What does the Buffett/Gates gift mean for philanthropy?
From PhilanthropyWiki
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Everyone will have read and heard much publicity about Warren Buffett's recent enormous philanthropic gift to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The sheer scale of the numbers is difficult to take in – it has been reported that this gift represents “The second wealthiest man in the country handing off much of his fortune to the wealthiest, resulting in a foundation that will be larger than the next nine richest philanthropies in the nation, giving away some $3 billion a year by 2009 - an amount greater than the gross domestic product of forty nations. It's time to step back and try to put these staggering numbers in historical, cultural, and political perspective.”
Accordingly, the (US based) Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal hosted a panel of experts to discuss the gift.
The four speakers in the discussion make some interesting observations about the scale of the gift, particularly in comparison to the scale of the problems it purports to fund; how the gift has been structured; the governance of a foundation of this size and the role and effectiveness of both small and large foundations (they don't necessarily think that large foundations can do it all).