Paul Vallely

Notes

Chapter 16 – Epilogue

Source Notes

Chapter 16 – Epilogue

Philanthropy – from Aristotle to Zuckerberg

Sources are credited in full on their first mention, with hyperlinks where available. Thereafter only an abbreviated source line is given.

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Chapter 16:

Is Philanthropy Bad for Democracy?  

(pages 606–659)

  1. Cara Buckley, ‘Cosseted life and secret end of a millionaire Maltese’, New York Times, 9 June 2011.
  2. David Plotz, ‘Competitive philanthropy – the history of the Slate 60’, Slate, 20 February 2006. ‘$200-Million Mission Aims to End Killing of Unwanted Animals’, Associated Press, 31 January 1999.
  3. Charities try new tactics to be remembered in wills’, Economist, 10 January 2019.
  4. Stephen Kinzernov, ‘Lilly heir makes $100 million bequest to poetry magazine’, New York Times, 19 November 2002; Suzanne Goldenberg, ‘Heiress’s $120m arts gift stuns US’, Guardian, 19 December 2002; Julia Kleinnov, ‘A windfall illuminates the poetry field, and its fights’, New York Times, 12 November 2007.
  5. Quentin Hardy, ‘Paul Allen’s philanthropy mirrors his passions and business approach’, New York Times, 2 November 2015.
  6. Edward Luce, ‘Is wealthy philanthropy doing more harm than good?’, Financial Times, 21 December 2018.
  7. ibid.
  8. John Burn-Murdoch and Federica Cocco, ‘Philanthropy: Crunched – the numbers behind big tech’s tax avoidance’, Financial Times, 11 April 2019.
  9. Sally Weale, ‘Annual donations to UK universities pass £1bn mark for first time’, Guardian, 3 May 2017.
  10. Iain Hay and Samantha Muller, ‘Questioning generosity in the golden age of philanthropy: towards critical geographies’, Progress in Human Geography, 2014, Vol. 38(5) 635–653. A new phenomenon called local education foundations have grown dramatically in America in recent years to supplement the budgets of schools run by the state, Elizabeth Kolbert, ‘Gospels of giving for the new gilded age’, New Yorker, 27 August 2018.
  11. Million Pound Donors Report 2017, Coutts Institute, 2017.
  12. Robert Arnove, Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism, Boston, MA, 1982, p. 1.
  13. Andrew Carnegie, ‘The best fields for philanthropy’, The North American Review, 149:397, December 1899, p. 685.
  14. See Barry Karl and Stanley Katz, ‘Foundations and ruling class elites’, Daedalus, 116:1, 1987, pp. 1–40.
  15. Teresa Odendahl, Charity Begins at Home: Generosity and Self-Interest among the Philanthropic Elite, New York, 1990.
  16. Rutger Bregman, Winnie Byanyima and Anand Giridharadas, ‘Fightback against the billionaires: the radicals taking on the global elite’, Guardian, 7 February 2019.
  17. Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, London, 2019.
  18. David Callahan, The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age, New York, 2018, p. 286.
  19. Rob Reich, Just Giving: Why Philanthropy is Failing Democracy and How it Can Do Better, Princeton, NJ, 2018, p. 7.
  20. ibid, p. 73.
  21. Jon Henley, ‘The new philanthropists’, Guardian, 7 March 2012.
  22. Zachary Mider, ‘The $13 billion mystery angels – who is funding the fourth-largest charity in the US?’, Bloomberg Businessweek, 14 May 2014.
  23. Beecher Tuttle, ‘The hedge fund job you didn’t know you wanted that you probably can’t get’, eFinancialCareers, 21 May 2014.
  24. Caroline Bermudez and Heather Joslyn, ‘Bloomberg Businessweek unmasks mystery donors’, Chronicle of Philanthropy, 18 May 2014.
  25. Peter Singer, ‘What should a billionaire give – and what should you?’, New York Times, 17 December 2006.
  26. UK Income Tax rates and Personal Allowances from 6 April 2019 to 5 April 2020. Accessed 5 April 2020.
  27. ibid.
  28. ibid.
  29. Rob Reich, ‘Plutocratic politics and the age of gilded giving’, Washington Post, 30 November 2018.
  30. Richard Miller, ‘Beneficence, duty and distance’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 32, 2004, pp. 357–83.
  31. Mark Dowie, American Foundations: An Investigative History, Cambridge, MA, 2001, p. 247.
  32. US War Revenue Act of 1917, in Gabrielle Fack and Camille Landais, ‘Charitable giving and tax policy: a historical and comparative perspective’, Paris School of Economics CEPR conference volume, 2012.
  33. An Overview of Philanthropy in Europe, Observatoire de la Fondation de France, 2015.
  34. Fran Quigley, ‘The limits of philanthropy – time to end the charitable tax deduction’, Commonweal, 8 January 2015; Beth Breeze, ‘Since the Finance Act 2000, tax breaks for giving have been almost on a par with those found in the USA’, Understanding Philanthropy – Time for a New Research Agenda, University of Kent, p. 8.
  35. Georgina Ferry, A Better World is Possible: The Gatsby Charitable Foundation and Social Progress, London, 2017, p. 5.
  36. Sweetened charity’, Economist, 9 June 2012.
  37. Benjamin Page et al., ‘Democracy and the policy preferences of wealthy Americans’, Perspectives on Politics, 11:1, March 2013, pp. 51 and 67.
  38. Henley, ‘The new philanthropists’.
  39. ibid.
  40. ibid.
  41. Charles Handy, The New Philanthropists, London, 2007, pp. 9–10.
  42. Henley, ‘The new philanthropists.
  43. Beth Breeze and Theresa Lloyd, Richer Lives: Why Rich People Give, London, 2013, pp. 85–8; Beth Breeze, ‘Why do rich people give?’, Discover Society, 3 December 2013.
  44. Graham Hiscott, ‘Phones4U billionaire John Caudwell: why I’m not leaving my kids all my money’, Mirror, 31 March 2019.
  45. Interview between Caudwell and Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell, Today programme, BBC Radio, 9 December 2019.
  46. Henley, ‘The new philanthropists’.
  47. Economist, 9 May 1863.
  48. Economist, ‘Sweetened charity’.
  49. Daniel Mitchell, ‘Should we end the tax deduction for charitable donations?’, Wall Street Journal, 16 December 2012.
  50. Breeze and Lloyd, Richer Lives, pp. 85–8; also Breeze, ‘Why do rich people give?’
  51. Economist, ‘Sweetened charity’.
  52. Quigley, ‘The limits of philanthropy’.
  53. John Bingham, Martin Beckford and Chris Hope, ‘Charities’ anger over Osborne’s “tax dodge” attack on donors’, Daily Telegraph, 10 April 2012.
  54. Quigley, ‘The limits of philanthropy’.
  55. Luce, ‘Is wealthy philanthropy doing more harm than good?’
  56. Economist, ‘Sweetened charity’.
  57. Edward Malnick, ‘Labour chairman urges members to back plan to abolish private schools’, Telegraph, 7 September 2019.
  58. Economist, ‘Sweetened charity’.
  59. quoted in Kolbert, ‘Gospels of giving for the new gilded age’.
  60. Ajay Kapur, Niall Macleod and Narendra Singh, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalance, Citigroup Equity Strategy, New York, 16 October 2005, p. 9.
  61. ibid, p. 2.
  62. ibid, p. 10.
  63. ibid, p. 25.
  64. ibid, p. 2.
  65. Ajay Kapur, Niall Macleod and Narendra Singh, Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer, Citigroup Equity Strategy, New York, 5 March, 2006, p. 1.
  66. ibid, p. 10.
  67. German millionaires criticize Gates’ “Giving Pledge”’, Der Spiegel, 10 August 2010.
  68. Stephanie Stromnov, ‘Pledge to give away fortunes stirs debate’, New York Times, 10 November 2010.
  69. Dan Ngabonziza, ‘American funds construction of 100 schools in Rwanda’, KT Press, 4 May 2016.
  70. George Washington’s Farewell Address, 17 September 1796.
  71. CORRECTION:  This quote is not from the UN General Assembly but from a report by an NGO which monitors the UN General Assembly. Jens Martens and Karolin Seitz, ‘Philanthropic power and development ­– who shapes the agenda?’, Bischöfliches Hilfswerk Misereor, Aachen/Berlin/Bonn/New York, November 2015.
  72. ibid.
  73. Callahan, The Givers, p. 166.
  74. Reich, Just Giving, p. 126.
  75. John Harwood, ‘5 reasons why income inequality has become a major political issue’, CNBC, 5 June 2019.
  76. Danny Dorling, ‘Peak inequality’, New Statesman, 4 July 2018.
  77. ibid.
  78. Inequalities in the Twenty-First Century, Institute for Fiscal Studies, May 2019.
  79. Dorling, ‘Peak inequality’, New Statesman.
  80. Greg Robb, ‘The harsh truth about economic inequality, based on thousands of years of evidence’, Market Watch, 19 September 2017.
  81.  Danny Dorling, ‘Is the British education system designed to polarise people?’, Guardian, 4 February 2014.
  82. Danny Dorling, Peak Inequality: Britain’s Ticking Time Bomb, Bristol, 2018.
  83. Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality, New York, 2012. And Lawrence Mishel and Jessica Schieder, ‘CEO compensation surged in 2017’, Economic Policy Institute, 16 August 2018.
  84. Inequalities in the Twenty-First Century.
  85. UK: Trade Union Membership Statistics 2018, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, 30 May 2019. US: Alice Ross and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, ‘Group of ultra-rich Americans calls for wealth tax’, Financial Times, 24 June 2019; John Harwood, ‘Five reasons why income inequality has become a major political issue’, CNBC, 5 June 2019.
  86. Poverty and inequality under Trump: ​​human ​​rights under ​​threat’, Guardian, 26 June 2018.
  87. Kevin Kelleher, ‘Gilded Age 2.0: U.S. income inequality increases to pre-Great Depression levels’, Fortune, 13 February 2019.
  88. Gabriel Zucman, Global Wealth Inequality, Working Paper No. 25462, National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2019.
  89. An Economy for the 99%, Oxfam International, 16 January 2017.
  90. Chris Giles, ‘Inequality is unjust, not bad for growth’, Financial Times, 18 August 2015.
  91. Kevin Laskowski, ‘Philanthropy and inequality: what’s the relationship?’, Responsive Philanthropy, Winter 2011/12, pp. 6–7. Laskowski cites Albert Ruesga, quoted on page 627.
  92. Peter Buffett, ‘The charitable-industrial complex’, New York Times, 26 July 2013.
  93. Luce, ‘Is wealthy philanthropy doing more harm than good?’
  94. Reich, Just Giving, 67.
  95. Erica L. Green and Stephanie Saul, ‘What Charles Koch and other donors to George Mason University got for their money’, New York Times, 5 May 2018. ‘Schar School receives $1.1 million from the Koch Foundation’, Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, Arlington, VA.
  96. Zoltan J. Acs’s response to Robin Rogers, ‘Philanthropy and inequality – review of Why Philanthropy Matters: How the Wealthy Give, and What it Will Mean for our Economic Well-Being by Zoltan J. Acs’, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Summer 2013.

UNNUMBERED NOTE: Albert Ruesga is cited in Laskowski (see Note 91 above).

  1. Anand Giridharadas, ‘The new elite’s phoney crusade to save the world – without changing anything’, Guardian, 22 January 2019, quoting Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard.
  2. The future of foundation philanthropy’, Center for Effective Philanthropy, December 2016.
  3. David Callahan, ‘Systemic failure: four reasons philanthropy keeps losing the battle against inequality’, Inside Philanthropy, 10 January 2018.
  4. ibid.
  5.  ibid.
  6. William Jewett Tucker, ‘The gospel of wealth’, Andover Review, XV, 1891, p. 645.
  7. Beth Breeze, ‘Should charities accept contrition cash from dubious donors?’, Guardian, 24 November 2017.
  8. Reich, Just Giving, 4–5; Harold Howland, The Essential Theodore Roosevelt: Great Speeches and Writings of America’s Most Dynamic President, New Haven, CT, 1921.
  9. Anand Giridharadas, ‘When your money is so tainted museums don’t want it’, New York Times, 16 May 2019.
  10. Chris Flood, ‘Blackstone leads global surge in property investment’, Financial Times, 22 May 2019. Andrew Jack, ‘Blackstone boss hands Oxford record £150m gift, Financial Times, 19 June 2019.
  11. Richard Adams, ‘Oxford to receive biggest single donation “since the Renaissance”’, Guardian, 19 June 2019.
  12. United Nations, ‘Mandates of the Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises and the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context’, Geneva, 22 March 2019.
  13. Patrick Butler and Dominic Rushe, ‘UN accuses Blackstone Group of contributing to global housing crisis’, Guardian, 26 March 2019. (See note 108.)
  14. BBC Investigations Team, ‘Paradise Papers: Blackstone avoided UK taxes’, BBC Scotland, 7 November 2017.
  15. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, New York, 1932 (1960), pp. 13–14.
  16. Gillian Rose, The Broken Middle, Oxford, 1992, pp. xii, 89, 198.
  17. Gillian Rose, Love’s Work, London, 1995, p. 116.
  18. Chiara Cordelli, ‘Reparative justice and the limits of discretionary philanthropy’, in Philanthropy in Democratic Societies, ed. Rob Reich, Chiara Cordelli and Lucy Bernholz, Chicago, IL, 2016.
  19. Chiara Cordelli, ‘The problem with discretionary philanthropy’, HistPhil, 28 September 2016.
  20. Anthony Atkinson, Inequality: What Can Be Done?, Cambridge, MA, 2014.
  21. Janet Lowe, Warren Buffett Speaks: Wit and Wisdom from the World’s Greatest Investor, New York, 1997, p. 164.
  22. Chuck Collins, Mike Lapham and Scott Klinger, I Didn’t Do It Alone: Society’s Contribution to Individual Wealth and Success, Responsible Wealth, Boston, MA, August 2004.
  23. ibid.
  24. Singer, ‘What should a billionaire give?’
  25. Zoe Wood, ‘“I did the right thing”: Richer Sounds boss has no regrets’, Guardian, 18 May 2019.
  26. Obama White House Archives, Entrepreneurship Summit participant bios, 25 June 2016; and Shaffi Mather, TED speakers.
  27. Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, p.127.
  28. Kapur et al., Revisiting Plutonomy, 10.
  29. Stephen Foley, ‘Ambitious wealth: tax talk, yes, but do not forget philanthropy’, Financial Times, 20 June 2019.
  30. Nick Cohen, ‘Forget philanthropy. The super-rich should be paying proper taxes’, Observer, 3 February 2019.
  31. Federica Cocco and John Burn-Murdoch, ‘Data crunch’.
  32. Rupert Neate, ‘Most people want higher taxes on rich to support poor – OECD’, Guardian, March 2019.
  33. Ben Feuerherd, ‘Ocasio-Cortez: system that allows billionaires is “immoral”’, New York Post, 22 January 2019.
  34. Arit John and Laura Davison, ‘ Bernie Sanders to propose an estate tax up to 77 per cent on wealthy’, Time, 31 January 2019; Ross and Edgecliffe-Johnson, ‘Group of ultra-rich Americans calls for wealth tax’, Financial Times, 24 June 2019; Edward Hadas, ‘An ultra-tax on the ultra-rich makes sense’, Reuters, 30 January 2019.
  35. Forbes Billionaire Database, 11 February 2020.
  36. Rebecca Hill, ‘Should the super-rich pay 70 per cent tax rate above $10m?’, The Register, 25 January 2019.
  37. Tyler Fisher, ‘How past income tax rate cuts on the wealthy affected the economy’, politico.com, 27 September 2017
  38. Rochelle Toplensky, Patrick Mathur and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, ‘US companies count costs and benefits of Trump tax law’, Financial Times, 22 April 2018; Mark Vandevelde, ‘Blackstone to shift from partnership to a corporation – private equity group finds complex structure no longer worth the trouble following US tax cuts’, Financial Times, 18 April 2019.
  39. Tom Bawden, ‘Buffett blasts system that lets him pay less tax than secretary’, Times, 28 June 2007. Buffett said that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made in 2006, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent.
  40. Stephen Foley, ‘Ambitious wealth’.
  41. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, Oxford, 1974, pp. 169–70.
  42. Alex Kotch, ‘Group that sponsored anti-Ocasio-Cortez billboard tied to Koch and other billionaires’, Sludge, 22 February 2019.
  43. Alex Henderson, ‘In vow to protect centrist incumbents, Koch brothers set their sights on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’, Salon, 12 June 2019; ‘Trump under fire for racially charged tweets against congresswomen’, BBC News, 14 July 2019.
  44. Luke Darby, ‘The Koch brothers want to prevent future AOCs’, GQ, 10 June 2019.
  45. Warren E. Buffett, ‘Stop coddling the super-rich’, New York Times, 14 August 2011.
  46. Bill Gates: US should pay more tax’, Newsnight, BBC, 24 January 2014.
  47. Chris Christie to Warren Buffett: just write a check and shut up’, HuffPost, 22 February 2012.
  48. Callahan, The Givers, p. 88.
  49. Ross and Edgecliffe-Johnson, ‘Group of ultra-rich Americans calls for wealth tax’; signatories included Louise J. Bowditch, Robert S. Bowditch, Abigail Disney, Sean Eldridge, Stephen R. English, Agnes Gund, Catherine Gund, Nick Hanauer, Arnold Hiatt, Chris Hughes, Molly Munger, Regan Pritzker, Justin Rosenstein, Stephen M. Silberstein, Ian T. Simmons, Liesel Pritzker Simmons, Alexander Soros, George Soros, Hansjörg Wyss and Anonymous.
  50. Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, ‘Abigail Disney: “I’m choosing to be a traitor to my class”’, Financial Times, 5 July 2019.
  51. Eli Broad, ‘I’m in the 1 percent. Please, raise my taxes’, New York Times, 25 June 2019.
  52. Stephen Foley, ‘The ultra-rich are making money faster than they can give it away’, Financial Times 28 February 2019.
  53. Noah Kirsch, ‘Bill Gates’ net worth eclipses $100 billion’, Forbes, 18 April 2019.
  54. Conor O’Clery, ‘The Irish-American billionaire who gave away his fortune’, Irish Times, 3 January 2017; ‘Billionaire gives away R100 billion, leaving only 0.0002 per cent of fortune for himself’, 702 South Africa, 20 June 2019.
  55. David Callahan, ‘The richest Americans are sitting on $4 trillion. How can they be spurred to give more of it away?’, Inside Philanthropy, 4 December 2018.
  56. Robert Armstrong, Eric Platt and Oliver Ralph, ‘Warren Buffett: I’m having more fun than any 88-year-old in the world’, Financial Times, 24 April 2019.
  57. Andrew Roberts and Thomas Mulier, ‘Billionaire Cartier owner sees wealth gap fueling social unrest’, Bloomberg, 8 June 2015.
  58. Evan Osnos, ‘Doomsday prep for the super-rich: some of the wealthiest people in America – in Silicon Valley, New York, and beyond – are getting ready for the crackup of civilization’, New Yorker, 22 January 2017.
  59. Harriet Agnew, ‘Rich Brits urged to flaunt their philanthropy – wealthy elite told to be more open about charitable works the American way’, Financial Times, 15 September 2015.
  60. ibid.
  61. Benjamin Soskis, ‘The importance of criticizing philanthropy’, Atlantic, 12 May 2014.
  62. George Arnett, ‘How charitable are fashion’s biggest companies?’, Vogue, 22 May 2019.
  63. Beth Breeze, ‘Philanthropy’s bad reputation could put big donors off giving – here’s why it matters’, The Conversation, 22 May 2019.
  64. Theresa Lloyd, Why Rich People Give, London, 2004, pp. 232–4.
  65. Arnett, ‘How charitable are fashion’s biggest companies?’
  66. LVMH’s billionaire boss Arnault defends Notre-Dame donations’, Reuters, 18 April 2019.
  67. A loose translation of Martin Luther’s Thesis Twenty-Seven (see Note 81 in Chapter Three). Aditya Chakrabortty, ‘The billionaires’ donations will turn Notre Dame into a monument to hypocrisy’, Guardian, 18 April 2019.
  68. Megan Cerullo, ‘French billionaires slow-walk donations to rebuild Notre Dame’, Moneywatch, CBS News, 5 July 2019.
  69. Sara Dorn, ‘Yellow vest protesters say Notre Dame donations better spent fighting poverty’, New York Post, 20 April 2019.
  70. Chakrabortty, ‘The billionaires’ donations’.
  71. Henley, ‘The new philanthropists’.
  72. John Naughton and Justin Forsyth, ‘Is billionaire philanthropy always a good thing?’, Observer, 6 December 2015.
  73. Breeze, ‘Philanthropy’s bad reputation’. The figure is about 11 per cent according to The Palgrave Handbook of Global Philanthropy, ed. Pamala Wiepking and Femida Handy, New York, 2015.
  74. Phil Buchanan, ‘Philanthropy’s blighted reputation threatens global giving’, Financial Times, 15 April 2019.
  75. Addis Ababa Action Agenda, UN General Assembly, 2015, para. 42.
  76. Bill Gates steps down from Microsoft board to focus on philanthropy’, BBC News, 13 March 2020. James Surowiecki, ‘In defense of philanthrocapitalism’, New Yorker, 13 December 2015.
  77. Mark R. Kramer, ‘Catalytic philanthropy’, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2009.
  78. Jennifer Wang, ‘Why Blackstone cofounder Steve Schwarzman donated $188 million to support the humanities and AI ethics’, Forbes, 22 June 2019.
  79. ibid.
  80. ibid.
  81. Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science Association 1869, ed. Edwin Pears, London, 1870, p. 135.
  82. Winston Churchill in a House of Commons debate, 11 November 1947, Hansard, 444, §207.
  83. Benjamin Soskis, ‘New realities for philanthropy in the Trump era’, Chronicle of Philanthropy, 10 November 2016.
  84. Reich, Just Giving, 137.
  85. Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill, ‘Just justice?’, Philanthropy Daily, 8 January 2019.
  86. Reich, Just Giving, 87

The interview with Eliza Manningham-Buller was conducted on 1 October 2019

 

 

Chapter 17:

Effective Altruism – What Could be Wrong with That?  

(pages 660–705)

  1. Mark Zuckerberg, ‘A letter to our daughter’, Facebook, 1 December 2015.
  2. Consolidated Financial Statements, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 31 December 2015.
  3. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to give away 99% of shares’, BBC News, 2 December 2015.
  4. John Cassidy, ‘Mark Zuckerberg and the rise of philanthrocapitalism’, New Yorker, 2 December 2015.
  5. Dale Russakoff, ‘Schooled’, New Yorker, 12 May 2014.
  6. Dale Russakoff, The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools, New York, 2015.
  7. Abby Jackson, ‘Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million donation to Newark public schools failed miserably – here’s where it went wrong’, Business Insider, 25 September 2015.
  8. Ruth Marcus, ‘How Newark schools partially squandered Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million donation’, Washington Post, 21 October 2015.
  9. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, 6 November 2015.
  10. Beth Breeze, ‘Don’t call Mark Zuckerberg unrealistic – philanthropists are uniquely free to shoot for the moon’, The Conversation, 23 September 2016; Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho, New York, 1980, p. 89.
  11. Maya Rhodan, ‘Mark Zuckerberg, wife donate $120 million to Bay Area schools’, Time, 30 May 2014; Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, 6 November 2015.
  12. Assessing the $100 million upheaval of Newark’s public schools’, NPR, 21 September 2015.
  13. Papers filed by Facebook, Inc, United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
  14. Natasha Singer and Mike Isaac, ‘Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropy uses LLC for more control’, New York Times, 2 December 2015.
  15. Jesse Eisinger, ‘How Mark Zuckerberg’s altruism helps himself’, New York Times, 3 December 2015.
  16. Linsey McGoey, ‘Love from mom and dad … but who gains from Mark Zuckerberg’s $45bn gift?’, Guardian, 6 December 2015.
  17. Carl Rhodes and Peter Bloom, ‘The trouble with charitable billionaires’, Guardian, 24 May 2018.
  18. Cassidy, ‘Mark Zuckerberg’.
  19. Vassilisa Rubtsova, ‘The merits and drawbacks of philanthrocapitalism’, Berkeley Economic Review, 14 March 2019.
  20. Marcus Baram, ‘Facebook wants you to know that Zuckerberg’s 99% initiative is not a charity’, Fast Company, 2 December 2015.
  21. Singer and Isaac, ‘Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropy’.
  22. ibid.
  23. Shannon Bond, ‘Jeff Bezos divorce casts spotlight on wife MacKenzie’, Financial Times, 18 January 2019.
  24. Claire Cain Miller, ‘Laurene Powell Jobs and anonymous giving in Silicon Valley’, New York Times, 24 May 2013.
  25. Sean Parker, ‘Philanthropy for hackers’, Wall Street Journal, 26 June 2015.
  26. Ariana Eunjung Cha, ‘$250 million, 300 scientists and 40 labs: Sean Parker’s revolutionary project to “solve” cancer’, Washington Post, 13 April 2016.
  27. Stephen Foley, ‘Sean Parker: hacker philanthropist’, Financial Times, 23 May 2016.
  28. David Gelles, ‘How tech billionaires hack their taxes with a philanthropic loophole’, New York Times, 3 August 2018.
  29. Ariana Cha, ‘$250 million, 300 scientists and 40 labs: Sean Parker’s revolutionary project to “solve” cancer’, Washington Post, 13 April 2016
  30. Russ Juskalian, ‘Was Carnegie right about philanthropy?’, New Yorker, 9 February 2014.
  31. 2018 DAF US Report, National Philanthropic Trust, Jenkintown, PA, 2018; Philanthropy Comes of Age – The Continued Rise of Donor Advised Giving in the UK, Charities Aid Foundation, London, 2018.
  32. Suzanne Goldenberg, ‘Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks’, Guardian, 14 February 2013.
  33. Douglas Fischer, ‘“Dark money” funds climate change denial effort’, Scientific American, 23 December 2013, and David Callahan, The Givers: Wealth, Power and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age, New York, 2018, p. 203.
  34. Tom Metcalf, ‘A peek into Goldman’s black box charity reveals tech billionaires’, Bloomberg, 14 March 2018.
  35. Gelles, ‘How tech billionaires hack their taxes’. Alana Semuels, ‘The ‘Black Hole’ That Sucks Up Silicon Valley’s Money’, The Atlantic, 14 May 2018
  36. Kerry Dolan, ‘Here are 17 billionaires who’ve donated to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation’, Forbes, 2 May 2018.
  37. Gelles, ‘How tech billionaires hack their taxes’.
  38. Nasdaq index, 26 July 2019.
  39. Online Q&A with Nicholas Woodman on the discussion website Reddit, 6 October 2016,
  40. Gelles, ‘How tech billionaires hack their taxes’.
  41. Ray Madoff and Roger Colinvaux, Letter to Orrin G. Hatch on donor-advised funds, to Orrin G. Hatch, Chairman of the US Senate Committee on Finance, 17 July 2017, Law School Publications, Boston College, 2017.
  42. Matt Barnum and Sarah Darville, ‘Lifting the veil on education’s newest big donor: inside Chan Zuckerberg’s $300 million push to reshape schools’, Chalkbeat, 6 September 2018.
  43. Casey Bayer, ‘Reach Every Reader targets early literacy crisis’, Harvard Gazette, 6 March 2018.
  44. Barnum and Darville, ‘Lifting the veil on education’s newest big donor’.
  45. Maria Di Mento, ‘Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan launch new database of grant making and investments’, Chronicle of Philanthropy, 29 March 2019.
  46. David Callahan, ‘The price of privacy: what’s wrong with the new shadow giving system’, HistPhil, 1 August 2018.
  47. Aquinas I-II 114, 4 ad 3, quoting Paul, I Corinthians 13:4.
  48. Ian Parker, ‘The gift’, New Yorker, 2 August 2004.
  49. Peter Singer, ‘What should a billionaire give – and what should you?’, New York Times, 17 December 2006.
  50. Parker, ‘The gift’.
  51. Angela M. Eikenberry and Roseanne Marie Mirabella, Extreme Philanthropy: Philanthrocapitalism, Effective Altruism, and the Discourse of Neoliberalism, American Political Science Association, January 2018.
  52. Peter Singer, Famine, Affluence, and Morality, Oxford, 2016.
  53. Julian Baggini, ‘A new breed of hardcore altruists are changing the way we think about charity. But can generosity go too far?’, New Statesman, 20 August 2015; Peter Singer: ‘The why and how of Effective Altruism’, Ted Talk, 2013; Peter Singer, The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism is Changing Ideas about Living Ethically, Yale, 2015; Peter Singer, ‘How can we be more Effective Altruists?’, NPR, 26 May 2017.
  54. Eric Friedman, Reinventing Philanthropy, Washington DC, 2013, pp. xii–xiii, 18–22, 46–9.
  55. Nicholas Kristof, ‘The trader who donates half his pay’, New York Times, 4 April 2015.
  56. givingwhatwecan.org/about-us
  57. givingwhatwecan.org/giving-recommendations; and www.givewell.org/about; and www.givedirectly.org/faq
  58. 80000hours.org/key-ideas
  59. Tom Geoghegan, ‘Toby Ord: why I’m giving £1m to charity’, BBC News Magazine, 13 December 2010.
  60. Kristof, ‘The trader who donates half his pay’.
  61. Peter Singer, ‘Famine, affluence, and morality’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1:3, Spring 1972, p. 241.
  62. William MacAskill, Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference, London, 2015.
  63. Julian Baggini, ‘A new breed of hardcore altruists are changing the way we think about charity’.
  64. Amia Srinivasan, ‘Stop the robot apocalypse’, a review of MacAskill’s Doing Good Better, London Review of Books, 24 September 2015.
  65. Jeff McMahan, ‘How much good should you do? – philosophical critiques of Effective Altruism’, The Philosophers’ Magazine, 73, 2nd quarter, 2016, pp. 92–9.
  66. Giles Fraser, ‘It’s called Effective Altruism – but is it really the best way to do good?’, Guardian, 23 November 2017.
  67. Dylan Matthews, ‘Philanthropy is undergoing a massive backlash. A new book argues it’s gone too far’, Vox, 27 May 2019.
  68. Angus Deaton, ‘The logic of Effective Altruism’, Boston Review, 1 July 2015.
  69. ibid.
  70. Caroline Fiennes and Ehren Reed, ‘Moneyball philanthropy? Not always’, Forbes, 30 June 2014.
  71. Global Witness website.
  72. Srinivasan, ‘Stop the robot apocalypse’.
  73. Julian Baggini, ‘A new breed of hardcore altruists are changing the way we think about charity’.
  74. Ken Berger and Robert Penna, ‘The elitist philanthropy of so-called Effective Altruism’, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 25 November 2013.
  75. Deaton, ‘The logic of Effective Altruism’.
  76. William MacAskill, ‘Replaceability, career choice, and making a difference’, Ethic Theory and Moral Practice, 2014, p. 280.
  77. Benjamin Todd, ‘Earning to give’, 80,000 Hours, 21 August 2014.
  78. William MacAskill, ‘80,000 Hours thinks that only a small proportion of people should earn to give long term’, 80,000 Hours blog, 6 July 2015.
  79. MacAskill, ‘Replaceability, career choice’, p. 278.
  80. MacAskill, ‘80,000 Hours’.
  81. MacAskill, ‘Replaceability, career choice’, p. 274.
  82. Benjamin Todd, 80,000 Hours: Find a Fulfilling Career that Does Good, Oxford, 2016.
  83. The Effective Altruism movement shifted in another way. Clearly stung by the accusations that they ignored structural injustice, Robin Wiblin, the director of research at 80,000 Hours published a blog – just two days after MacAskill’s “common misconceptions” article. Wiblin’s was headlined Effective Altruists love systemic change’, (80,000 Hours blog, 8 July 2015.) In it he acknowledged what many of EA’s left-leaning critics had surmised:

“Effective altruists are usually not radicals or revolutionaries. My attitude, looking at history, is that sudden dramatic changes in society usually lead to worse outcomes than gradual evolutionary improvements. I am keen to tinker with government or economic systems to make them work better, but would only rarely want to throw them out and rebuild from scratch”.

He personally favoured “maintaining and improving mostly market-driven economies”, he wrote, adding that “this temperament for ‘crossing the river by feeling the stones’ is widespread among Effective Altruists”. That would lead to EA helping to avoid the mistakes of extremists through history. “The system could be a lot better, but one only need look at history to see that it could also be much worse.”

  1. Even so Effective Altruism was now looking beyond direct interventions to save lives through primary healthcare in developing countries. It now needed to address “runaway climate change” and consider the risks that could arise from artificial intelligence and bioengineering alongside the undoubted benefits they might usher in. “Over the past eight years, we’ve come to realise that the present generation is capable of putting the entire future of civilisation at stake if it doesn’t wisely navigate the development of these technologies”.  (‘Your career can help solve the world’s most pressing problems’, Key Ideas, 80,000 Hours)
  2. McMahan, ‘How much good should you do?’.
  3. MacAskill, ‘Replaceability, career choice’, p. 280.
  4. Singer, The Most Good You Can Do, 29–30.
  5. John Gray, ‘How and how not to be good’, New York Review of Books, 21 May 2015, reviewing Singer, The Most Good You Can Do.
  6. Singer, ‘What should a billionaire give?’
  7. Gray, ‘How and how not to be good’.
  8. Srinivasan, ‘Stop the robot apocalypse’.
  9. David Brooks, ‘The way to produce a person’, New York Times, 3 June 2013.
  10. ibid.
  11. Singer, The Most Good You Can Do, p. 78.
  12. ibid.
  13. Giles Fraser interview with the author, 23 November 2017.
  14. Fast Facts, HamlinFistual.org
  15. MacAskill, Doing Good Better, p. 15.
  16. Srinivasan, ‘Stop the robot apocalypse’.
  17. Judith Lichtenberg, ‘Peter Singer’s extremely altruistic heirs’, New Republic, 30 November 2015.
  18. Amartya Sen, on Twitter, 26 February 2016, quoted by Angel Gurría, ‘Addressing the hidden dimensions of poverty’, OECD, 10 May 2019.
  19. Julian Baggini, ‘A new breed of hardcore altruists are changing the way we think about charity’.

 

The interview with Lenny Henry and Kevin Cahill was conducted on 28 November 2019

 

 

Chapter 18:

How Philanthropy can Recover its Lost Soul

 (pages 706–734)

  1. June Thomas, ‘The retreat observation that put Patty Stonesifer on Microsoft leadership’s radar’, Slate, 28 March 2019.
  2. Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon, ‘Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation’, Los Angeles Times, 7 January 2007.
  3. bernsteinfamilyfoundationdc.org/patty-stonesifer
  4. Maureen Dowd, ‘She’s getting her boots dirty,’ New York Times, 2 June 2013.
  5. Steve Hendrix, ‘Patty Stonesifer, former CEO of Gates Foundation, to lead D.C. food pantry’, Washington Post, 29 January 2013.
  6. Bill McGarvey, ‘David Brooks on his life-changing pilgrimage with St. Augustine and Dorothy Day’, America, 15 August 2019.
  7. Eli Pariser, ‘When the internet thinks it knows you’, New York Times, 22 May 2011.
  8. Jonathan Sacks, Faith in the Future: The Ecology of Hope and the Restoration of Family, Community and Faith, London, 1995, p. 23.
  9. Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Vatican, 1987, §38.
  10. Benedict XIV, Deus Caritas East, Vatican, 2005, §26.
  11. ibid, §28.
  12. ibid, §34.
  13. Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, Vatican, 2013, §198.  This tradition of mutuality and partnership is developed by the Dutch theologian Henri Nouwen in The Spirituality of Fund-raising (ed John Mogabgab, Upper Room Books, 2010).  Nouwen writes: “Fund-raising is precisely the opposite of begging. When we seek to raise funds we are not saying: “Please, could you help us out because lately it’s been hard.” Rather, we are declaring: “We have a vision that is amazing and exciting. We are inviting you to invest yourself through the resources that God has given you – your energy, your prayers, and your money – in this work to which God has called us.” (p. 3-4). “Asking people for money is giving them the opportunity to … invest what they have in the work of God.” (p. 25). That means inviting the rich “into a new spiritual communion” (p. 27) which “must hold out the real possibility of friendship and community. People have such a need for friendship and for community that fund-raising has to be community-building. (p. 28)  “Fund-raising must always aim to create new, lasting relationships” (p. 30).
  14. Evangelii Gaudium, §53.
  15. Pope Francis, interview in the Milan street magazine Scarp de’ tenis, 28 February 2017.
  16. Beth Breeze, ‘The shop-floor perspective on corporate philanthropy’, Guardian, 2 October 2012.
  17. ibid.
  18. BBC News, ‘Comic Relief raises £1bn over 30-year existence’, 14 March 2015.
  19. Kickstarter statistics, 7 April 2020
  20. 2015CF Crowdfunding Industry Report, Massolution, 31 March 2015.

21-25.  Friedemann Polzin, Helen Toxopeus & Erik Stam, ‘The wisdom of the crowd in funding: information heterogeneity and social networks of crowdfunders’, University of Cambridge Judge Business School, 28 October 2016.

What is striking here – and in giving generally among the wider public – is the extent to which their instinct aligns with Reciprocal Philanthropy rather than Strategic Philanthrocapitalism.  Only 35 per cent of donors do any research into charities before they give, according to William Schambra of the Bradley Center for Philanthropy & Civic Renewal in Washington DC. Donors say they care about how charities perform but very few go out of their way to seek out the highest-performing charities, as Effective Altruists recommend. Those who do check out charities in advance are mostly only looking “to confirm that the group they’ve already chosen isn’t a total fraud”. (William A. Schambra, The coming showdown between philanthrolocalism and Effective Altruism, Philanthropy Daily, 22 May 2014).  Giving here is clearly addressing a need which is outside the calculus of the Strategic Philanthropists.

It is not hard to see why Effective Altruists are unhappy about this. One of the most spectacular examples of internet fundraising over the past decade has been the Ice Bucket Challenge.  In the summer of 2014, around 17 million people all over the world had a bucket of ice-cold water poured over their heads and then shared a film of their reaction on the internet (‘Ice Bucket Challenge funds gene discovery in ALS (MND) research’, BBC News, 27 July 2016). In the short video clips, each person challenged another three people to do the same within 24 hours or else make a donation to the ALS Association, a charity for the victims of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis – a fatal disease in which gradual paralysis eventually leaves sufferers “locked inside” bodies incapable of almost any movement. Most patients retain full mental capacity even as the disease robs them of mobility. In Britain it is known as Motor Neurone Disease. Average life expectancy is three to four years, though Professor Stephen Hawking lived with it for more than five decades..  The stunt became a global craze as the videos went viral.

A host of pop musicians, sports stars, politicians, philanthropists and celebrities took the challenge including Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, David Beckham, Kate Moss, Lebron James, Lady Gaga, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Former president George W Bush performed the challenge and then nominated Bill Clinton. Some, like President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron, preferred to pay the forfeit. But many of the celebrities both dowsed themselves and also donated. Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate, was nominated by the Mayor of Boston, Marty Walsh. Trump labelled Walsh “a clown” and told the city to “get a new mayor” – but then had Miss Universe and Miss USA dump icy water on his head. (Dialynn Dwyer, ‘Donald Trump’s response to Marty Walsh’s Ice Bucket challenge: He’s a clown’, boston.com 14 Aug 2015).   Yet if the wisdom of crowds had turned to the madness of crowds the impact upon the disease’s two main charities was transformative. In the days before the Ice Bucket Challenge, the Motor Neurone Disease Association in the UK would receive on average £200,000 a week in donations. In only the seven days from 22 to 29 August 2014, it received £2.7 million. In the US the ALS Association, which had previously raised an average income of $20 million a year now received – in just one month – $98 million, a figure which rose to $115 million by the end of the financial year (‘Understanding the Impact of the Ice Bucket Challenge on The ALS Association’s Finances‘, Official blog of the ALS Association, 5 June 2019).

The phenomenon, though widely applauded, was also widely derided. Social commentators scorned it for its combination of competitiveness, peer pressure, and self-congratulatory online narcissism. The whole tone of the Ice Bucket Challenge was trivial and made no attempt to engage with the seriousness of the disease. One newspaper columnist snootily dismissed it as “a middle-class wet T-shirt contest”. Pressure groups projected their own agenda onto the jaunty affair. Some pro-life lobbyists complained that it might fund research using stem cells from embryos (David Prentice, ‘Send Your Ice Bucket Challenge Donation to Ethical, Successful Adult Stem Cell Research’, Family Research Council, 21 Aug 2014). An animal rights group declared that research would involve “archaic and painful tests on animals.” (Paul Bedard, ‘PETA challenges ALS ‘ice bucket challenge’ over animal testing’, Washington Examiner, 29 Aug 2014). Effective altruists asked why so much effort was being expended on a disease that affects only around 0.03 per cent of the population.  One of the movement’s leaders, William MacAskill, declared: “The Ice Bucket Challenge is a symbol for much that’s wrong with contemporary charity: a celebration of good intentions without regard for good outcomes. It is iconic for what I call donor-focused philanthropy—making charitable giving about the giver, rather than about those who need help.” (William MacAskill, ‘This week, let’s dump a few ice buckets to wipe out malaria too’, Quartz, 18 August 2014). It would divert money from better causes. And it would encourage what MacAskill called “moral licensing” – a psychologist’s term for people feeling that they were now allowed to indulge in bad behaviour because they had done something good for charity (‘The cold, hard truth about the ice bucket challenge’, Quartz, 14 August 2014). Others complained that the ALS Association allocated too much of the money (67 per cent) to research into treatments for the disease, rather than on caring for present sufferers. That complaint looked particularly odd a couple of years later when it was announced that researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School – one of six groups of 80 researchers in 11 countries funded with the Ice Bucket cash – had identified a third gene that is a cause of the disease, providing a new target for gene therapy treatment. (‘Ice Bucket Challenge funds gene discovery in ALS (MND) research’, BBC News, 27 July 2016).

Disability rights campaigners also hailed the Ice Bucket Challenge as a success in terms of awareness-raising, despite voicing clear reservations about the style of the stunt. “It’s been very celebrity-orientated and it plays into our culture of putting everything about ourselves out there on social media,” said the actor and disability rights campaigner, Shannon Murray. “Some people have obviously done it to raise their profile and that’s up to them. Personally it makes me a bit uncomfortable. But the bottom line is that people weren’t talking about [the disease] two months ago, and now they are.” Google searches for the various names for Motor Neurone Disease rose sharply and more than a million extra hits were recorded on the ALS Association’s Wikipedia page. (Lucy Townsend, ‘How much has the ice bucket challenge achieved?’, BBC News, 2 September 2014).  The long-term impact of this is questionable, however.  The charity made efforts to retain Ice Bucket donors by immediately thanking them for their donation, that was not enough to keep them engaged. Less than 1 percent of those who gave for the first time during the challenge donated again.  (Emily Haynes, ‘Cold Cash: What to Do When Unexpected Money Pours In’, Chronicle of Philanthropy, 17 July 2019)

So what does the Ice Bucket Challenge tell us about public attitudes to philanthropy? The freak phenomenon perhaps says more about the stunt than the charitable cause it supposedly promotes. It was the medium rather than the message which captured a skittish public imagination. “No one at ALS or MND sat down and planned this, it wasn’t their idea, it’s something that has happened to them because of social media and the internet”, said Joe Saxton the former chair of the Institute of Fundraising. (Lucy Townsend, ‘How much has the ice bucket challenge achieved?’, BBC News, 2 September 2014). Others who tried to copy the idea met only limited success. Women who posted bare-faced pictures of themselves online with the tagline #NoMakeupSelfie raised the far smaller amount of £8m for Cancer Research UK, though Water Aid saw a spike in donations from people bemoaning the water wasted by the Ice Bucketeers. “Social media is extraordinarily powerful for charities,” concluded Saxton, “but it’s not something they can particularly control”.

  1. Sean Parker, ‘Philanthropy for hackers’, Wall Street Journal, 26 June 2015.
  2. As at 2 May 2020, Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and now Bernard Arnault regularly jostle for the title of the world’s richest man in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which is updated daily according to shifts in share prices and other financial data. On 18 February 2020 the ranking was Bezos $130 billion, Gates $119 billion and Arnault $98 billion. Fourth was Warren Buffett at $89 billion and Mark Zuckerberg at $81 billion. On 7 April 2020, after the coronavirus stock market collapse, the figures were, respectively $123 billion, $101 billion, $72 billion, $72.8 billion, and $63.5 billion.
  3. Jeff Bezos, Twitter, 15 June 2017, reported in Nick Wingfield, ‘Jeff Bezos wants ideas for philanthropy, so he asked Twitter’, New York Times, 15 June 2017.
  4. Jeremy Beer, The Philanthropic Revolution: An Alternative History of American Charity, Philadelphia, PA, 2015.
  5. ibid, pp. 9–10.
  6. Jeremy Beer, ‘Satan was the first philanthropist’, Localism in the Mass Age: A Front Porch Republic Manifesto, ed. Mark Mitchell and Jason Peters, Eugene, OR, 2018. An online version can be found here: Satan was the first philanthropist.
  7. Emily Clough, ‘Effective Altruism’s political blind spot’, Boston Review, 14 July 2015. Angela M. Eikenberry and Roseanne Marie Mirabella, Extreme Philanthropy: Philanthrocapitalism, Effective Altruism, and the Discourse of Neoliberalism, American Political Science Association, January 2018. How politically realistic philanthro-localism and advocacy philanthropy are in their purest forms is open to question

33-36.  The Oxford economist Sir Paul Collier in his 2018 book The Future of Capitalism, suggests more of a middle way. Collier also wants to re-establish a sense of mutual obligation – but not merely at the local level. He starts with the family, moves on to the individual business, then the nation and then our global society. At all these levels we need to strengthen the reciprocal obligations we have to each other. Bill Gates, in reviewing the book, seized on the author’s analysis of how businesses now work:

“Collier criticizes the notion that a company’s only responsibility is to make money for its shareholders. This sole focus on the bottom line, he argues, means many companies no longer feel responsible to their employees or the communities where they operate. This has been a big driver, he says, of ‘the mass contempt in which capitalism is held – as greedy, selfish, corrupt’.”  (Bill Gates, ‘Is there a crisis in capitalism?’, gatesnotes, 20 May 2019)

The problem here is not capitalism, Gates and Collier both maintain. If companies see that they have a responsibility to the society in which they operate, and not just to their shareholders, they can make long-term commitments to contribute to the common good in their neighbourhood by sharing their skills and services as well as making philanthropic donations.

Collier looks back to the foundational documents of modern capitalism, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments. “For two centuries economists thought that Smith had written two incompatible books…only recently has he been properly understood,” Collier writes. (Paul Collier, The Future of Capitalism – Facing the New Anxieties, London, 2018, p28).  The first book deals with ‘wants’ and the second with ‘oughts’. But both are built on the idea that there is mutual benefit from the exchange of ‘wants’ and ‘oughts’– and where the two clash the ‘oughts’ should triumph. The problem is that since the 18th century the dominant political influences – among utilitarians, Rawlsians and libertarians – have encouraged the rights of the individual to override those of the collective. (ibid, p14-5). As a result, capitalism needs to be “managed” to re-emphasise reciprocity and mutual respect as its core values.  Paul Collier’s idea for a more ethical capitalism provides the soil in which a middle way for philanthropy could be planted which would bring together the reciprocal and strategic approaches.

  1. Paul M. Connolly, ‘Balancing the humanistic and technocratic in philanthropy’, Tactical Philanthropy, 7 September 2011.
  2. ibid.
  3. Paul M. Connolly, ‘What can philanthropy learn from Moneyball?’, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 27 October 2011.
  4. ibid.
  5.  ibid.
  6. Paul M. Connolly, ‘The best of the humanistic and technocratic: why the most effective work in philanthropy requires a balance’, Foundation Review, 3:1, 2011, p. 135.
  7. Sarah Murray, ‘How impact investing can complement but not displace philanthropy’, Financial Times, 21 June 2019.
  8. Susan Phillips and Tobias Jung, ‘A new “new” philanthropy: from impetus to impact’, Routledge Companion to Philanthropy, London, 2016.
  9. Peterborough Social Impact Bond shown to cut reoffending and make investor returns’, Barrow Cadbury Trust, 27 July 2017. Investors in the Peterborough Social Impact Bond included: Barrow Cadbury Trust, the CowPat Trust, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Friends Provident Foundation, Golden Bottle Trust, The Henry Smith Charity, the Hintze Family Charitable Foundation, J. Paul Getty Jr Charitable Trust, Johansson Family Foundation, K. L. Felicitas Foundation, LankellyChase Foundation, Monument Trust, Panahpur, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, R&S Cohen Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and the Tudor Trust.
  10. Brookings Impact Bonds Snapshot – 1 March 2020.
  11. Hannah Murphy, ‘Social impact bonds: on the margins’, Financial Times, 24 September 2018.
  12. Andrew Jack, ‘The top global social impact bonds – a way to generate funding for social policy while also attracting investors’, Financial Times, 4 December 2018.
  13. Tim West, ‘Sir Ronald launches an “impact revolution”’, Pioneer Post, 15 October 2018.
  14. Evangelii Gaudium, §53.
  15.  Matthew 6:24.
  16. Pope Francis, Address to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace Conference on ‘Impact Investing for The Poor, Vatican, 16 June 2014.
  17. Sarah Murray, ‘How impact investing can complement but not displace philanthropy’.
  18. Global Investor Statement to Governments on Climate Change, 26 June 2019.
  19. Faith, hope and impact – the Catholic church becomes an impact investor’, Economist, 19 August 2017.
  20. Francesca Bastagli, Jessica Hagen-Zanker, Luke Harman, Valentina Barca, Georgina Sturge and Tanja Schmidt, with Luca Pellerano, Cash Transfers: What Does the Evidence Say? A Rigorous Review of Programme Impact and of the Role of Design and Implementation Features, Overseas Development Institute, July 2016.
  21. Antipoverty cash transfers in the global South, Global Development Institute.
  22. Joseph Hanlon, Open University, 15 June 2010,
  23. David Hulme, ‘Just give money to the poor and what works for the poorest: book launch’, Overseas Development Institute, 15 June 2010.
  24. Peter Singer, EA recommendations, GiveDirectly
  25. EA Concepts, Cash Transfers
  26. International Rescue Committee, 2015-2020, Cash Relief
  27. Hanlon, Open University.
  28. William MacAskill, Doing Good Better, London, 2015, pp. 3–10.
  29. Georgina White, ‘The Ethics of Philanthropy’, The European Legacy, 2018, 23:1-2, 111-126.
  30. Dowd, ‘She’s getting her boots dirty’.
  31.  Catherine Dunn, ‘Advice for women starting over: find your passion’, Fortune, 17 October 2013.
  32. Q&A with Patty Stonesifer, C-span, 18 November 2013.
  33. bernsteinfamilyfoundationdc.org/patty-stonesifer
  34. Dowd, ‘She’s getting her boots dirty’.
  35. Elizabeth O’Gorek, ‘Come to the table: Martha’s Table open in Ward 8’, East of the River News, 21 August 2018.
  36. Martha’s Table, Commons Learning Project, 11 September 2014
  37. Jenni Murray interviews Melinda Gates, Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 4, 25 April 2019.
  38. Bill Gates, Responding to Covid-19 — A Once-in-a-Century Pandemic?, New England Journal of Medicine, 28 February 2020.
  39. Bill Gates, TED talk, March 2015. Transcript.
  40. Bill Gates, ‘We are vulnerable to flu epidemic in next decade’, BBC News, 30 December 2016.
  41. Bill Gates, Munich Security Conference, 17 February 2012.
  42. Bill Gates, ‘The next epidemic is coming. Here’s how we can make sure we’re ready’, Shattuck Lecture, 27 April 2018.
  43.  ibid. NOTE. IN THE FIRST EDITION OF SOME E-BOOK EDITIONS THIS NOTE WAS INADVERTENTLY OMITTED CAUSING ALL THE NOTES HEREAFTER TO BE MISNUMBRED BY ONE NUMBER.
  44. Helen Branswell, ‘Bill Gates got President Trump fired up about a universal flu vaccine — and also (maybe) got a job offer’, Sat News, 30 Aril 2018.
  45. Beth Cameron, ‘I ran the White House pandemic office. Trump closed it’, Washington Post, 13 March 2020.
  46. Live Simulation Exercise to Prepare Public and Private Leaders for Pandemic Response, World Economic Forum, 15 October 2019.
  47. The Candid Foundation, 1 June 2020. ‘Bill Gates is funding new factories for 7 potential coronavirus vaccines, even though it will waste billions of dollars’, Business Insider, 3 April 2020. ‘Covid-19 exposes American philanthropy’s strengths and weaknesses’, Economist, 27 April 2020.
  48. Megan O’Neil, ‘Zuckerberg moves to pay for $45 billion pledge’, Chronicle of Philanthropy, 27 April 2016.
  49. Rhodri Davies, ‘Why the criticism of Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropy is both wrong and right’, Charities Aid Foundation blog, 3 December 2015.
  50. Peter Buffett, ‘The charitable-industrial complex’, New York Times, 26 July 2013. And website of Novo Foundation
  51. Kay Dervishi, ‘Backlash emerges as NoVo Foundation cuts program and staff’, NYNMedia, 20 May 2020. Email from Peter and Jennifer Buffett to NoVo partners
  52. Darren Walker, ‘Toward a new gospel of wealth’, Ford Foundation, 1 October 2015.
  53. Davies, ‘Criticism of Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropy’.
  54. Clare Grant and David Paul, ‘Who are the UK’s most generous millionaires?’, 2019 Giving List, Sunday Times, 12 May 2019.
  55. Jenni Murray interviews Melinda Gates.
  56. Abigail Pesta, ‘Melinda Gates on her life with the richest man in the world’, Daily Telegraph, 25 November 2013.
  57. Bloomberg Billionaires Index, 10 January 2020.
  58. Richard Kirkland, ‘Should You Leave It All to the Children?’, interview with Warren Buffett, Fortune, 29 September 1986.
  59. Áine Cain and Allana Akhtar, ‘Inside the 25-year marriage of Bill and Melinda Gates, who met at work, have 3 kids, live in a $124 million home, spend $45 billion on philanthropy, and still wash dishes together every night’, Business Insider, 24 April 2019.
  60. Bloomberg Billionaires Index, 10 January 2020. (He was fifth on 16 June 2020).
  61. Beth Breeze, ‘The return of philanthropy’, Prospect, 16 January 2005.
  62. Alice Ross, ‘Wealthy move to tackle pitiful state of UK philanthropy’, Financial Times, 15 February 2019.
  63. Editorial Comment, ‘Zuckerberg/Chan philanthropy offers hubris and hope’, Financial Times, 22 September 2016.
  64. ibid.
  65. Clive Cookson and Hugo Greenhalgh, ‘Likes mount up for $3bn Chan-Zuckerberg cure-all ambitions’, Financial Times, 22 September 2016.
  66. Rhodri Davies, ‘Has Mark Zuckerberg just announced the death of the charitable foundation?’, Charities Aid Foundation, 4 December 2015.
  67. Financial Times, ‘Zuckerberg/Chan philanthropy offers hubris and hope’.
  68. Rupert Neate, ‘Facebook’s UK tax bill rises to £15.8m – but it is still just 1% of sales’, Guardian, 8 October 2018.
  69. Mark Zuckerberg, ‘A letter to our daughter’, Facebook, 1 December 2015.
  70. ibid.
  71. Michael Edwards, ‘Will Zuckerberg and Chan end the philanthropic oligarchy?’, Chronicle of Philanthropy, 4 December 2015.
  72. Davies, ‘Criticism of Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropy’.
  73. Bloomberg Billionaire Index, 10 January 2020.

 

 

EPILOGUE:

Philanthropy after the Pandemic

(pages 735–743)

 

  1.  John Gray, Why this crisis is a turning point in history, New Statesman, 1 April 2020
  2.  ‘Coronavirus: EU could fail over outbreak, warns Italy’s Giuseppe Conte’, BBC News, 9 April 2020
  3.  ‘Trump suspends funding to World Health Organization’, Financial Times, 15 April 2020. ‘Trump Defunds World Health Organization In the Middle of a Global Pandemic’, Vanity Fair, 15 April 2020
  4.  The 18 countries with the most millionaires, ranked, Personal Finance, 23 Oct 2019
  5.  ‘The Good — And Bad — About China’s New Charity Law’, Wall Street Journal, 16 March 2016.
  6.  Philanthropy in China report, Asian Venture Philanthropy Network & Rockefeller Foundation, New York, 5 April 2019
  7.  ‘Chill descends upon Hungary after Viktor Orban’s power-grab’, Financial Times, 3 April 2020
  8.  ‘Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos grows fortune by $24bn amid coronavirus pandemic’, Guardian, 15 April 2020. ‘US stocks fall 10% in worst day since 1987 crash’, Financial Times, 12 March 2020. ‘“Jeff Bezos values profits above safety”: Amazon workers voice pandemic concern’, Guardian, 7 April 2020
  9.  ‘Zoom booms as demand for video-conferencing tech grows’, Guardian, 31 March 2020
  10. Analysis by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) reported in ‘Covid-19 exposes American philanthropy’s strengths and weaknesses’, Economist, 27 April 2020
  11. Angelika Albaladejo, ‘While Trump boasts of economic growth, inequality deepens’, Fast Company, 11 July 2019
  12. Since 1967. Income and Poverty in the United States: 2018, US Census Bureau, 2019
  13. Rupert Neate, ‘Branson to mortgage Caribbean island as he seeks Virgin bailout’, Guardian 20 April 2020
  14. Andrew Hill, ‘Covid-19 lays bare managers’ efficiency obsession’, Financial Times, 20 April 2020. Margaret Heffernan, Life After The Virus, Jericho Conversations, 8 April 2020.
  15. There is such a thing as society, says Boris Johnson from bunker’, Press Association, 29 March 2020.
  16. Kevin Clarke, ‘In Easter message, Pope Francis proposes “universal basic wage’’ ’, America 12 April 2020. Kanni Wignaraja and Balazs Horvath, ‘Universal basic income is the answer to the inequalities exposed by COVID-19’,  World Economic Forum, 17 April 2020.
  17. Patrick Gillespie. ‘Mark Zuckerberg supports universal basic income’, CNNMoney, 26 May 2017. Dom Galeon, ‘A Billionaire Is Helping Fund a Massive Universal Basic Income Project’, Futurism, 10 February 2017. ‘Universal basic income: money for nothing’, Financial Times, 19 May 2019
  18. Senator Bernie Sanders called for $2,000 in monthly basic income during the COVID epidemic to help “every person in the United States, including the undocumented, the homeless, the unbanked, and young adults excluded from the CARES Act”. Andrew Naughtie, ‘Coronavirus: Bernie Sanders proposes giving every household in America $2,000 a month during epidemic’, Independent, 18 March 2020. Eliza Relman, ‘Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demands the government distribute a universal basic income and implement ‘Medicare for all’ to fight the coronavirus’, Business Insider, 12 March 2020.
  19. Peter Hennessy, The corona experience, though suffused in tragedy, has shown us the very best of ourselves, Tablet, 22 April 2020 and on Broadcasting House, BBC Radio, 26 April 2020.
  20. George Monbiot, ‘The horror films got it wrong. This virus has turned us into caring neighbours’, Guardian, 30 March 2020. Anne Bennett, ‘Mutual aid is an old idea whose time has come’, Church Times, 21 April 2020. COVID-19 Mutual Aid database.
  21. Gordon Brown, ‘The solution to this crisis is still global’, New Statesman,       22 April 2020.
  22. Bill Gates, ‘The world after covid-19 – how to fight future pandemics’, Economist, 23 April 2020.
  23. Covid-19 exposes American philanthropy’s strengths and weaknesses‘, Economist, 27 April 2020.

 

“Timely and fascinating,” PETER HENNESSY Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History, Queen Mary, University of London 

“The definitive book on philanthropy –  a deep and probing study of an increasingly powerful force in our world,” JOHN GRAY Emeritus Professor of European Thought, London School of Economics

“Good books lay out the lie of the land. Important books change it. This book does both... Paul Vallely insists that giving needs to restore its spiritual dimension whereby the giver respects the one who receives,” GILES FRASER priest and philosopher

“Magisterial ... the best single volume on the ideas that have shaped philanthropy ... stuffed with astonishing stories and illuminating interviews," ROB REICH Professor of Political Science at Stanford University.

Comprehensive and panoramic” BETH BREEZE Director of the Centre for Philanthropy, University of Kent

"Deeply researched and wonderfully written ...  a powerful call for philanthropy to do a better job of melding empathy with effectiveness" DAVID CALLAHAN, Editor of Inside Philanthropy

CONTACT