Gospels of Giving for the New Gilded Age

Are today’s donor classes solving problems—or creating new ones? “We live, it is often said, in a new Gilded Age—an era of extravagant wealth and almost as extravagant displays of generosity. In the past fifteen years, some thirty thousand private foundations have been created, and the number of donor-advised funds has roughly doubled. The Giving Pledge—signed by Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, Larry Ellison, and more than a hundred and seventy other gazillionaires who have promised to dedicate most of their wealth to philanthropy—is Andrew Carnegie’s “Gospel” stripped down and updated. And as the new philanthropies have proliferated so, too, have the critiques.” This is a quote fron a thought provoking article in the New Yorker that is worth a read.