The charitable wave

Jeff Bezos, the world’s wealthiest man, announced a few days ago the launch of a $2 billion philanthropic fund to help homeless families and create pre-school opportunities for low-income communities. This follows on the heels of another surprise announcement by Jack Ma, the iconic face of new age Chinese capitalism, to hang up his boots and concentrate his time on philanthropic education. A couple of years ago Mark Zuckerberg pledged to donate $3 billion to end global disease. The ruler of Dubai declared 2017 as “The Year of giving”. The world seems to be suddenly swept by a charitable wave of epic proportions.

“The Giving Pledge” has 184 of the world’s wealthiest people, drawn from 22 different nations, as signatories, committing themselves to donate more than half of their personal fortune to address society’s most pressing problems, either within their lifetime or through their will. The initiative, spearheaded by Bill and Melinda Gates, include a list of phenomenal individuals such as Warren Buffet, Michael Bloomberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Azim Premji, Nandan Nilekani, Elon Musk and David Rubenstein.

An unprecedented surge of global altruism in the backdrop of obnoxious affluence is quite paradoxical. The wealthiest one per cent of the world own more than half the world’s wealth. World Bank estimates suggest that nearly 10 per cent of the global population is living on less than $1.90 a day. The ‘Global Philanthropy Report’ documents that there are over 15 million millionaires in the world and 2,000 billionaires.

Altruistic impulses

The wealth of global high net worth individuals has quadrupled in the last two decades and is now pegged at a staggering $60 trillion. For the first time in modern human history, the personal wealth of so many individuals is greater than the aggregate GDP of several nations.

What is driving these altruistic impulses in an age of consumerism? Is the rich minority suddenly feeling pangs of guilt about their opulence in the face of suffering of overwhelming human majority? Or are they genuinely concerned about the enormity of problems of hunger, poverty, disease and illiteracy facing the world?

Is philanthropy linked with life experiences of the wealthy or does it emanate from their core values? Is the desire to give back to society linked with age? Do cultural or religious traditions in certain societies encourage charity? Or are the billionaires sitting at the pinnacle of Maslow’s pyramid of human needs? The questions are well worth pondering over, yet there may be no straight answers.

A 1994 study by Russ Prince and Karen File titled The Seven Faces of Philanthropy documents different motivations to philanthropy.

Even though the scale in India is nowhere comparable to charitable endowments of the US and Europe, yet there is a growing trend of private funding for social causes. A majority of charitable grants are for education, given that it holds the key to individual opportunity. Bharti Foundation, Shiv Nadar Foundation, Azim Premji Foundation, The Global Education and Leadership Foundation, EkStep Foundation are engaged in different initiatives, all focussed on improving quality of education.

Some of them are leveraging technology as a disruptive influence for crafting new solutions to traditional social problems. Public investments have hitherto dominated the social sectors.

Now, a plethora of not-for-profit organisations are jostling for space, leading to a somewhat fragmented approach. The recent launch of the $11 million Development Impact Bond is a welcome initiative, as it brings together a coalition of organisations — Tata Trusts, Dell Foundation, British Asian Trust, British Government’s Department for International Development — to launch the ‘Quality Education India’ Development Impact Bond. This aims to target literacy and numeracy skills for over 300,000 children using an outcome based learning approach. This unique model sets to channelise wealth of high net worth individuals and benchmark performance outcomes against other schools. The group of philanthropies would underwrite investments based on pre-agreed incremental improvement yardsticks. This creates an ‘entrepreneurial approach’ to philanthropy in the words of Finance Minister Jaitley.

Achieving UN Sustainable Development Goals calls for an imaginative approach. Philanthropic institutions have the nimbleness and flexibility to access global resources, technology and best practices, which can be grafted into traditional models of development.

They can also bring innovations in development communication, an area which normally governments are ill-equipped to handle. The challenge will be how to leverage these resources for people who need them the most. In the words of Aristotle, “To give away money is an easy matter and in any man’s power. But to decide to whom to give it and how large and when, and for what purpose and how, is neither in every man’s power nor an easy matter.”

The writer is an IAS officer, currently working with Government of Mizoram. Views are personal.