From Overseas Press

Philanthropy becoming new status symbol for wealthy

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-08-12 16:26

GIVING BY RICH AN EXPECTATION

The true measure of the wealthy should be their generosity, said Bradford Smith, president of the Foundation Center.

"If philanthropy is indeed becoming the new status symbol of the wealthy it will do a lot more to change the world than buying Gucci bags," he said.

But Paul Schervish, director of the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College, said it was important that philanthropy as a status symbol was just a reflection of giving and not a motivation.

"Philanthropy is becoming a regular part of the financial life of wealth holders in a substantial way," he said, adding that anything that is the right thing to do morally can become status symbols.

But, he cautioned, the risk is that if giving is seen as the purview of the rich then it may devalue charity endeavors of regular Americans.

Individual Americans gave more than $227 billion in 2009, according to a the Giving USA report by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, down just 0.4 percent from the previous year despite the U.S. recession.

Melissa Berman, president and chief executive of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, said there was a growing expectation on wealthy families to not only give their money away but be actively involved in their philanthropy.

"(The Giving Pledge) is going to have a tremendous impact and it's impact may be greater outside the United States ... because (China and India) are countries where there is less of a tradition of that kind of scale of philanthropy," she said.

Gates and Buffett and planning to travel to China in September and India in March to speak to wealthy families about the Giving Pledge in the hope that it will drive a similar growth in philanthropy there.

Wall Street Journal wealth columnist Robert Frank, author of "Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich," said the recession had helped spur America's rich to search for new status symbols.

"Yachts, private jets, seaside mansions are so 2007," Frank wrote recently. "But being wealthy enough and generous enough to get on the Giving Pledge list may quickly become the ultimate badge of status -- both in the U.S. and abroad."