Category: Philanthropy

Warren Buffett donates $3.6bn to Gates’ and family charities

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Warren Buffett is donating roughly $3.6bn of Berkshire Hathaway stock to five charities including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the biggest contribution in Buffett’s plan to give away his fortune.

The donation will boost the total amount Buffett has given to the charities to more than $34.5bn since the 88-year-old billionaire pledged in 2006 to give his shares away. Buffett’s largest previous annual donation was $3.4bn in 2018.

Four-fifths of the donations go to the Gates Foundation. The rest goes to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named for Buffett’s late first wife, and charities run by his children Howard, Susan and Peter: the Howard G Buffett Foundation, the Sherwood Foundation and the NoVo Foundation.

The Gates and family charities typically sell Buffett’s shares to finance their activities, reflecting his desire that money be spent.

Following the latest donation, Buffett will still own about 15.7% of Berkshire, despite having given away 45% of his 2006 holdings, and have roughly 31% of its voting power. Buffett remains the world’s fourth-richest person, worth $87.5bn according to Forbes magazine.

[The Guardian]

A privilege to serve those in need

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There have been a lot of heated conversations around refugees, everywhere in the world.

Let’s all “change places“ and put ourselves in the situation of refugees, having left behind everything– their homes, family members, friends, and belongings in search of a safe haven. I am sure it is a threatening idea, but it can happen to any of us. Peace is not to be taken not for granted.

As doctors, we care about the health and well-being of our patients, regardless of their socio-economic, ethnic background, race, gender, nationality, or religion. Refugees are the same as any of our patients back home. The only difference is that they are much more vulnerable.

It is not only a responsibility. It is a privilege to serve those in need.

Within one year, I volunteered with SAMS on two medical missions to Jordan, and will be joining them again next month. I can hardly express the joy and satisfaction I experienced and the breadth of knowledge and experiences that I acquired during these missions. When we see and treat patients in one of the facilities in Jordan or elsewhere it is not about “refugees,” a vague and anonymous group of people far away. It is about faces and names, about the Ahmads, Arwas, and Mohammeds we meet. It is about those individuals with unique stories of hardships, resilience, hopes, and dreams.

We know that by volunteering, we can not move mountains, and we cannot wipe away all their pains. However, we can alleviate their suffering and address their health problems.

[Read full article by Dr. Bettina Seitz, Volunteer for Syrian American Medical Society Foundation]

MacKenzie Bezos, worth nearly $37 billion, will give half her fortune to charity

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The newly minted billionaire MacKenzie Bezos has signed the Giving Pledge, which encourages the world’s richest people to dedicate a majority of their wealth to charitable causes, either during their lifetimes or in their wills.

The initiative was launched by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates in 2010 and has so far attracted the support of 204 individuals and families. 

MacKenzie Bezos became one of the richest people in the world following her divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos earlier this year. She ranks 22nd on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Her personal fortune is now worth an estimated $36.6 billion. Her former husband leads the global rankings with a net worth of roughly $114 billion.

MacKenzie Bezos said in a letter announcing the move that “I have a disproportionate amount of money to share. …My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won’t wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty,” she said in the letter, which was published Tuesday.

MacKenzie Bezos was one of 19 new Giving Pledge signatories announced on Tuesday. The group also included Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp, Paul Sciarra, the co-founder of Pinterest and Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange.

“The generosity of this group is a reflection of the inspiration we take from the many millions of people who work quietly and effectively to create a better world for others, often at great personal sacrifice,” Buffett said in a statement on Tuesday.

[CNN]

Google offers tech aid to take on humanitarian crises

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Frontier technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence have revolutionized Google’s business, and now the tech company is looking to share the wealth with those that need it most: people on the front lines of humanitarian crises.

From among 2,600 applicants, 20 winning nonprofits and social enterprises walked away from Google’s AI Impact Challenge with access to a pool of $25 million in funding, expertise from “Googlers,” and a shot to mitigate humanitarian challenges in their local communities.

“We want to see if we can help make the world a better place by bringing the best of Google,” said Jacquelline Fuller, vice president of Google, and president of the company’s humanitarian arm, Google.org. “We look at issues and see where do we think we could have a differential impact. And so some of those areas include economic opportunity, the future of work, thinking about how to bring digital skilling to millions across the globe.”

This year’s winners include the American University of Beirut, which is developing a tool to help Middle Eastern and African farmers save water; Eastern Health of Australia, which uses machine learning to identify patterns in suicide attempts for more effective prevention; and Hand Talk, a startup that is using AI to translate Portuguese into sign language for disadvantaged, deaf Brazilians.

Fuller said the project helps unite tech companies, civil society, and governments to ensure “everyone has access to the benefits of this technology, and that we are applying it to the problems that really matter most to humanity.”

[Cheddar]

Polio vaccine now introduced worldwide

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By the end of 2017 Gavi the Vaccine Alliance, backed by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Norway and the United Kingdom, had helped more than 75 million children to be immunized against polio with IPV. (Nepal was the first Gavi-supported country to introduce the vaccine in September 2014.) Today, every country worldwide has now introduced the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV)  which protects children against polio.

“Introducing IPV into routine immunization programs is a critical milestone on our journey towards a polio-free world,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization and Chair of the GPEI Polio Oversight Board. “It’s also vital that we use the infrastructure that has built up around polio immunization programs to ensure that all children receive other nationally-recommended vaccines. Achieving universal health coverage means making sure that all children, rich and poor, receive the same protection from vaccine-preventable diseases.”

Polio is a highly contagious viral infection, mainly affecting children under the age of five, which can lead to paralysis or even death. Only three countries – Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan – remain endemic to wild poliovirus. Thanks to global efforts and vaccination, since the beginning of 2019 only fifteen cases of wild poliovirus have been recorded in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Moreover, Nigeria, the third endemic country could be declared polio-free by the end of the year. Polio cases have fallen by 99% since 1988, from an estimated 350,000 cases to 33 reported cases in 2018.

[GAVI Alliance]

Poorest countries bear the brunt as aid levels fall for second successive year

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Experts have warned that the fight against global poverty has taken a backward step after new figures show foreign aid has fallen for a second successive year. Aid levels dropped last year by 2.7% from 2017, with the poorest countries worst hit, according to figures published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Bilateral aid – direct, country-to-country assistance – to the least developed countries fell by 3% in 2018, with support to the African continent down 4% and humanitarian assistance dropping by 8%.

Toni Pearce, Oxfam’s head of advocacy, said: “The overall fall in aid globally is a worrying trend that risks exacerbating poverty and inequality worldwide. Cutting aid to the poorest and most vulnerable countries is a step backwards in the fight to end extreme poverty.

“With refugee numbers at their highest since the second world war, disasters like Cyclone Idai devastating lives, and food crises looming in Yemen and elsewhere, the fall in humanitarian aid is particularly alarming. Vulnerable people across the world rely on this essential lifeline when disaster hits.”

Angel Gurría, the OECD secretary general, also expressed concern: “This picture of stagnating public aid is particularly worrying as it follows data showing that private development flows are also declining. Donor countries are not living up to their 2015 pledge to ramp up development finance, and this bodes badly for us being able to achieve the 2030 sustainable development goals.”

Only five of the 30 development assistance committee (DAC) members met or exceeded the longstanding aid target of 0.7% of gross national income target: Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden and the UK. Turkey and the UAE donated 1.10% and 0.95% of their gross national income.

[The Guardian]

Extreme Poverty: Bad, but better

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The World Bank has used an international poverty line, originally the “dollar a day” line, since at least 1990 to monitor global poverty. In recent years, the line has come under criticism for being too low in value.

When the World Bank convened the Commission on Global Poverty in 2015, 10 percent of the world was living in extreme poverty. We might be entering the hardest stretch in the march toward the end of extreme poverty, which is increasingly concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa.

A recent World Bank report breaks new ground. To construct a more complete picture of poverty, it presents two new sets of poverty lines. The first are poverty lines at higher thresholds—$3.20 and $5.50 per day (in 2011 Purchasing Power Parity dollars)—reflecting typical national poverty thresholds in lower- and upper-middle-income countries. By these criteria, more than a quarter (at the $3.20 line) and almost half of the world’s population (at the $5.50 line) were poor in 2015.

The report also introduces a societal poverty line that increases in value as a country gets richer—a global poverty line that reflects the variation in national poverty lines observed across the world. It is a recognition that poverty is a deeply social and relative experience, so it cannot be detached from the social context of the individual. A refrigerator may be a luxury in a poor country, but it is essential to basic functioning in rich countries. When judged by the relative standard of the society in which they live, almost 3 in 10 individuals were living in poverty in 2015.

The new measures are not without flaws, and lack of timely, high-quality data to monitor poverty in all its forms everywhere remains a challenge. Despite these limitations, close observers of the World Bank would agree that the latest report breaks the mold. It stays centered on its core mandate of monitoring global extreme poverty, while offering a rich menu of complementary indicators that are relevant to a growing world and that encompass poverty in its multiple forms.

When asked about the state of the world, Hans Rosling, the data guru, was fond of quipping: “Bad, but better.” Similarly, this year’s Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report shows that while remarkable progress has been made in reducing extreme poverty, much remains to be done to eliminate poverty in all countries, in all aspects of life, and for all individuals.

[Brookings]

How old is the typical American donor?

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How old is the typical U.S. donor?

[  ] 35 years of age
[  ] 50 years of age
[  ] 75 years of age

Donors aged 65 and older comprise (by far) the largest slice of the American charity pie.

Those under age 35 make up the smallest slice of the same pie. 

In 2017, one of America’s top 10 brand-name charities, a group serving the homeless and addicted, analyzed its vast donor database by age. Its largest group of “active” (i.e., repeat) donors was 87 years old on average. Its largest group of first-time (i.e., new) donors was age 70 on average. 

Even in Australia, a philanthropic market that vigorously courts younger donors, older donors end up ruling the roost. Sean Triner, co-founder of Pareto, that country’s largest direct mail and phone fundraising agency, ran the numbers. He simply concluded: “Older donors are better.” Why? They tend to stick longer and hence give more in total. 

Are younger people less generous? Not at all. But they lack one essential: money to give away.          

Young adults are building lives. They’re buying stuff. They’re forming and furnishing households. They are as caring and concerned and compassionate as anyone else. But unless they were born with the proverbial silver spoon, they probably don’t have all that much disposable income to throw around (especially if they choose to have children, an expensive proposition in America).           

And then things change.           

“At age 55,” Jeff Brooks observed, “people start to become reliably charitable. They’re starting to have some extra money.” There is some surplus in their wallets: the kids are launched, the house is almost paid for. “Then households begin giving to charity,” said Jeff. “And their giving ramps up until age 65, where it levels off.

[GuideStar blog]

Humanitarian investing gathers speed at Davos

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Finding ways to channel more private investment into humanitarian settings was a hot topic this year at Davos — the World Economic Forum’s 48th annual meeting in Switzerland — which included the tentative launch of a development impact bond to create jobs for Syrian refugees.

The IKEA Foundation said it will provide €6.8 million ($7.7 million) to fund the outcomes of the bond, which has been put together by impact finance firm KOIS, and aims to help up to 12,000 Syrian refugees and host populations in Jordan and Lebanon earn a living. 

New research by British think tank the Overseas Development Institute shows that job creation activities have the potential to offer a financial and social return on investment. But some delegates expressed reservations about the role the private sector should play in financing humanitarian efforts.

Mark Lowcock, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that while he sees a big opportunity for the private sector to come in where there are “investable activities,” it is important not to assume too much from investors and businesses that are ultimately profit-driven.

The development impact bond is part of a broader effort to attract new financing for humanitarian efforts in the face of an increasing number of protracted crises. Between 2005-2017, the number of active crises nearly doubled from 16 to 30 and the average length of active United Nations interagency appeals also increased, according to UNOCHA. Despite these growing needs, donor financing has not kept pace. Experts also say funding needs to be longer-term and to embrace the humanitarian-development continuum in order to reflect the extended nature of the crises.

Per Heggenes, CEO at the IKEA Foundation, said that financial tools such as development impact bonds could help bridge the funding gap. “The needs are increasing, and we can’t expect it all to be covered by donors; we have to look to involve the private sector partly on the funding side but also [for] their knowledge and networks which can be more valuable than just money.”

Speaking during a session Tuesday, Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said aid actors tend to see fragile states as “places where it is impossible to do something.” While many organizations are working on income-generating activities, they tend to be “left alone by the international aid system,” he said.

[Devex]

A problem with the term ‘philanthropist’

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Fundraising academic Beth Breeze says people who give large donations are celebrated in the US, but British culture has a problem with the idea of a “philanthropist”.

Breeze, who is director of the Centre for Philanthropy at the University of Kent, said that in the US large donations from very wealthy people were celebrated and seen as something to aspire to. “There’s a very distinct culture of philanthropy in the US, one where they’re pretty positive and encouraging about the use of private wealth to advance the public good,” she said.

Despite the UK’s long tradition of charitable giving, she said, British people seemed to be a lot more comfortable celebrating smaller donors. “If you stick a few zeroes on the end of a donation, people get a bit uncomfortable and unsure how to react,” she said. “We reject the word ‘philanthropist’ in this country. Major donors here will often say ‘I’m not a philanthropist, I’m just generous, I’m just doing what I like’.”

She said this problem was often played out in newspapers, which made snide comments about the large-scale giving of billionaire Bill Gates.

[Third Sector]