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 […]
If you need proof that philanthrocapitalism matters more than ever, look no further than the large number of books touching on effective giving and social change that have been published this year. Excluding our own contribution, The Road From Ruin (published in paperback this year in both Britain and America), here in no particular order […]
Why do we trust charities (non-profits, NGOs) so much more than we trust government or business? After all, each of these sorts of organisations are run by the same sort of flawed human being. Charities may have more obviously good intentions than business, though not perhaps government, but talking a more virtuous talk does not […]
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 […]
“Watch out Vittana”, tweeted Stephanie Strom (@ssstrom), the philanthropy writer at the New York Times, in response to Matthew’s tweet that Kiva, the online microfinance powerhouse, may be about to enter the student lending marketplace. Matthew reported Kiva’s likely expansion in an article in The Economist that argues that lending to finance students in poor […]
The Social Innovation Fund established by the Obama administration is an important pilot of a new approach to scaling up successful ideas by social entrepreneurs, that we believe could be a model of philanthrocapitalism at its best. (See Matthew’s article on social innovation in The Economist.) However, what Steve Goldberg calls a “kerfuffle” has taken […]
There was much soul-searching at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. Matthew, who was there covering the event for the Economist, was struck by the mixture of gloom and optimism: gloom, because the recovery of the world economy is still fragile at best; optimism, because there is a will to build a better economic system. One […]
British hedge-fund philanthropist Chris Cooper-Hohn and his wife Jamie have just announced another huge gift – of £495m ($812m) – to the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), as Matthew has reported in The Economist. This took the assets of the foundation, which they created in 2003 to receive and give away a slice of the […]
“What has the Gates Foundation done for global health?”, was the topic of a debate at Britain’s Royal Society of the Arts on May 28th. The debate was inspired by a series of articles in the medical journal The Lancet (registration required) that highlighted the growing number of criticisms of the Gates Foundation’s efforts from […]