Bill Gates and Warren Buffett appear undeterred by the refusal of some fellow billionaires to join their Giving Pledge initiative and criticism of their their brand of philanthropy.
“Like the best charity street ‘chuggers,’ Mr Buffett – who has already pledged to give away 99 per cent of his $47bn fortune – and his ‘Giving Pledge’ partners Bill and Melinda Gates plan to keep asking, working their way through the Forbes 400 rich list,” Ian Wylie of the Financial Times observes.
Buffett himself admitted to getting turned down several times by the people he calls. He said some are reluctant to pledge their wealth to charity because they inherited it and would want to leave it within the family.
Gates and Buffett’s approach to philanthropy, which experts tagged “philanthrocapitalism,” has also received its share of criticism.
“Financial Times columnist Christopher Caldwell has warned of their ‘disruptive effects on democracy’. An editorial in The Lancet in May 2009 expressed ‘serious anxiety about the transparency of the [Gates] Foundation’s operation’ and questioned its ‘whimsical governance’,” Wylie says.
An opinion piece published on the Telegraph voiced similar sentiments, as reported by Devex.
“However, for supporters of philanthrocapitalism, it is the influence and networks as well as the funds that billionaires have at their disposal that make their commitment so important,” Wylie argues, while outlining several merits of Gates and Buffett’s initiative and vision.
Wylie says the timing of the Giving Pledge initiative, which seeks to convince 400 billionaires to donate half of their wealth to charity, is significant given how the financial and business community is struggling to redeem their reputations. One of the pledge’s signatories, according to Wylie, said the initiative is “changing the face of American business.”
The FT writer adds that Gates and Buffett’s initiative is helping to make philanthropy a more common concept among the world’s wealthy. And they are expanding their work to outside of the U.S., he says.
“The pair will travel to China at the end of next month to meet some of its wealthiest business people, followed by a similar trip next March to India, which Mr Gates has already predicted will become second only to the US in its high-end philanthropy,” Wylie says.
