When you are known as Mr Toilet, you are allowed to tell the occasional fart joke. When Jack Sim, aka Mr Toilet, met Matthew in Mumbai earlier this year, the head of the World Toilet Organisation was trying to convince a local actress to appear in a Bollywood movie about the dangers of lousy sanitation. […]
This November 27th will be the first #givingtuesday in America (and perhaps elsewhere), a new national day focused on getting everyone – individuals and organizations alike – to make a fresh commitment to give. The final few weeks of the year, with their important religious and national holidays, have long been a time when people […]
So, after needlessly offending Britain’s philanthropists by calling them tax dodgers, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has sensibly abandoned his plans to limit the tax deductibility of their giving. This U-turn is embarrassing for the government, certainly, but not as harmful as it would have been to its efforts to promote a Big […]
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 fun of the Russian steam bath, or ‘banya’, supposedly comes from the invigorating contrast between the heat of the sauna followed by a bracing roll in the snow. There was an echo of such dubious pleasure at this year’s Skoll World Forum held in Oxford last week, as the mood swung between optimism and […]
Britain’s Prime Minister has cause for a small (nice cup of tea, rather than pop the champagne cork) celebration today, now that his Big Society idea has had its first positive headlines in quite some time, with the long-awaited launch of the £600 million Big Society Capital (BSC) social investment fund. BSC has cost the […]
When Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne made his budget speech a couple of weeks ago, the well-trailed headline was his decision to cut the rate of income tax for the highest earners to 45% from 50%. Cue howls of complaint from the Labour opposition and ridicule for the government’s claim that ‘We are […]
“Build back better” is one of those phrases that caught on after the financial crisis that struck in 2008 laid waste to so many economies and the social and environmental activities they supported. Unfortunately, actual examples of building back better, or even making a serious attempt to do so, have been hard to find. Now, […]
The idea that the fight against poverty needs to put women and girls at the top of the agenda has been gaining traction in recent years. This has been a long slog, boosted by the advocacy of people like Sheryl WuDunn and Nick Kristof, the authors of the terrific ‘Half The Sky’. Equally important has […]