By Rob Basso on
9/10/2010 10:00 AM
In case you haven’t heard, in June of this year more than three dozen billionaires pledged to donate more than half their fortunes to charity. “The Giving Pledge” is a program started by none other than Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet. This move was surprising to many since it comes at a time when most have sustained heavy losses from the recession, but now the top 40 wealthiest families in the country are donating eye popping amounts of money to charities. Even the founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, who notoriously made headlines for retracting a $100 million dollar gift to Harvard, wrote a brief note stating that 95% of his wealth was assigned to a trust to be given to charity, totaling billions of dollars.
All this comes on the heels of an annual report completed by the American Association of Fundraising Counsel, which announced that donations were down over 3.6%, the biggest decline since 1956. Interestingly enough, the greatest portion of charitable giving in 2009 was made not by the nations’ wealthiest, but by the average household, at a time when finances are stretched tight. This decline also hits our local charities hard as the demand for their services rise while public and government funding declines.
What can we do to help and create our own Giving Pledge? Aside from writing a check...