The giving is anonymous and it has been for a very long time. No plaques, no announcements, nothing with my name on a wall anywhere.

I used to describe that as a principle. I have come to think it is more complicated and rather less flattering than that.

The Building With Somebody Else's Name On It

Years ago I was shown around a facility that existed largely because of a man whose name was on the front of it, in fairly large letters.

My instinctive reaction was distaste, and I sat with that reaction afterward because it seemed too quick. The building was excellent. It did exactly what it had been built to do. The name on it had cost nothing and taken nothing from anybody.

And it had done one thing my giving does not do, which the director explained to me without any idea she was making an argument against my own practice.

“Two other families gave because he did,” she said. “They knew it was possible because they could see it was possible.”

His name on the front was not vanity, or not only vanity. It was a signal in a market with very poor information, and it had recruited money that my anonymity does not and cannot recruit.

What Anonymity Is Actually Optimizing For

I had to be honest with myself about what my preference was doing.

What I told myself: that attaching my name makes the giving about me, and that the recipient should not have to carry my reputation as part of the gift.

What is also true: anonymity is extremely comfortable. It removes any obligation to be consistent, any scrutiny of whether the amounts are meaningful relative to what I have, and any possibility of being asked for more. A man who gives anonymously is accountable to nobody about it, including himself.

And it is a small vanity of its own — the private satisfaction of being the sort of person who does not need the credit. That satisfaction is real and I notice it and it is not obviously superior to the satisfaction of seeing your name on a building. It is just less visible, which is not the same as less self-regarding.

There is a version of the argument that goes the other way and I should give it its due. A name on a building creates an expectation of continuity — the family is now attached, and withdrawing later becomes a visible event rather than a private decision. Anonymity keeps the giving genuinely optional, and an organization that has built a plan around your name is more fragile than one that has built it around your money. I do not think that consideration is doing much work in my own case, but it is not nothing.

The Money My Silence Has Not Recruited

The cost is the thing the director described and I cannot measure it, which is convenient for me.

Every time I have given quietly to something, the signal that would have told other people it was worth funding did not get sent. Some number of gifts did not happen. I have no idea what that number is. It is not zero, because I have watched the mechanism work in the other direction with my own eyes, in a building with somebody else's name on it.

So the honest position is that my preference has a price and the price is paid by the recipients rather than by me. That is quite a different thing from a principle. A principle costs the person holding it.

I have not changed the practice. I want to be clear about that rather than end on a resolution I have not actually made — I still give anonymously, having now thought carefully about it and concluded it is partly self-serving, which is a fairly poor showing.

The One Adjustment I Did Make

Where a signal is the thing that is actually needed — where an organization needs a first name on a list so that others will follow — I will do it, and it makes me uncomfortable, and the discomfort is not a good enough reason to refuse.

That has happened three times. In all three cases the discomfort passed within about a week and the money that followed did not.

The rest stays quiet, for reasons I now describe to myself accurately: because I prefer it, not because it is better.

The building is still there and still busy. My name is not on anything and I am no longer certain that is to my credit.

Note: Victor Draemont is a character, and these notes are written in his voice. Nothing here is financial, investment, tax, or legal advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or gamble on anything.