The only problem with this is a charity can become too dependent upon this one persons generosity.
I have not personally witnessed a rich person being generous. I have seen reports of generosity but have not seen in happen in front of me. The closest might be a (worthy) charity flower auction where fairly nice examples drew unnecessarily high bids. Wait, I just thought of an example, in Santa Rosa, California. PEANUTS cartoonist Charles Schultz donated large amounts to local causes including a guide-dog campus we also contributed to in our meager way.
Of course I note institutions that benefited from blood money. I’m not sure Carnegie or the Koch Bros were being “generous” with their philanthropies. And don’t get me started on Bezos. :mad:
Addendum: My fuzzy brain just remembered that MrsRico and I recently visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where prominent exhibits were funded by Silicon Valley pioneers David Packard (of HP) and Gordon Moore (Fairchild, Intel). I don’t think they exploited too many people for their money so I’ll count them as good philanthropists whose generosity I’ve witnessed and benefited from. But don’t get me started on Bezos.
I will trust that this is a well-meaning expression of your sincere concern and not an effort to shit on the small part of my friend’s legacy of which I was a part. I could go into great detail about why you shouldn’t worry yourself over this but I won’t.
I don’t know how rich he is/was, but Dan Price of Gravity Payments famously made all employee salaries at his company a minimum $70,000/year. He cut his own salary from over a million a year to $70,000 to cover it.
No. No insult intended. I just know how easy it is for an organization to get used to a single funding source and what happens when they leave.
In 1981, Eugene Lang (paywall warning) was supposed to give the commencement address to 61 sixth-graders at PS 121 (his alma mater) in New York. He spontaneously offered all of them (mostly African-American and Hispanic kids) college scholarships. But he didn’t stop there. He mentored the kids through school, including taking them to dinner, on trips and intervening when they had problems. Later, he started a foundation to do the same thing for other kids, and encouraged other wealthy people to do the same thing.
The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, in 6 years, fought the hookworm epidemic which plagued the South since the 18th century. At the start of the commission in 1909, 40% of southerners suffered from hookworm, by its end… 6 years later… this number had dropped by half, and the RSC’s successor, the International Health Board, claimed… with a bit of hyperbole… that hookworm was effectively eradicated by 1927.