Is there enough philanthropy, and is it working?
As the world gets richer we hear more and more stories about powerful modern philanthropists like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. But is there enough giving taking place overall? Is money given to the right causes? And what are the trends in philanthropy right now?
We investigated the philanthropy sector as an internal research project to inform potential future venture development. Our work is shared below (you can also download it here).
Some of our main learnings are:
There is about $220 trillion of wealth in the world
About $0.5 trillion is donated annually
The cost of solving many of the world’s most pressing issues (other than the environment) sums to around $1trillion
Much giving is to wealthy institutions (eg universities and churches) rather than needier causes
Many of the “mass-affluent” give very little indeed, possibly because there is no easy path for them to give more
Hopefully you’ll find the findings as interesting as we did. We’re now beginning to work up ideas to encourage more philanthropy for genuinely worthy causes.
