Wealthy Donors Urged to Think Globally and Give Until ‘It Hurts’

By Maria Di Mento

Wealthy philanthropists and donors of average means today have unprecedented opportunities to improve the lives of poor people in the United States and around the world, Bill Clinton, the former president, told a conference held here last week to honor the donors who appear on The Chronicle’s annual list of the most-generous contributors in America.

“It is impossible to overstate the impact private giving will have on public good,” he told a group assembled at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum.

The conference was sponsored by the Clinton Foundation, Slate magazine, and the University of Arkansas’s School of Public Service. Slate magazine publishes The Chronicle’s list of top donors each year in a feature known as the Slate 60.

At the conference, speakers urged private donors to step in where government is not able or willing to do so, and to experiment with new approaches.

Mr. Clinton said that, as he collected donations after the South Asia tsunamis for a fund he started with George H.W. Bush, the former president, and again after Katrina, he was struck by the way that the Internet had made it so easy for people of small means to give amounts that added up to a lot of money.

“These average people now have as much power as the wealthiest philanthropists,” he said.

But as the world’s wealthiest people think about how to give their money away, he urged them to focus their giving on the challenges posed by globalism, oil dependency, and terrorism, and to avoid arrogance.

“The mission of humanity, clearly, is to build up the positive interdependence of peoples,” said Mr. Clinton, who urged the philanthropists to support projects that produce “more partners” for the United States, and “less terrorists.”

He said that a mixture of philanthropy and investment by business leaders has made an “enormous” difference in the developing world, and cited the work of Muhammad Yunus, who started the Grameen Bank, which provides small loans to poor people, and entrepreneurs who have made it possible for many poor people in Africa to have cellphones.

“There is no shortage of intelligence, ability, or effort in the developing world,” said Mr. Clinton, but there is a shortage of infrastructure that would make it possible for most people in developing countries to improve their lives.

Mr. Clinton told the philanthropists to think about how hard it would have been for them to earn their fortunes without the help of reliable access to electricity, healthy food, and clean water, and then to think about the people they are trying to aid.

“Philanthropy is a word rooted in love, right?” he said. “It is not patronizing, it is the obligation to reach for the self-evident. When you do it, remember to do it with humility.”

Among the top donors who spoke at the conference was New York’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, who laid out what he saw as the things that philanthropy can do better than government.

Mr. Bloomberg, who ranked No. 8 on last year’s list by giving away $144-million, said that philanthropists have the freedom to give to causes that might not be politically popular.

For instance, he said he has supported stem-cell research through his private giving, since government has been less receptive to the approach. Philanthropy also acts “as a saving grace of overlooked causes,” said Mr. Bloomberg.

Donors also have the power to cultivate a spirit of generosity in a way government cannot, he said.

“All of us at one time or another have been inspired by individuals throughout history who demonstrated charity and foresight,” he said. “Now it’s our turn to inspire.”

Ted Turner, the founder of Cable News Network and Turner Broadcasting, who ranked No. 15 on last year’s list of most-generous donors, said he has taken to heart the importance of inspiring others to give.

He is, in fact, the reason that several publications have started ranking donors for their philanthropy.

As Mr. Turner’s fortunes grew, he decided that he wanted to give away a big chunk of his wealth to solve what he saw as the world’s biggest problems.

In 1997, he set philanthropy records by pledging $1-billion to a foundation that supports the United Nations — making what was then the single biggest pledge by a philanthropist.

“I wanted to have a shot at being the richest man in the world, and I knew when I gave that money away I was taking myself out of the running to be the richest. I knew that Forbes 400 list made me think twice about giving that money away,” said Mr. Turner.

So Mr. Turner suggested that news organizations start making lists of people who give the most money away, in the hopes of fueling a competition among the wealthy.

Now, says Mr. Turner, he has gotten so used to donating money and taking other steps to make the world better that “I’ve become an irrepressible giver,” noting that he turns off lights wherever he is and picks up trash to protect the environment.

He urged others to do the same, telling wealthy people that they should give more than they might think they can afford.

“If you don’t make it big enough that it hurts,” Mr. Turner said, “then you haven’t done anything.”

He does try to make it seem less painful by refusing to use the term giving away money.

Instead, he says, he calls his philanthropy “an investment in humanity.”

At the conference, many donors talked about the difficulties they faced persuading others to support causes they care about — or in persuading government officials to take on those issues.

Stephanie Blank, the chairwoman of the Board of Trustees of the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Foundation, said she feared that too many people have negative stereotypes of the poor. (Ms. Blank’s husband, Arthur, is a co-founder of Home Depot and has appeared on the top donor list three times.)

While most of the people who live below the poverty line work and usually hold down more than one job at a time, many wealthier people, she said, continue to assume that poor people are to blame for their situation, that they must not be doing enough to pull themselves out of poverty. She also said donors are understandably frustrated that charities are unable to solve major problems quickly.

“With social issues, you can pour lots of dollars in, but it takes a long time to see results,” said Ms. Blank.

Joseph Robert Jr., chief executive of J.E. Robert Companies, a real-estate firm in McLean, Va., said the wealthiest philanthropists have a responsibility to press policy makers to reduce poverty. (He and his wife, Jill, appeared on the list in 2001, after they made a $25-million gift to Children’s National Medical Center, in Washington.)

“Go to the White House, push, force, urge policy that addresses these issues. Think of what one single guy — Bono — did to ease third-world debt. Politicians want to see famous singers, yes, but they really want to see rich people,” said Mr. Robert.

He added that wealthy philanthropists should not shy away from reminding politicians that philanthropists have enough money to campaign hard to get a political figure out of office.

He recalled that a few years ago, local officials in a Virginia suburb of Washington tried to shut down a small program that helped needy youngsters, figuring that the program’s clients wouldn’t be able to vote and express their anger.

Mr. Robert went to talk to an official and pledged to spend three times as much as the city program cost in an effort to oust the official proposing the program’s cancellation. The official backed down.

The need for greater collaboration in philanthropy was much on the mind of several of the donors at the conference.

Steve Case, the former chief executive of America Online, said a key goal of his foundation was to start “forging partnerships across sectors,” such as corporations and governments, and he said he was surprised at how competitive groups in the nonprofit world were with each other.

(Mr. Case appeared on the 1999 list when he and his wife, Jean, donated more than $40-million to an array of causes.)

“I think there’s too much of an inclination among all of us to start new things. We should focus on working on the organizations that exist and start considering mergers, a little bit more integration, a little bit more collaboration, ” said Mr. Case, who acknowledged that in the business world, his company’s alliance with Time Warner did not necessarily succeed.

Perhaps the biggest collaboration in philanthropic history has the potential to grow even bigger. In June, Warren Buffett announced that he would give a big chunk of his fortune — probably at least $30-billion — to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which already has assets of $29-billion.

Now the Gates Foundation is considering accepting money from other donors, Bill Gates Sr., who plays a leading role in the foundation’s operation, said at the conference. Mr. Gates said he and others at the foundation were surprised that so many people wanted to copy Mr. Buffett’s action.

“Our initial reaction was we just can’t get into that, it’s just too complicated,” said Mr. Gates.

But he said the foundation had started to reconsider after receiving increasing numbers of calls from people who want to donate. Mr. Gates said the foundation is now in the process of figuring under what conditions it would take money from others.

Mr. Gates said as the foundation gets bigger, he and other foundation officials worry that other donors will stop giving to causes like global health — a top priority of the Gates philanthropy. He said the foundation does not want to be seen as monopolizing the field, and that even though it is the wealthiest American grant maker, it does not have enough money to meet needs around the world.

One donor in the audience asked Mr. Gates whether focusing on providing health care in developing countries was the most important way to make a difference, or if the foundation should have focused on global warming — which could devastate both the developed and developing world.

“I suppose it’s possible that we made a mistake, that the priority should be global warming and not what we’re doing, and if that turns out to be the case, that will be a horror,” he said. “But we’re not going to change direction now. We know a lot about what we’re doing, and we’re committed to it,” said Mr. Gates.

Mr. Gates was also asked what he thought of the growing use of the label “entrepreneurial” to describe giving by the Gates Foundation and other new donors.

He said he thinks the term is “nonsense” and largely an invention by the news media.

If anything was entrepreneurial, said Mr. Gates, it was John D. Rockefeller Sr.’s decision to establish in 1901 the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, which later became Rockefeller University, after discovering that medical education in the United States at that time was third-rate at best.

“There’s nothing unusual about what we do and the notion that we’ve invented something new is [wrong],” he said. “It’s an enormous insult to those people — people like the Rockefellers and the Fords — people who’ve been doing it for decades. We have more money than anyone, that’s a given, but that doesn’t make us different. It just makes us bigger.”