Tag: giving pledge

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The Year of Philanthrowoman

The start of the New Year means that it is time, yet again, to gaze into our philanthrocrystal ball and make our annual predictions. We did OK last year but are hoping to do even better in 2013. Our top theme among our 20 predictions is that 2013 will be a breakthrough year for women […]

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Failure and the Giving Pledge

Why did the 35 billionaire philanthropists who gathered in Santa Barbara on May 9th hold their meeting behind closed doors? After all, as Matthew reported in the latest issue of The Economist, they were only invited to attend as a result of having been very public, declaring their intention to give away at least half […]

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Gates Gives a Glimmer of Hope

The G20 meeting in Cannes has enough on its plate figuring out a way to save the Eurozone, with or without Greece. So it is a credit to the meeting’s host, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, that he booked a slot on the agenda for a discussion of how to finance the fight against poverty based […]

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A Big Legacy?

A gaggle of notables from the arts philanthropy world (and Tracey Emin) gathered at London’s Tate Gallery last night to mark the launch of a new campaign, Legacy10, to get Brits to give more. The campaign, set up by “the most influential PR man in the country” Roland Rudd, wants to get people to take advantage […]

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More A Whisper Than A Scream

When a group of British donors and charity chiefs announced at the end of last year their own independent review of how to make Brits give more to charity, we were excited at the possibility that the philanthropy community would come up with new ideas to promote giving. Indeed, since David Cameron’s government was engaged in […]

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G’Day Phil Cap!

Abbreviation is something of an art form in Australia. A pickup truck is a ‘ute’ (from ‘utility vehicle’), university is ‘uni’ (a term that was once alien in Britain but is now ubiquitous through the influence of Aussie soap operas like ‘Neighbours’), afternoon is ‘arvo’ (not be confused with ‘avo’, an avocado), and the global financial crisis has […]

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The Year of Fighting Over What Works

Last year we made a set of predictions for 2010. Some were satisfyingly prescient – the surge in mega-giving we predicted for 2010 became a reality through the Buffett-Gates Giving Pledge (even if we were off the mark in betting on Steve Jobs rather than Larry Ellison to be the Gates business rival who would step up to major philanthropy). […]

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It’s Humbug Season Again

Ah, there’s something about Christmas: a time to be with family and friends, a time to think of others, a time to make merry and, of course, a time for dusting off old prejudices. On that last point, Aaron Dorfman of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), is playing Scrooge with two articles in the […]

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The Social Network of Giving

Cynicism abounded in September when Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, announced a $100m donation to improve education in Newark just in time for the launch of The Social Network, a movie about the networking website that does its best to portray him as a money-obsessed double-crosser. Whilst there is a long tradition of the […]

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“Bah! Humbug!” in the Wall Street Journal

Two recent articles in the Wall Street Journal have taken shots at elements of philanthrocapitalism – the idea, endorsed by many of the most successful capitalists, that capitalism needs to make a more deliberate effort to improve society. Like Dickens’ Mr Scrooge, the writers’ response to the suggestion that firms and business leaders could do […]