Philanthrocapitalism_ How Giving Can Save the World - Matthew Bishop [8]
Robin Hood is a model that could and should be replicated in every city with poverty problems and well-to-do citizens who want to give to efforts that produce measurable results. Kitchen Table Charities Trust, a British NGO, offers similar opportunities to givers at all levels, collecting funds and allocating them to groups doing good work. I hope others will follow suit. San Francisco has already established a similar operation.
In the United Kingdom, hedge fund manager Arpad Busson founded ARK (Absolute Return for Kids) to give wealthy donors the chance to invest in his venture-philanthropy projects: high-performance inner-city schools and programs to support AIDS patients in South Africa and orphans in Romania. British philanthropist Richard Caring also raises large sums of money to increase protection and support for vulnerable children.
For people who can give modest amounts of money but want to follow the Buffett–Robin Hood practice of giving it to someone they trust to spend it well, Oprah Winfrey’s Angel Network is a good option. Oprah uses her enormous popularity and influence to publicize and hold accountable worthy projects and invites people who can give even small amounts of money to support them. To ensure that all the donations go to “help underserved people rise to their own potential,” Oprah covers the management, fund-raising, and other operating costs.
Since 1998, Oprah’s Angel Network has received more than $50 million in donations, averaging just over $150 and ranging from $5 to $1.4 million; funded sixty schools in thirteen countries in Africa, Latin America, China, and Haiti; provided $15 million in relief funds after Hurricane Katrina; given thousands of poor South African children school uniforms, shoes, and school supplies; supported community organizations helping orphaned children in three African countries; and helped women in post-conflict areas to put their lives back together. The network has also given more than $6 million in Use Your Life Awards to fifty-four small-and medium-sized organizations to expand their own efforts to help people in need, and provided books for children in nations where an Oprah’s Book Club selection is set: China, Russia, Colombia, Mexico; and in Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, and the Gulf Coast area hit by Katrina.
On top of all that, Winfrey gave $40 million of her own money to fund a new foundation to establish the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, a school for academically gifted but economically disadvantaged girls in South Africa. The academy will change the lives of many young women and further increase the confidence of modest donors that Oprah’s foundation will spend their money well.
I asked Oprah why she started the Angel Network and her academy. Her reply: “I wanted to give back what I was given, a sense of worth. Everyone wants to matter. Three nuns I didn’t know made me feel like I mattered when my mother, half brother, half sister, and I were on welfare and they brought us food and toys for Christmas. The best gift wasn’t the toys. It was being able to give an honest answer when the other kids asked what I got for Christmas.” That explains the Angel Network. What about the academy? “Caring teachers made education an open door for me. I wanted to help girls like me, economically disadvantaged, but not poor in mind or spirit.” Together the academy and the Angel Network brought her “the greatest joy I’ve ever had. I am glad I am able to help others, but what they’ve done for me is greater than I could have imagined.”
In the fall of 2007, Oprah will introduce a new kind of reality TV show on ABC. It’s called The Big Give. Ten