or, OLIVER TWIST MEETS #GIVING TUESDAY
The American people, or at least most of us, are a generous lot. The somewhat well-off, middle class, working class, and even the poor, will be contributing to what should be a record Giving Tuesday. But the $600 million or so raised for a variety of noble causes this week masks how stingy the rich donor class, the 0.1% of taxpayers, really is. As they do all year, they more likely will be spending Tuesday counting their money rather than giving it away. To put it in perspective: Tuesday’s projected total haul amounts to just the monthly income of each of the country’s five centibillionaires!
As I was growing up my father taught me not to count other people’s money, which is somewhat odd because he was an accountant and all he did was count other people’s money. I was pretty faithful to this principle until Bastille Day, July 14, 2020 when I launched the Crisis Charitable Commitment, an effort to enlist rich people and foundations to give more than usual in response to the crises surfaced by the pandemic. Now I follow another lesson: follow the money.
When the accounting for charitable giving in 2020 is reported next year, we’ll see that the richest Americans give annually around 1% of their net worth to charity, and the richest foundations, with assets over $1 billion each, stick to the legally required 5% distribution. It’s been this way for as long as anyone can remember. But no one can remember the confluence of crises and the demand for charitable dollars that we now face. So much for trickle-down economics, where it was believed that the rich would take care of us if we only made them richer.
Non-profit jobs have been cut 8%, for a loss of 1 million jobs. The demands on public charities have never been greater, and worse, it is projected that as many as 40% of nonprofits may be out of business entirely by the end of next year. This situation is unimaginable and unacceptable.
Meanwhile, private foundations are sitting on nearly $1 trillion, making virtually tax-free money at astounding rates for more than ten years. However, that is nothing compared to the billionaires, who according to an analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies that uses Forbes’ data, have made that much money just since the pandemic began! Taken as a whole, the wealthy get my Oliver award in recognition that “please sir, I want some more” has fallen on their deaf ears
If every one of the 650 billionaires met the Charitable Standard, these billionaires alone would send nearly $150 billion to nonprofit organizations, from food banks to schools, from arts and artists to community organizing groups. To be clear: $150 billion to nonprofits, $850 billion into their pockets! Not a huge sacrifice.
Jeff Bezos has made more than $70 billion since the pandemic began. To meet the charitable standard, he would need to give away $9 billion; Alice Walton made $7 billion, she’d give $3 billion; Bill Gates made $14 billion, he’d give $5 billion; Michael Bloomberg made $7 billion, he’d give $2.5 billion; and so on, and so on. But none are stepping up to meet this crisis’ urgent need.
On Giving Tuesday 2015, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced that they would give away 99% of their wealth. They are off to a very slow start. If they were to give $250 million every Tuesday it is unlikely that they would achieve their goal. It’s time we expect more from the richest people in the world. The next time you see a big announcement about their $100 million gift, don’t cheer. Say, “please sir, I want {to see} some more.”