Tag: Bill Gates

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Review of the Year

This time last year we stuck out our necks and made ten predictions for philanthrocapitalism in 2012. So how did we do? 1. Greater scrutiny of the 1%. We were right that the US presidential election would focus attention on the role of wealthy donors in shaping the political agenda through their cash donations to […]

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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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Did It Work?

‘The Year of Fighting Over What Works’ was our headline prediction for 2011. So how did we do? Let’s take a look at the 10 scenarios we saw when we peered into our philanthrocrystal ball back in January. 1) “A battle is going to rage over the relationship between profit and philanthropy.” And some. Within […]

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Does Pakistan Need Our Help?

Is aid a blessing or a curse for developing countries? For Imran Khan, a former cricketer turned politician, the answer for his country, Pakistan, is clear. “If we don’t have aid we will be forced to make reforms and stand on our own feet,” he told the BBC recently. This was a message that he […]

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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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The Billionaire Boys Club

In her book last year, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System”, Diane Ravitch dismissively described the wealthy philanthropists who are bankrolling various efforts to improve the otherwise taxpayer funded school system as the “billionaire boys club”. She argues that the likes of Bill Gates, the Walton family (heirs of the founder […]

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Three Cheers for GAVI

The news that $4.3 billion of new money was pledged on June 13th to vaccinate children in the developing world against several deadly diseases is worth celebrating. The money was promised at the first ever pledging conference for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), which exceeded its target of $3.7 billion. That means […]

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Osama bin-Laden – Philanthropist?

The late and unlamented terror chief may not be anyone’s idea of a philanthropist, least of all ours. Yet, however offensive it may seem, the horrible thought does raise some important questions, so please bear with us on this one… First of all, Osama bin-Laden had plenty of cash – inheriting a pile from his […]

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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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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 […]