May 27, 2012 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Moving beyond a promise to contribute at least half of their wealth to charity, signers of the Giving Pledge are beginning to help each other learn to be smart donors, reports The Economist (May 19).
The magazine points to a gathering in early May of many of the 81 wealthy individuals and families who have signed the pledge, noting they held a “serious conversation about lessons learned,” according to Steve Case, the AOL co-founder, who served as host of the event.
The tenor of the meeting, The Economist suggests, “was evidence of a rapid evolution of the Giving Pledge from a collection of individual promises into a movement focused on collectively achieving results.” Mr. Case says “impact investing,” in which giving is designed to both make profits and do good, was a popular topic among the wealthy donors, who also discussed education reform, medical research, antipoverty efforts, and international giving.
Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor who is a driving force behind the Giving Pledge, and a skeptic of impact investing, told The Economist that he is troubled by the dearth of concern he sees among Giving Pledgers for tackling income inequality and its side effects.
“I do not see any of the philanthropic activity I run into motivated by the idea that this is going to calm the masses,” he says. “It is amazing to me the degree of inequality that exists without people really getting upset.”
Accompanying the article online are two video interviews. In one, Mr. Buffett says the availability of tax deductions for his giving didn’t sway his decision to donate $2-billion last year. In another, Elon Musk, the 40-year-old PayPal founder who now heads SpaceX, the company that last week launched a rocket to supply the space shuttle, says he thinks many of his peers in the technology industry are ready to give generously.
To read the article, go to the magazine’s Web site.
