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 […]
‘Toward a New Social Contract’ is the theme of this year’s Global Philanthropy Forum, currently taking place in Washington, DC. But the real hand-to-hand fighting on the role that philanthropy plays in the rich’s responsibilities to society is being played out in Britain, where a government initiative to cut the tax subsidy to giving has […]
The leaders of the G20 major economies are going to have lots to talk about at their summit meeting in Cannes at the end of this week: saving the Euro, preventing a meltdown in the global economy and, at the request of summit host Nicolas Sarkozy, the thoughts of Bill Gates on how to finance […]
Can and should companies be in the business of doing good? This long-running debate was graced earlier this year by a new contribution from Michael Porter, one of the world’s leading management gurus, and his sometime sidekick, philanthropy consultant Mark Kramer. In a headline article in the Harvard Business Review they both took a swipe at […]
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). […]
2010 has been a good year for books touching on philanthrocapitalism. In no particular order, here are the first five of our favourites (not including our own “The Road From Ruin“), with more to follow in later posts: “The Power of Social Innovation“, by Stephen Goldsmith. This is a terrific look at some of the […]
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 […]
This week in San Francisco some 1200 people have gathered for SoCap10, the third annual meeting of what has already become a sort of Woodstock for those interested in social capital markets. Judging by the many invites to SoCap-related parties that we have received (much appreciated) and California’s relaxed laws on marijuana use, it may […]
“Why isn’t it better to be the biggest giver rather than the biggest hog?” That was the challenge laid down in 1996 by the godfather of philanthrocapitalism, Ted Turner, to two tight-fisted billionaires – Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Fourteen years on and Gates and Buffett are the world’s biggest givers who have laid down their […]
By providing much needed transparency to the giving marketplace, the Center for Effective Philanthropy has become one of the leading intermediaries in philanthrocapitalism. In particular, its “grantee perception reports”, which get those receiving money from a foundation to disclose (confidentially at the individual level) what they think of a donor and its processes, has helped […]