Bill Gates Helps Bring Attention To Philanthropy Classes
Bill Gates has lived a life that has not only brought fortune to him and his family, but has also changed the lives of millions of others. He brought people Microsoft, but has also made a name for himself as a philanthropist along with his wife Melinda for their work through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As an advocate for philanthropy, he tweeted out an article to his followers that talked about a college course in philanthropy which had one assignment: give away $50,000.
The course is being taught at Northwestern University, and the $50,000 students are to give away is real money.
Gates, 58, brought attention to the class by posting this on Twitter:
How would you give away $50K? It’s these students’ final project: http://t.co/LTd1h2yKBe via @dealbook pic.twitter.com/pbNt8t6Wg9
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) June 12, 2014
The New York Times article reveals that the class was given the money from a grant it received from a Texas hedge fund manager named Geoffrey P. Raynor, a wealthy 46-year-old owner of Q Investments which is based in Forth Worth, Texas. His goal is to spread his company’s fortune “across a widening tract of academia, spreading his own provocative views in the process.” His hedge fund is in the same office as his foundation, Once Upon a Time, and managed nearly $1.75 billion of September of 2013. $727 million of that money came from the firm’s partners.
Students who take the class have to “find and investigate nonprofit organizations and, if they stand up to scrutiny, give them a portion of the five-figure cash pot.” One of last year’s recipients was Chicago-based charity Inspiration Corporation. The company’s director of work force development, Margaret Haywood, was surprised that the money actually existed.
“I didn’t realize they had real money to give,” she said, according to the New York Times article.
While $50,000 may not seem like a lot coming from Gates, he has actually slimmed down his donations in recent years. After donating $24.6 billion from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, CBS News reports that he only donated $3.7 billion from 2002 to 2012. Even with his decrease in charitable giving he joined Warren Buffett for an idea called “The Giving Pledge,” a moral pledge by the world’s wealthiest to give half of their fortune to philanthropy “and other charitable causes.”
The philanthropy classes aren’t just held at Northwestern; they’ve also popped up at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton over the past few years. According to the New York Times, the class that Gates is trying to bring attention to is categorized as a workshop.
[Image via Thomas Hawk]
