‘Business Week’: A New Era of Philanthropy

Emboldened by lessons they have learned in the corporate world, a growing number of wealthy Americans are ambitiously broadening the scope of their charitable work, which has ushered in a new era of philanthropy, according to a BusinessWeek cover story (December 2).

As part of the 10-page special report, called “The New Face of Philanthropy,” BusinessWeek ranks the most generous and innovative donors, as well as wealthy people whom it considers philanthropic “laggards.”

Despite the decline of the stock market, the ranks of the wealthy have never been stronger, the magazine says, and many of those individuals are working harder than ever at giving away their fortunes.

Large gifts from prominent donors such as Ted Turner and Bill Gates have encouraged hundreds of other individuals to make charitable contributions earlier in life and in more imaginative ways than donors from previous generations, BusinessWeek reports.

Donors today are tackling broad social problems such as world health and weaknesses in American schools by evaluating how much money is needed to make an impact on certain causes, and by expecting charities to produce measurable change, the magazine reports.

To do that, donors are getting more involved than many of their philanthropic predecessors did, displaying “impatient disdain for the cautious and unimaginative check-writing that dominated charitable giving for decades,” BusinessWeek says.

In short, many donors are treating their philanthropic work like a business — acting as “fully engaged venture capitalists” for nonprofit organizations, according to the magazine.

Bill and Melinda Gates top the magazine’s list of the most-generous donors. In support of health and education causes, the co-founder of Microsoft and his wife have poured a total of $23.5-billion, or 60 percent, of their net worth into their foundation.

Other top donors, and what they have given or pledged, include:

• Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computer, and his wife, Susan — $510-million for children’s health care.
• Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft — $410-million to arts and culture groups.
• Donald Bren, a real-estate developer — $400-million to education and environmental groups.

BusinessWeek names Lawrence J. Ellison, founder of Oracle, a software company, as the top philanthropic laggard. He has given away $69-million, or 0.4 percent of his net worth, to medical research. He told the magazine that results should count more than the size of the gift. “Until you start curing diseases,” Mr. Ellison said, “what difference does it make how much you give?”

The article and lists are available at http://www.businessweek.com.