I'd like to see some of the leading benefactors donate to cities that demonstrate this level of civic service and professional delivery. There's no reason that governments can't receive donations like non-profits and charities do.
They do, it’s called taxes.
If a government starts having a donation culture, it’ll just end up becoming a legal way to pay for government favours and exacerbate rise in corruption. (Corruption has been rising more and more now that local journalism is declining, which previously used to bust out local events, embezzling tax payer money by municipalities, etc).
Look at what has happened to colleges which have donations as a major chunk of their income, or colleges which subsidises local students education with international students.
Colleges have easier admissions for children of donators, local students are neglected for international student programmes (happening a ton in Canada right now, a lot of their previously reputed colleges are becoming blacklisted by employers as diploma mills, e.g Conestoga College, Ontario)
When you’re not the payer/customer, YOU. DONT. MATTER.
Corporate lobbying is making votes ineffective, politicians are listening to lobbyists and their donations to campaign funds, than the voter who gets out to cast their votes.
Donations are bad, and should be discouraged for powerful organisations like Gov, College, etc which have a lot of power.
You’re local orphanage would benefit from donations and there’s not much power in their hands over majority of society.
But when you introduce donation culture in more critical places, it becomes a method of corruption.
This is why I prefer local governments to be indexed to sales taxes, property taxes & income taxes. It encourages them to create economic activity.
I dislike it when local governments rely almost entirely on funding from central government. There's little incentive to create economic activity because it often creates more work in building infrastructure & social services. And less political incentive to improve public services, because you can always blame central government for a lack of funding.
I’m not sure how this ends well.