posted on: Thursday, August 02, 2012

By Kevin Laskowski

GlassPockets, the Foundation Center’s initiative to bring additional transparency to the field, has launched “Eye on the Giving Pledge” to give the public a closer look at the philanthropy of the 81 high-net-worth donors and families who have declared their intention to give away half of their wealth. It’s a rich glimpse into the background, words and giving interests of those who’ve joined the Bill Gates and Warren Buffett-led Giving Pledge.

There’s just one thing missing: are they keeping their promises?

The site features detailed profiles on each of the signatories, excellent summary graphics (I was most taken with the word cloud of the most common phrases in the signatories’ letters and the bubble chart of their giving interests), and links to essential reading on the Giving Pledge as a whole.

The Foundation Center has done philanthropy and the public a great service by shining a light on an initiative that could bring important change to the sector. GlassPockets notes, “With a combined net worth of roughly $400 billion, the commitments made by the current participants could bring an estimated $200 billion or more to charity.” That’s roughly five times the annual grantmaking of all the nation’s foundations—if the billionaires make good on their word.

If the Eye on the Giving Pledge is looking in that direction, we can’t see it. Each profile notes the estimated net worth of the signatory. Then, information about any related foundation giving is provided and news items about giving, including major gift announcements, are included. From that information, one can estimate whether the giving seems significant enough, but there is no single number that summarizes this information and tells you how close the signatory is to meeting his or her stated obligation. In the end, however, one of the most important things about a promise—whether or not it seems on track to being kept—is absent.

Certainly, there are difficulties in doing this. For instance, how do we verify a signatory’s gifts to public charities when these charities are not required to disclose their donors? Additionally, a person’s net worth can fluctuate wildly over one’s lifetime. For the purposes of the pledge, which net worth is to be used as the denominator, one’s worth at the time of signing or upon one’s death or what?

Despite these challenges, “Eye on the Giving Pledge” could reveal whether or not Ted Forstmann, who sadly passed away last year due to brain cancer, fulfilled his pledge.

It’s important to ask how these men and women are doing. The answers might provide guidance and inspiration to new donors and potential signatories. How much are the signatories giving by amount and as a share of their wealth? Are most giving at or around 50 percent? How many are giving 80 or 90 percent? How many of them are planning to wait until death to make their largest distributions? Is the Giving Pledge spurring new giving, or are people pledging based on grants and plans they’ve already made? Might we be able to spur more and better giving faster if the signatories were essentially encouraged to compete with one another? I imagine the ensuing debate over what counted and how would be quite animated and illuminating.

It is by asking these types of questions that transparency becomes real accountability. For instance, when the Giving Pledge went live, signatory Ronald Perelman’s original letter (no longer available on the Giving Pledge website) indicated only a commitment of “up to half my assets ... after my family and children have been provided for.” For those keeping score, this isn’t exactly the Giving Pledge: “up to half” after inheritances are subtracted is less than “half.” His letter has since been updated. It now includes the story of Perelman’s funding of the development of “Herceptin, the only drug known to cure certain types of breast cancer” and a pledge to “designate half my assets for the benefit of charitable purposes during my lifetime and through my foundation.” Because the billionaires’ words are published, it is possible to hold them to those words—even if it’s only to clarify their intentions and tell more of their stories.

As much as we applaud when a promise is made, we can and should applaud all the more when they’re kept. I hope Eye on the Giving Pledge eventually publishes the numbers. It matters a great deal if and how these Giving Pledges are fulfilled. Now that the Eye on the Giving Pledge has made the initiative more transparent, the work of making it more accountable can be renewed in earnest.

Kevin Laskowski is research and policy associate at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.