
Not every giver wants to control the impact in detail. Some are content to open an opportunity and leave the next decision to the recipient. Others want feedback or a visible connection between money and outcome. Whether a good relationship develops also depends on what the recipient understands by a gift freely given. That two-sided perspective belongs in What happens when money changes hands?.
Enjoying giving is nothing to confess
Decades ago, economist James Andreoni explored an explanation that became known as warm glow. In a 1990 theoretical paper, he described how people can derive personal benefit from the act of giving itself. They may care about other people's welfare while also finding their own giving satisfying.
This idea is sometimes misunderstood as science having exposed all generosity as disguised selfishness. That would be a rather sad use of an economic model. Someone who helps their mother and feels pleased afterwards has not helped her any less. Someone who supports a stranger and feels good about themselves need not have regarded that other person merely as a means to an end.
The personal benefit may involve gratitude, pride, feeling true to oneself or enjoying the ability to act at all. It may also fail to appear. Some people give out of duty without finding the decision pleasant. Looking only at enjoyable feelings leaves out part of the reality of giving.
What particularly interests me is how this undermines a common moral demand. We sometimes expect a genuinely good gift to matter absolutely nothing to its giver. Why, exactly? A gift is not automatically less voluntary because the giver enjoys it. Problems arise when their desire to feel good displaces the recipient's autonomy or needs.
Values, life history and self-image
People can see giving as an expression of what matters to them. Someone raised in a family where supporting one another was taken for granted may want to continue that habit. Someone who associates financial success with fortunate circumstances or other people's help may develop a wish to give something back. Others remember opportunities they lacked when young and want to make them possible for someone else.
Here, a financial decision connects with personal history. The giver may ask themselves: What kind of person do I want to be? What should remain of my success? What responsibility do I feel towards people with fewer opportunities? These reflections need not result in a gift. Someone who has them may decide to use their money differently. What matters is the role of personal values in assessing possible actions.
A study by Sara Konrath and Femida Handy developed and tested a questionnaire on motives for donating. The researchers identified six distinguishable dimensions, including altruism, trust, social reasons and self-image. Tax-related reasons and barriers to giving were also included. The questionnaire concerns charitable donations. It proves neither that people can always consciously distinguish these motives nor that the same structure applies unchanged to large private gifts.
What it does make clear is that giving need not arise from a single inner impulse. Someone supporting an organisation may share its goals, trust its handling of money and feel proud of contributing. Values, personal connection and trust might likewise come together in a private gift, simply within a different relationship.
Large fortunes come with stories of their own
Very wealthy people are sometimes assumed, as a group, to use generous gestures to buy a good reputation or soothe a guilty conscience. Either is a conceivable motive in an individual case. Turning that into a general explanation, however, replaces research with an accusation.
In an analysis published in 2021, Hans Peter Schmitz, George Mitchell and Elena McCollim examined 187 publicly available letters from signatories of the Giving Pledge, an initiative in which particularly wealthy people state their intention to devote a substantial part of their fortunes to charitable purposes. The researchers identified different patterns of public explanation. Frequently mentioned themes included gratitude, wanting to give back, upbringing and an intention to make a difference. Other letters emphasised personal satisfaction, concerns about excessively large inheritances or a lack of uses for surplus wealth.
This study is interesting precisely because of its limitation. The researchers analysed letters: public presentations of the self. They could examine how billionaires explain their generosity. They could not look inside their heads or establish which unmentioned motives were actually decisive. A public letter tells a story addressed to an audience. That does not automatically make it dishonest. It makes it a different data source from an anonymous survey or an observed private decision.
The Giving Pledge also concerns publicly declared philanthropy. Someone making a large private gift without a foundation, campaign or social mission faces a different situation. Research is less comprehensive on precisely these personal transfers of wealth. We can borrow insights from philanthropy, but cannot turn them into a ready-made statistical account of private givers' motives.
Family: help, closeness and sometimes expectations
Within families, money is particularly closely connected with relationships. Parents want to give their children a good start. Adult siblings help each other through a difficult period. Grandparents pass something on because they want to see its effects while alive. Affection, responsibility and awareness of unequal opportunities often belong to the same decision.
Economic research on private transfers has long examined how altruistic motives and forms of exchange can interact. Donald Cox contrasted these explanations for private income transfers in a 1987 paper. A transfer may reflect concern for others, expectations of future help or other family relationships. Such models organise possible motives. They cannot diagnose from a distance why a particular family passes money on.
Expectations can indeed arise on both sides. Someone providing help may want the other person to become independent. Someone receiving it may want to use the gift freely. Sometimes they understand the same money very differently. Voluntary support can thus become a source of connection, but occasionally also an unspoken contract.
The distinction between giving and creating an obligation is explored more fully in the family articles. For motives, the initial point is this: even a gift to relatives can arise simultaneously from love, duty, caution and hope. The mixture does not make the giver suspect. It simply deserves closer consideration than the word “generosity” alone allows.
Recognition need not be a purchase
Of course, the desire for recognition can play a part too. A publicly announced gift makes it visible that someone can and wants to give money away. Perhaps the act is meant to encourage others. Perhaps the giver enjoys the applause. Often the two cannot be separated completely.
Psychological research on gratitude also shows that a friendly response to help has social significance. In experiments published in 2010, Adam Grant and Francesca Gino found that expressions of thanks could encourage further helping, particularly because helpers felt socially valued. These were situations involving help, not specifically gifts worth millions. Nevertheless, the distinction is interesting: recognition need not be a price paid to purchase good deeds. It can signal that the relationship matters to both sides.
Someone giving anonymously forgoes public recognition but may gain other forms of personal satisfaction. Someone giving visibly can support a cause while enhancing their own standing. Visibility alone cannot reveal how strongly each motive mattered. That is precisely why Giving anonymously or wanting to be seen? has its own article. Deciding about publicity is too complex to settle here with a moral label.
Responsibility is different from guilt
Someone may experience their wealth as a responsibility. Perhaps they want to give relatives security, create opportunities or help address social problems. That can arise from gratitude or a conviction that financial advantages bring obligations. It can equally mean continuing to manage their own assets because they feel responsible for doing precisely that.
I would be cautious about claiming that anyone with a great deal must inevitably want to give it away. People differ in how they understand their obligations. Wealth can contain personal work, family history, risks and commitments. The bank balance tells us only a small part of that.
While researching this, I noticed how often voluntary giving and moral expectations appear in the same discussions. That should not lead us to merge the two concepts. If someone gives money away to fulfil a responsibility they have chosen for themselves, that is one possible explanation of their action. If outsiders assign that responsibility to them, they are initially describing their own expectations. Sometimes the two coincide. That does not make them identical.
Guilt is not a reliable compass for financial decisions either. Someone giving to escape an uncomfortable judgement of themselves may feel relieved afterwards or develop new doubts. The studies cited here establish no general mechanism by which a large gift permanently removes such feelings. I would therefore advise nobody to seek moral purification through a transfer. Laundering your conscience is a bad idea even when meant metaphorically.
Why it remains a personal question at Tired of Wealth
The idea of Tired of Wealth is unusually simple: if someone voluntarily wants to give wealth away, I am willing to accept it. I do not hide the fact that this money would interest me. That openness is part of the project. Readers should know who is making an offer and what it involves.
Research provides no ready-made target audience with a particular psychological weakness. I do not know what motives a potential giver would have. Perhaps they want to support a particular person. Perhaps a substantial part of their wealth has simply become less important to them. Perhaps they enjoy the dry humour behind the offer. And perhaps someone finds the entire idea absurd and leaves. That would be an understandable response too.
There is no scientifically sound basis for telling such people in advance what they would gain internally from a gift. A decision about wealth may have several good reasons behind it, but it must come from its owner. Those wishing to read further can explore Does giving money away make you happier than spending it? for what psychological research actually tells us about possible emotional effects. Reasons for an action and its later consequences are, after all, different questions.
A perfectly pure motive is not required
Perhaps the most sensible conclusion from the research is that people who give can rarely be reduced to a single purpose. They may want to help because someone matters to them. Because they want to see an impact. Because it fits their values. Because their family set that example. Because they enjoy recognition. Or because several of these reasons coexist.
The fact that the giver gains something does not automatically devalue the gift. Conversely, a good motive does not make every transfer a good decision. The recipient's needs and freedom remain important, as do the consequences for the giver. We can discuss this without romanticising generosity or treating it with blanket suspicion.
Perhaps, then, we should less often ask whether the intention behind a large gift was absolutely selfless. And more often whether those involved understand what they are agreeing, what they expect of one another and what decision they genuinely want to make. Money can change hands quickly. The meaning people give it usually travels with it.
Sources
Bekkers, René, and Pamala Wiepking (2011). “A Literature Review of Empirical Studies of Philanthropy: Eight Mechanisms That Drive Charitable Giving”. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 40(5), pp. 924 to 973. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764010380927
Andreoni, James (1990). “Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving”. The Economic Journal, 100(401), pp. 464 to 477. https://doi.org/10.2307/2234133
Konrath, Sara, and Femida Handy (2018). “The Development and Validation of the Motives to Donate Scale”. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 47(2), pp. 347 to 375. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764017744894
Schmitz, Hans Peter, George E. Mitchell and Elena M. McCollim (2021). “How Billionaires Explain Their Philanthropy: A Mixed-Method Analysis of the Giving Pledge Letters”. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 32, pp. 512 to 523. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-021-00338-6
Cox, Donald (1987). “Motives for Private Income Transfers”. Journal of Political Economy, 95(3), pp. 508 to 546. https://doi.org/10.1086/261470
Grant, Adam M., and Francesca Gino (2010). “A Little Thanks Goes a Long Way: Explaining Why Gratitude Expressions Motivate Prosocial Behavior”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(6), pp. 946 to 955. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017935