A Little Philanthropy Goes A Long Way
Everybody wants to be rich, right? Imagine the things you do
, the places you could go and the girls you could party with... Travie McCoy recently sang those immortal words: "I wanna be a billionaire, so frickin' bad", but I'm sure he wasn't thinking that he'd give it all away.
And that's exactly what's becoming the hot trend among America's elite at the moment.
Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg has become one of the latest billionaires to join the group The Giving Pledge, set up by Bill Gates and his wife, which encourages America's wealthiest people to publicly donate to charity.
The 26-year-old entrepreneur is estimated to be worth around 7bn USD (4.4bn GBP) and is one of the youngest to sign up. Earlier this year he gave 100m USD in shares to schools in New Jersey, saying "People wait until late in their career to give back. But why wait when there is so much to be done? There is a big opportunity for many of us to give back earlier in our lifetime and see the impact of our philanthropic efforts."
Other members of The Giving Pledge include Larry Ellison, Warren Buffett, Star Wars creator George Lucas and Ted Turner, founder of CNN.
Giving large chunks of money away for the greater good isn't a new thing. U2 frontman Bono has been proactively donating funds to worthy causes for many years now, while Bob Dylan supports a number of charities.
The act of public figures giving to charity isn't a new idea. Look to the Stars is the self-proclaimed number one source of celebrity charity news and information on the web and has been promoting charity since 2006. A quick glance through their website shows Annie Lennox, Brad Pitt, George Clooney and many more stars have all been giving some of their immense wealth to less fortunate for a lot longer than Zuckerberg and co.
And why not? I mean, can these people ever truly get through their wealth in their lifetime when there are so many living in poverty and squalor across the globe? Doubtful.
When you have a billion dollars, giving away a few million here and there is no skin off your nose. The real philanthropic hero of the moment though has to be humble university researcher, Toby Ord.
The 31-year-old has given one third of his earnings in the last year to charity. Considering he only earns 25,000 GBP a year, that's quite a sacrifice to make.
On his website, Ord's mission statement is the first thing you see: "I realised that by donating a large part of my future income to the most efficient charities, I really could save thousands of people's lives. Since I already have most of things I really value in life, I thought - why not?"
Giving What We Can now has 64 members who have pledged to give more than 22m USD in their lifetimes.
With an increasing number of rich people popping up across the globe, it seems that publicly donating to the poor is a hot trend right now. If it carries on, we could well see world poverty significantly reduced in the not-so-distant future.
by: Jon Lane
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