MACKENZIE’S METHOD
AS THE PANDEMIC and its restrictions strangled businesses large and small, an estimated 8 million more Americans fell into poverty from June to November last year, increasing the rate to almost 12 percent, or 22 percent for those without a college education. Meanwhile, the bank balances of the 600-plus American billionaires rose by more than $1 trillion in the 11-month period ending in mid-February, inflated by record-breaking stock markets. Elon Musk’s theoretical piggy bank is now $158 billion heavier than it was in March of last year, while Jeff Bezos became $76 billion richer, despite ceding a quarter of his Amazon stake to his ex-wife, Mac-Ken zie Scott.
Yet it would be unfair to characterize America’s billionaire class as dragons sleeping out the crisis atop their glittering treasure mounds. Some have been stirred to action by the aggregate effect of Covid, extreme political dysfunction and stark inequalities in wealth, health and race. Scott best encapsulated the new mood of urgency by putting her divorce windfall to good use, donating nearly $6 billion to about 500 nonprofits over the course of last year, an unprecedented rate and scale of philanthropy. Scott, in effect, threw down the gauntlet to her fellow billionaires.
The pressure is now on, not only to give but to give fast, rather than endow a perpetual foundation that exists, at least in some part, to burnish the legacy of its founder after death. But is faster really better? And if it is, why do so many find it so hard to do?
In the US, charity attempts to supply a safety net “which government is not designed to provide,” says Sampriti Ganguli, CEO of Arabella Advisors, one of America’s leading philanthropy consultancies. “Its underpinnings come from a religious background, and the majority of giving still goes through religious institutions.” The ability to deduct
