No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy

By Linsey McGoey

Philanthro-capitalism: How charity became big business

The charitable sector is one of the fastest-growing industries in the global economy. Nearly half of the more than 85,000 private foundations in the United States have come into being since the year 2000. Just under 5,000 more were established in 2011 alone. This deluge of philanthropy has helped create a world where billionaires wield more power over education policy, global agriculture, and global health than ever before.

In No Such Thing as a Free Gift, author and academic Linsey McGoey puts this new golden age of philanthropy under the microscope—paying particular attention to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As large charitable organizations replace governments as the providers of social welfare, their largesse becomes suspect. The businesses fronting the money often create the very economic instability and inequality the foundations are purported to solve. We are entering an age when the ideals of social justice are dependent on the strained rectitude and questionable generosity of the mega-rich.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781784781194

Linsey McGoey

LINSEY MCGOEY is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex. She has been a member of the World Health Organization's expert steering group on the impact of a human rights-based approach to health. She has published reviews and op-eds for the Guardian, Open Democracy, Spectator, and Globe and Mail. Prior to Essex, Linsey held research fellowships at the University of Oxford.

Reviews for No Such Thing as a Free Gift

[davidwineberg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Boys and their toysOne of the immutable rules of the universe is that nothing ever turns out the way it first seems. So with philanthropies, according to Linsey McGoey in No Such Thing As A Free Gift. The super-rich are out to benefit themselves and their companies, blaming government for failing to address issues, while criticizing them for spending on those issues (and not giving them and their firms enough breaks). McGoey uses the whipping boy of The Gates Foundation, which has its own agenda, and outspends governments and in some instances the UN. Its influence is enormous, but its strategy leaves the field cold. Bill Gates’ “obsession” with polio has meant poor attention given to more immediate needs, such as HIV. Some call this obsession the biggest obstacle to lower priced HIV treatment in the world: “The Gates Foundation just leaves chaos. Not only is it changing the ideology of public health – it is deinstitutionalizing public health.” The same feelings are expressed in education, where Gates has run rampant and unchecked.The charges against Gates boil down to a spoiled brat spending to please himself. Programs and purchases are made to benefit Microsoft and Coca-Cola, which the foundation stands to inherit from board member Warren Buffet. Its grants are made to US firms, three times more often than to local ones, on the ground where the need is both better understood and immediate. Much like government aid that must be used to purchase US goods and be shipped by US transport, The Gates Foundation benefits Americans more than Africans or Asians.McGoey says Gates actively follows the footsteps of Andrew Carnegie, the great philanthropist who famously had Pinkertons shoot his employees for striking. He cut their already miserable wages by two thirds, at a time when his company enjoyed a doubling of revenues, all so he could continue to perform his munificent philanthropy. He built libraries, in his own name, all over the country. Today, all kinds of new billionaires take up highly targeted pet causes, with little regard for overall impact, goals or co-ordination, in exchange for massive tax relief. This steals from government revenues while enriching favored suppliers, cronies and politicians. We call this efficiency, and the rich congratulate themselves over it at conferences like Davos. In their minds, they are performing far better than government could. On the ground, education and healthcare workers strive to undo the mess they create.The book reaches out in many directions, following the money in long tangents. The focus on Gates is valid, but in many ways unfair. The whole sector operates this way. Philanthropy is no less corrupt than transnational corporations, politicians or the dictators they support, which is hardly comforting. It makes No Such Thing As A Free Gift both revealing and uncomfortable. If our charities are this misleading, what is left?David Wineberg