Besides his business interests, Christopher Moran supports charities in a wide range of sectors across arts & national heritage, health & wellbeing, and faith & international relations. Below he examines the contrast between the UK & US models of philanthropy – and sets out the challenge for corporate Britain in the 21st Century.
Take a walk on Park Avenue or Wall Street and you’ll see countless posters and banners profiling the wide variety of cultural activities on offer in New York. And at the bottom of each you’ll see sponsorship from a large private company – usually a bank, and usually a big one at that. Goldman, Morgan, BNY – happy and proud to support the development of the arts in their cities.
And, if you paid a visit to any medium or large scale anti-AIDS project in sub-Saharan Africa, the chances are that at least part of the funding will come from any number of US charitable foundations, directly or indirectly linked to major corporations.
Our own financial crisis, precipitated to a large extent by reckless spending has led a to large scale reduction in public sector spending. The UK is seeing an unprecedented shrinking of the state, with the expectation that right across society, the private sector will fill the gap.
Why therefore are we not seeing a growth in UK philanthropy similar to US levels? Take the word itself, a Greek derivative – the nourishing or care of humanity. Our modern understanding of the term – doing public good – emerged in the US in the pre and post depression era. Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie adopted the ‘prevention is better than cure’ mantra which saw funding channeled to solve deep-seated problems in societal structure as opposed to simply dealing with the symptoms of those problems.
The modern understanding of philanthropy emerged in a context of the world’s first large scale free market economy. The US in the early 1900s was a prospectors paradise which, for the first time in history, saw monarchical wealth available to anyone, in theory anyway, who had drive, determination and the right idea. Although the impact of the Great Depression was severe across the Atlantic, it was the effect of the First World War in Britain which saw the bedding down of the Welfare State under Lloyd George. While poverty levels in the USA were similar, that country’s distance from the war and relatively short participation in it meant the groundswell of support for Liberal Welfare State policies in Britain was never replicated across the Atlantic.
Given the absence of large-scale government welfare support until FDR’s New Deal, many corporate entities took up the challenge to provide for the poor. Take a stroll in many UK cities and you’ll see libraries built by the Scottish-American Andrew Carnegie. And yes, he’s the same Carnegie who built Carnegie Hall, who started what is now Carnegie Mellon University, who established the Carnegie Corporation of New York to “promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding” and which over the years has funded, among other things, Sesame Street. Carnegie was just one of a number of individuals who gave away most of their wealth during their lifetime.
Arguably, our early commitment to the Welfare State is a principal reason why the UK hasn’t and doesn’t see philanthropy on the same scale as the US. Given that we now face unprecedented pressure on public finances, and an expected reduction in social welfare payments following the Duncan Smith reforms, it would appear the time has come for large corporate firms here to increase their support for the improvement of society.
The generosity of UK citizens is known at home and abroad. Anyone who has watched Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire cannot fail to be impressed by the energy and generosity many of these self-made millionaires bring to small-scale community projects up and down Britain. The Prince’s Trust Million makers, where businesses are given a small amount of support and asked to raise £10,000 each is a firm indication of the ingenuity of the private sector.
The fact remains that we do not see large scale support on a US scale here in Britain and that needs to change. Future competitiveness globally relies on trimmed back public expenditure and a commitment to productivity, both in the private sector and the public sector. That will mean less resources for government to target the causes of societal breakdown. David Cameron has already discussed the important role that voluntary organizations will play in tacking poverty and a range of other issues. He may have given it a new name, ‘The Big Society’ but it still means, community and corporate working hand–in-hand.
What is needed goes further than that. Some of the most successful firms nationally and internationally are largely British owned. Philanthropy models in the past relied on very wealthy individual owners able to decide what they wanted to do with their vast wealth. However some of the most successful Philanthropists in the world today started their lives at the helm of listed firms.
It appears that success in this field can be tied to commitment to specific projects. Everyone knows that the era of throwing money at a solution is over. We need to think of other ways of giving – not just financial resources, giving can also include a company’s time, expertise and even contacts. And by focusing these donations to specific outcomes, as a business would in any project of its own, they will deliver real results. The US defined philanthropy of the 20th century, it can be the UK who does it in the 21st.
This article was originally published in CITY A.M. 24 Feb 2012.
