When public institutions are dysfunctional, for example in the provision of public services such as health care, philanthropy might compensate for this failure. Insofar as this failure has negative implications for the trustworthiness of public institutions and citizens’ trust in them, philanthropy might be considered a reaction to a trust crisis in society.

Such a reaction brings a significant tension to the fore. The tension is between seeing philanthropy, on the one hand, as an enhancer of public institutional action, thus remedying its diminished trustworthiness and citizens’ lack of trust in it, and, on the other hand, as a threat to public institutional action, insofar as an increased role of philanthropy might further weaken the trustworthiness of public institutions and citizens’ trust in them.

We analyse and discuss this tension from the perspectives of normative political theory and public ethics. We ask what structural features justify the trustworthiness of public institutions and how this trustworthiness might be undermined in a way that justifies citizens’ lack of trust in them. We then analyse the twofold role of philanthropy in this context (as an enhancer of or a threat to public institutional action) and ask what normative ideals should govern the coalition between public institutions and philanthropy in a way that does not erode the justification of institutional trustworthiness and citizens’ trust in public institutions.