Marie Dageville and her husband Benoit Dageville became overnight billionaires when his cloud data company, Snowflake, went public in September 2020. After that life-changing moment, Marie, a former hospice nurse, decided to learn how to to give away that new wealth.
“We have to redistribute what we have, and it’s too much,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press from her home in Silicon Valley.
Although many say that giving away a lot of money is difficult, that is not Dageville’s perspective. Her advice is to just get started.
The richest Americans have encouraged each other to give more of their money at least since 1889, the year Andrew Carnegie published an essay entitled “The Gospel of Wealth.” He argued that the wealthiest should give away their wealth during their lifetime, in part to lessen the sting of growing inequality.
An entire industry of giving advisors, courses and charities has grown up to facilitate donations from the wealthy, fueled in part by the Giving Pledge, an initiative housed at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 2010 Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates called on other billionaires to pledge to give away half of their wealth during their lifetime or in their wills. So far, 244 have applied.
So what stands in the way of the wealthiest people giving more and giving faster?
What prevents billionaires from giving?
Philanthropy advisers say some of the answers are structural, like finding the right vehicles and advisors, and some have to do with emotional and psychological factors, like negotiating with family members or wanting to look good to their peers.
“It’s like a huge, perfect storm of behavioral barriers,” said Piyush Tantia, chief innovation officer at ideas42, who recently contributed report funded by the Gates Foundation, which researches what holds back the wealthiest donors.
He points out that unlike everyday donors, who may give in response to a request from a friend or family member, the wealthiest donors end up thinking a lot more about where to give.
“We might think, ‘That’s a billionaire. Who cares about a hundred thousand? They’re bringing it back in the next 15 minutes,’ he said. “But I don’t feel that way.”
His advice is to think of philanthropy as a portfolio, with different levels of risk and strategies that ideally work in concert. In this way, it is less about the outcome of each individual grant, and more about the cumulative effect.
Marie Dageville said she benefited from talking to other people who had signed the Giving Pledge, especially one person who encouraged her to general support for businesswhich means that the organization can choose how to spend the funds. She believes that nonprofits close to the communities they serve know best how to spend the money, and said she is not deterred by the concern that it will be misused.
“If you’re in the position you’re in now — able to redistribute this wealth — you either took a risk or someone took a risk on you,” she said, adding. “Then why can’t you take risks (in your philanthropy)?”
Dageville also believes that it focuses too much on the wishes of the donor, instead of the needs of the recipient.
MacKenzie Scott is proof that financiers can move fast
Private and open conversations between donors also help them thrive, the advisers found. The Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania runs an academy that brings together ultra-wealthy donors, their advisors and foundation leaders to learn together in cohorts.
Kat Rosqueta, the center’s executive director, said donors love it MacKenzie Scottauthor and now ex-wife of a billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, show that it is possible to move quickly.
“Must All Ultra High Net Worth Financiers Go Slower Than MacKenzie Scott? No,” she said.
But she said donors sometimes struggle with how to make a difference, given that philanthropic funding is small compared to government spending or business sector.
Cara Bradley, deputy director of philanthropic partnerships at the Gates Foundation, said the scrutiny of billionaires’ philanthropy also means they feel a strong responsibility to make the best use of their resources.
“They signed an oath truly committing to try to give away this huge amount of wealth. And then, people can get stuck because life gets busy. This is difficult. Philanthropy is a real endeavor,” she said.
Transparency is key to encouraging giving
It’s also not easy to conduct empirical research on billionaires, said Deborah Small, a professor of marketing at the Yale School of Management. But she said, in general, current social norms value anonymity in giving, which is considered more virtuous because the donor is not acknowledged for their generosity.
“It would be better for the causes, and for philanthropy as a whole, if everyone was open about it because it would create a social norm that this is the expectation in society,” she said.
Jorge Pérez, founder and CEO of real estate developer Related Group, along with his wife Darlene, joined the Giving Pledge early in 2012. In an interview with The Associated Press, Pérez said he often talks to his colleagues about giving more and faster .
“I think people stopped taking my calls,” he joked.
He has also involved his grown children in their philanthropy, which is mostly done through The Miami Foundation. He said they decided to use the foundation’s expertise, rather than starting their own organizations, to speed up the evaluation of potential recipients.
Even before the Pérezes joined the Giving Pledge, they were major supporters of arts and scholarship in Miami, where they are based. In 2011, the couple donated their art collection along with cash, worth a combined $40 million, to an art museum that was renamed the Pérez Art Museum Miami after the gift.
Pérez said he is giving because he thinks highly unequal societies are not sustainable and because he wants to leave a legacy behind.
“I keep selling the idea you’re giving for very selfish reasons,” he said. “The first thing is to feel good. But secondly, especially in the city or state or country where you’re going to live, in the long run, this will make a huge difference in making our society fairer, better and more progressive and likely lead to greater economic wealth.”
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The Associated Press receives financial support for its coverage of Africa from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
