Skip to main content

The Presumption of Altruism

Out now is the thirtieth anniversary issue of the Forbes 400, a listing of the wealthiest 400 Americans. While the 29 previous editions have regaled us with stories of vast wealth, how it was earned (or inherited) and how it was spent (or lost), the 2012 issue is mainly about how it is given away to charity.

But even before I got my copy, over the last few years it’s become apparent to me that the zeitgeist of day is that billionaires must now give away a substantial portion of their wealth to causes.

It hasn’t always been thus.

The last time that America’s wealthiest cared so much about giving away their money was the last time that Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were in the same room together. Carnegie almost single-handedly put a library in ever community of any size across North America and the English Commonwealth. Rockefeller gave America Colonial Williamsburg, the Grand Tetons National Park, the University of Chicago, and cures for yellow fever and hookworm.

Notwithstanding Carnegie and Rockefeller’s largesse, it took almost 80 years for what I’m calling the ‘presumption of altruism’ to develop among America’s richest. 

You can draw a line from Carnegie and Rockefeller straight to someone like Charles Feeney who co-founded the Duty Free Shoppers Group and used it to fund the multi-billion dollar foundation, The Atlantic Philanthropies.

From Feeney draw the line to Warren Buffet and Bill Gates who have since 2009 cajoled, shamed, or persuaded nearly 100 of their fellow billionaires to sign the Giving Pledge, wherein they promise to give away no less than half their wealth within their own lifetimes.

Put directly, to be a billionaire today carries not only great wealth, but the expectation that you will do more with it than create generations of trust fundies.

And increasingly the presumption of altruism is more than a North American phenomena. In 2008 when a powerful earthquake devastated Sichuan, China, the world responded. But not as much as did China’s many homegrown millionaires and billionaires.

Likewise, the 2012 Forbes list notes the charitable works of Manoj Bhargava, the entrepreneur behind 5 Hour Energy. Bhargava was born in India and immigrated to the United States at age 14. But now the richest Indian in America is also a philanthropist who looks homeward to India when it comes to ‘giving back.’

How deep does this presumption of altruism go? You can see it in this tableau from a recent American Girl Doll magazine. Two of the dolls, Julie and Ivy are shown holding a charity carwash as an effort to ‘save the eagles.’

This is all very different than the world of my youth. And thank goodness for it.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part 2: How Chili's Used Cause-Related Marketing to Raise $8.2 million for St. Jude

[Bloggers Note: In this second half of this post I discuss the nuts and bolts of how Chili's motivates support from its employees and managers and how St. Jude 'activates' support from Chili's. Read the first half here.] How does St. Jude motivate support from Chili’s front line employees and management alike? They call it ‘activation’ and they do so by the following: They share stories of St. Jude patients who were sick and got better thanks to the services they received at the hospital. Two stories in particular are personal for Chili’s staff. A Chili’s bartender in El Dorado Hills, California named Jeff Eagles has a younger brother who was treated at St. Jude. In both 2005 and 2006 Eagles was the campaign’s biggest individual fundraiser. John Griffin, a manager at the Chili’s in Conway, Arkansas had an infant daughter who was treated for retinoblastoma at St. Jude. They drew on the support Doug Brooks… the president and CEO of Brinker International, Chili’s parent co...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cause-Related Marketing with Customer Receipts

Walgreens and JDRF Right now at Walgreens…the giant pharmacy and retail store chain with more than 5,800 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico… they’re selling $1 paper icons for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). This is an annual campaign and I bought one to gauge how it’s changed over the years. (Short list… they don’t do the shoe as a die cut anymore; the paper icon is now an 8¾ x 4¼ rectangle. Another interesting change; one side is now in Spanish). The icon has a bar code and Jacob, the clerk, scanned it and handed me a receipt as we finished the transaction. At the bottom was an 800-number keyed to a customer satisfaction survey. Dial the number, answer some questions and you’re entered into a drawing for $10,000 between now and the end of September 2007. I don’t know what their response rate is, but the $10,000 amount suggests that it’s pretty low. Taco Bell’s survey gives out $1,000 per week. At a regional seafood restaurant they give me a code that garner...
2 comments
Read more

An Interview with Cause-Related Marketing Pioneer Jerry Welsh

Jerry Welsh is the closest thing cause marketing has to a father. In 1983 after a number of regional cause-related marketing efforts, Welsh, who was then executive vice president of worldwide marketing and communications at American Express looked out his window in lower Manhattan at the Statue of Liberty. The Statue was then undergoing a major refurnishing, and in a flash Welsh determined to undertake the first modern national cause marketing campaign. I say modern because almost 100 years before in January 1885, the Statue of Liberty was sitting around in crates in New York warehouses because the organization building the pedestal ran out of money. And so Joseph Pulitzer, the publisher of the newspaper called The World , proposed a very grassroots solution reminiscent in its own way to Welsh’s cause-related marketing. Pulitzer ran an editorial promising he would print the name of everyone who donated even a penny. Sure enough pennies, along with dimes and nickels, quarters a...
Post a Comment
Read more