The new face of philanthropy?
From Friday, December 13, 2002
A BusinessWeek cover story on the new face of philanthropy, an era who's start is defined as Ted Turner's 1997 $1B gift to the UN:
Carnegie would surely have given an approving nod to the latest generation of philanthropists. Not since the Gilded Age, when harsh overlords such as Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller Sr. put millions of their dollars toward good works, has philanthropy been as bold and ambitious. The spectacular late-1990s runup in the stock market created a generation of newly super-rich executives and entrepreneurs worth hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars. Even after the sharp decline in the market, the ranks of the very wealthy have never been stronger--and many are now working almost as hard at giving their fortunes away as they did at amassing them. Since 1990, charitable donations by individuals have grown by half, from $110 billion to $164 billion in 2001. By harking back to the individualistic style of giving practiced by Carnegie, these donors are ushering in a new era of philanthropy.