Quotes About Philanthropy

I want to show my children the importance of donating our time and energy to help those in need.

I would like the Hunter Foundation to outlive everything.

You can be outraged by what the Koch brothers do with their money in politics and you can appreciate what they contribute to hospitals and medical research, and you can do that at the same time and still retain an ability to function.

I always wanted to work in charitable things, community outreach, etc.

There's lots of charity stuff that I can do. There are actually a million things to do here, but it would be very hard for me to stop going overseas, because I've been doing that for longer than I've been playing in the WNBA.

If you donate overseas, it's a simple matter. In mainland China, there are so many headaches.

I don't enjoy money for its own sake, Miss Sedláková," he told me. "But it's an important resource for my mission.

That seemed to be a feature of life in the country [Malawi]: to welcome strangers, to let them live out their fantasy of philanthropy - a school, an orphanage, a clinic, a welfare center, a malaria eradication program, or a church; and then determine if in any of this effort and expense there was a side benefit - a kickback, a bribe, an easy job, a free vehicle. If the scheme didn't work - and few of them did work - whose fault was that? Whose idea was it in the first place?

There is no happiness in having and getting, only in giving.

I ask all those who hope to one day work for the good of humanity: never forget that even if you deliver up your body to be burned, you gain nothing if you have not Love. Nothing!

The art of giving is perfected through anonymity.

Buy art, build a museum, put your name on it, let people in for free. That's as close as you can get to immortality.

You can spend your money on art works and sit down and look at them. Or you can use your money to help people.

generous statement

Money is ephemeral, moving from person to person, it's a tool. Don't let it get into your heart or soul.

Every act of charity has choice at its core.

What is clear is that this growing river of money will dramatically expand the size and influence of a new power elite of living donors that already wields enormous clout. One analysis by the scholar Kristin Goss found that nearly half of America's top two hundred philanthropists—including many Giving Pledge members—have expressed an interest in shaping public policy.

From 2003 to 2013, according to one study, itemized charitable contributions from people making $500,000 or more increased by 57 percent, while itemized contributions from people making $10,000,000 or more increased by 104 percent over the same period. Some 30,000 new private foundations have been created since 2000, along with 185,000 donor-advised funds, which offer a simpler way to channel money to charitable causes.

In his book Born on Third Base, Chuck Collins—the Oscar Meyer heir who gave away his fortune—argues that Congress should establish two types of charitable entities and give them different tax benefits. Donations to groups that "alleviate poverty, reduce inequality, and address urgent social problems" would be fully deductible; donations to other nonprofits would not get the full benefit.

Although the Giving Pledge would become well-known, and was even featured on 60 Minutes, the actual mechanics of the campaign have received little attention. From the start, the idea was not just to get America's richest people to promise big bucks for charity; it was also to help these pledgers to give effectively.

no philanthropist has done more than Soros to soften America's drug laws. Soros got behind that cause in the mid-1990s, funding a new drug policy think tank and bankrolling the push for medicinal marijuana, widely seen as a bridge to legalization. Today, two decades after Soros began his push—and many tens of millions of dollars later—several states have legalized pot, and more are likely to follow.

the pet health interests of rich people may or may not line up with what society overall should give priority to in seeking medical breakthroughs. As the Times warned: "The philanthropists' war on disease risks widening that gap, as a number of the campaigns, driven by personal adversity, target illnesses that predominantly afflict white people—like cystic fibrosis, melanoma and ovarian cancer.

Unfortunately, the ranks of financial winners include few graduates of community colleges, and as a result big gifts to such institutions are rare. When LaGuardia Community College in New York City received a $2 million donation from Goldman Sachs in 2015, it doubled the school's endowment. The gift was unusual enough to make the New York Times. By comparison, Harvard raised an average of $3.1 million a day during 2015.

Most media coverage of philanthropy doesn't make much distinction among charitable gifts—and nor does the IRS for that matter. You get the same tax deduction whether you donate to a genuine charitable cause, say a food bank, or donate to a think tank with an ideological agenda.