I became a millionaire the way many people I know do: through an inheritance. I came into wealth through my dad, who was an investment banker for the bulk of my life. I grew up comfortably in the NYC suburbs, but I didn’t realize how wealthy my family was until I went to college in West Philly. My sophomore year, I started a volunteer gig teaching gardening, cooking, and nutrition to poor kids, and I was quickly exposed to the haves-and-have-nots divide in America.
Each week, I drove from my comfortable college campus apartment deep into the city to a neighborhood with plenty of space but limited access to public transit or grocery stores. The families I worked with were barely getting by, whereas my parents kept refilling my debit card when it ran low. Over the next ten years, I continued teaching food ed in Title I schools, first through AmeriCorps and then through a handful of struggling nonprofits. Through this teaching experience, I was able to grasp the negative multiplier effects that wealth inequality wreaks on people’s lives.
My education and professional career opened my eyes to the differences between band-aid philanthropy and systems-level change. I often share this dichotomy: I worked for four years for a little food education org that was easy to fundraise for—donors love buying seeds and gardening gloves for kids. But our org could only reach a couple thousand kids per year. In contrast, I’m now on the board of a food policy org, Community Food Advocates, that is way harder to fundraise for—fewer people want to pay for a staff member to lobby in Albany. But Community Food Advocates’ small staff, in collaboration with statewide coalitions, helped win government-funded free school lunch for more than 1 million NYC students.
In 2020, when schools shut down and I was briefly unemployed, I transitioned from teaching to political fundraising, from the micro to the macro. For my day job, I now fundraise for Movement Voter Project, an organization that operates like a “mutual fund” for progressive political giving: raising money from donors and channeling it toward the most impactful organizations and power-building work around the country. I was a Movement Voter Project donor before I started fundraising for them because MVP’s theory of change works: by supporting grassroots political organizers throughout the country, we can shift culture, win power, and shape policy.
All of this put me on my path toward becoming a Patriotic Millionaire. Philanthropy has its limits, and to make a meaningful dent in reducing inequality, we need government intervention— specifically from governments properly financed by rich people like me. Only the government has sufficient resources and can operate on a large enough scale to provide SNAP to families who need it and free lunches to all students. The same can be said for everything from transportation to education, healthcare, housing, and more.
Paying taxes to finance government work is a civic obligation. Yet for rich Americans like me, taxes have essentially become optional given all the special exemptions, deductions, low rates, and other perks we’ve come to enjoy. If we want to have a chance at reducing the massive gap between the rich and the rest in our country, that needs to change.
This is why I am proud to be a Patriotic Millionaire. I want to do my part to create a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable society for all of us, and that starts with paying my fair share of taxes, along with the rest of my wealthy peers.
Marissa Hersh is a Philanthropic Advisor at Movement Voter Project, an organization that operates like a “mutual fund” for progressive political giving: raising money from donors and channeling it toward the most impactful organizations and power-building work around the country. She is an active member of donor communities, including Resource Generation and Solidaire. Marissa is the board fundraising chair for Community Food Advocates, a public policy organization that ensures all New Yorkers have access to healthy, affordable, culturally affirming foods.