CHAPTER 6
WRESTLING WITH
THE QUESTIONS OF PHILANTHROPY
在慈善上的挫折
My first exposure to“philanthropy”11occurred back in the late 1990s when I was approaching fifty. At that time,Matt was sixteen, spoke Mandarin, and visited a Chinese orphanage to helpsomeone, where he learned that a $500 surgery could save or radically improvesome lives. We and our friends gave him money to help. Then, my friend PaulTudor Jones taught Matt how to create a 501(c)(3) foundation and Matt, just ajunior in high school, created the China Care Foundation in 2000. Matt broughtour family to the orphanages, so we had close contact with these special-needschildren and fell in love with them. We also watched Matt struggle to decidewhich children would live and which would die because there wasn’t enough moneyto save them all. Imagine being faced with the choice between a big night outon the town or saving a child’s life. That was essentially the choice weconstantly faced. This experience led us to become more involved withphilanthropy, so in 2003 we set up our own foundation to provide support inmore organized ways. We wanted to do our philanthropy together, as a familyactivity, which has proven to be fabulous.
Figuring out how to best giveaway money is as complex an undertaking as figuring out how to make it. Thoughwe now know a lot more about it than we did when we started, we still don’t
always feel capable to make the best decisions possible, so my family and I arestill feeling our way through it. I will give you a few examples of thequestions we have been wrestling with and how our thinking about them hasevolved, starting with the question of how much money should be saved for myfamily relative to how much should go to people and causes that are moredistant, yet more desperately in need.Long before I had a lotof money, I had determined that I wanted my sons to have only enough to affordexcellent health care, excellent education, and an initial boost to help theircareers get started. My perspective was influenced by my own journey through
life, which took me from having nothing to having a lot. That taught me tostruggle well and made me strong. I wanted the same for the people I loved. So,when I had earned a lot of money, I felt I had plenty of money to give away toothers.Over time, as we gainedexperience in trying to help in a number of areas, I learned how fast moneygoes and that we didn’t have nearly enough to take care of everything we caredabout. Additionally, when my first grandchild was born, it prompted me towonder how many generations I should budget to protect. Speaking to others incomparable positions, I discovered that even the richest people feel short ofthe money they need to do the things they want to do. So I studied how otherfamilies approach the question of how much to set aside for family and how muchto give away at what pace. While our family still has not answered thesequestions definitely, I know that I personally will give more than half of mymoney to those beyond my family.
Which causes we shoulddonate to was another big question. Barbara’s biggest passion has been helpingstudents in the most stressed public school districts in Connecticut,especially those students who are called “disengaged and disconnected.”12Astudy she funded showed that 22 percent of high school students fall intoone of these two categories, which was shocking because most will probablybecome adults who will suffer and be burdens on society rather than flourishingcontributors to it. Because she has a lot of direct contact with these childrenand their teachers, she understands their needs. When she learned that 10,000of them didn’t have winter coats, she felt compelled to provide them. What sheshowed me opened my eyes. How can clothing and nutrition be so severelydeficient in this “land of opportunity”? Everyone in our family believes thatequal opportunity, which is one of the most fundamental human rights, requiresequal educational opportunity—and that educational opportunities are terriblyunequal. The economic costs—in the forms of crime and incarceration—as well asthe social costs of not investing in improving these conditions are immense.While we have felt compelled to help, we’ve discovered it is very difficult tohave a significant impact relative to the size of the problem.
I feel deeply connectedto nature, especially the oceans. The oceans are our world’s greatest asset,covering 72 percent of its surface and comprising 99 percent of its livablespace. It thrills me to support scientists who are exploring the oceans andmedia showing them in the incredible environments they visit. I’m on a missionto make clear that ocean exploration is even more important and exciting thanspace exploration so that our oceans get more support and will be more sensiblymanaged. To add to my excitement, my son Mark is a wildlife filmmaker who
shares my passion, so we get to pursue it together.
Matt’s passion is tobring inexpensive, effective computing to the developing world as a way ofexpanding and improving education and health care. Paul’s passion is mentalhealth and his wife’s is fighting climate change. Devon is more focused on hiscareer than on philanthropy now, but his wife cares deeply about animalwelfare. Our family continues to support special-needs children in China, aswell as an institute that teaches best practices to Chinese philanthropists. Wealso support the teaching ofmeditationto children in stressful environments and to veterans with PTSD, cutting-edgeheart research, microfinance and other social enterprises, and much more.
We view our donations asinvestments and want to make sure that we have high philanthropic returns onour money. So another big question we wrestle with is how to measure thosereturns. It’s much easier to measure efficiency in a business by seeing howmuch its revenue exceeds its cost. Because of this, we developed an attractionto sustainable social enterprises. Still, I saw that so many philanthropicinvestments could pay off economically as well as socially, and ittormentedme that oursociety passes them up.
We also wrestled with howbig our organization should be and what governance controls we should have inorder to ensure the quality of our philanthropic decision making. I approachedthese ecisions the same way I explain in Work Principles—by creatingformalized principles and policies for our decision making. For example,because we are bombarded with more requests for grants than we canintelligently look at, I mandated a policy not to review unsolicited requestsso our staff has the time to sort through the areas we want to be focused on.We are continuously improving all our principles and policies, and I dreamabout building decision-making algorithms for our hilanthropic efforts, thoughthat’s beyond my reach at the moment.As you might haveguessed, we also seek advice from the most experienced and respected people possible. Bill Gates and the people we met through our participation in his,Melinda Gates’s, and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge have been enlightening.Others such as Muhammad Yunus, Paul Jones, Jeff Skoll, the Omidyar folks, andthe people at TED have been very helpful. The most important thing we’ve
learned is that there’s no one right way to do philanthropy, though there areplenty of wrong ways.
Giving away the moneythat I acquired during my lifetime—and doing that well—has been a joy, a
challenge, and the appropriate thing to do at this stage in my life.
译文：
我第一次接触慈善发生在1990年代晚期，接近50岁了，那时候马特16岁，说着一口普通话，参观了一家中国的孤儿院以便去帮助他们，在哪里他了解到500美元的手术就能或者迅速改变某些人的生活。我们和朋友们给了他一些钱去帮助那些人。然后我的朋友保罗琼斯教会马特怎么建立501基金，而马特仅仅是高中的初级生，2000年创建了中国护理基金。马特带着我们全家去了哪所孤儿院，我们得以近距离接触了这些需要特别看护的孩子，并深深爱着他们。我们也看到马特艰难决定那个孩子能活，而那些可能会死，因为没有充足的钱去拯救他们。相像以下面临着在镇上一个豪华的夜晚或者拯救一个孩子的生命的选择。而那基本上是我们常面临的选择。这种经历使我们更加深入的接触慈善事业，所以2003年我们成立了我们自己的基金并以更加有组织的方式提供支持。我们也想一起做慈善，就像一个家庭活动，二者后来被证明是不切实际的。
如何最好赠送钱就像赚钱一样复杂，尽管我们现在已经比刚开始的时候知道的多得多，我们依旧没有把握做出最佳的决定，所以我的家庭和我依旧以我们的方式进行。我将给你几个我们踩过的坑，以及我们是如何解决他的，从能节约多少钱开始取决于有多少是用在人身上，因为实在太远了，但实际上也更加要命。
早在我变得富有之前，我已经决定我会让我的孩子们只有能满足优越的健康护理，优越的教育，一份初级提升的职业生涯的开始。我的视角受我自身经历所影响，从一无所有到拥有很多。那教会我奋斗并让自己更加强大。我也想让我爱的人拥有这些。所以，当我挣了很多钱，我感觉我已经有了大量的钱可以赠送给他人。
随着时间过去，就在我试着帮助一定数量的地区而获得经验，我才知道花钱如流水，而我们没有足够的钱照顾到方方面面，当我第一个孙子出生，那促使我思考究竟有多少代人需要我预算去保护的。我与其他人进行了交流与比较，我发现即使是最富有的人们也会体会到钱到用时方恨少。所以我研究了其他家庭是如何应对这个问题多少钱预留给家庭，多少钱用于捐赠。当然我的家庭直到现在任然没有解答这些问题，我明白我个人愿意拿出超过自己财产的一半的用于捐赠。
那就导致了另一个大的问题就是我们应该捐赠那些？芭芭拉最大的热情用于帮助学生。在康涅狄格州绝大多数公立学校的地区，尤其是那些被称为“离异或遗弃儿童”的学生，她资助的一项研究表明大约22%的高中学生属于这两类。让人震惊的是这样的孩子大多数可能在成年后遭受并成为社会的负担而不是为社会做出贡献。因为芭芭拉与这些孩子和他们的老师有直接联系，她理解他们的需求。当她了解到有大约10000孩子没有冬天的大衣，她急切去提供大衣。芭芭拉给我展示的让我大开眼界。在这片充满机会的土地怎么会出现缺衣少食的情况？我们家的每个人都相信机会平等，这也是人权的最基础的之一，教育公平—而教育机会却严重的不均衡。教育成本—在那些犯罪和处于监禁的家庭—而改变这些需要的社会成本而不是通过投资促进这些情况是巨大的。当我们感到迫切改变这些状况时，我们发现相对于问题的规模，自己能做的非常难有显著的影响。
我感觉与自然产生了深深的链接，尤其是海洋。海洋是我们这个世界最大的财产，超过地球表面的72%是海洋，相对于地球上宜居的空间99%是海洋。海洋刺激这我支持科学家探索海洋并向全世界播放他们探险的那些不可思议的环境。海洋探索的重要性甚至超过空间探索，以便让海洋探索获得更多支持也将获得更加理智的管理。更加让我兴奋的是我的儿子马克是一个户外节目的制片人，他与我一样热情，所以我们自然就走到一起。
马特的热情在于让廉价，有效的计算开发世界成为一种扩展和提高教育和健康护理。保罗的热情在精神健康而他的妻子则在与气候变化战斗。德文则更加专注于他的职业而不是慈善业，但他的妻子则深深热爱着动物福利。我们全家持续帮助那些在中国的特殊需求孩子，同时有一家研究所为中国的慈善家提供最好的实践。我们也在支持教授在困难环境下的孩子们、患ptsd疾病的退伍军人学习冥想，同时支持尖端的心脏研究，微观经济学和其他社会企业及其他更多领域。
我们将捐赠视为一种投资，我们都确信慈善能带来高回报。而困惑我们的另一个大问题是如何衡量那些回报。在商业中通过观察收入与成本很容易衡量高效与否。然而我观察到许多慈善投资能更经济的支出，也能更具社会效应，让我折磨的是我们的社会统统放过这样的机会。
我们也为机构应该多大规模而烦恼，我们为机构管理应该采用何种方式以便确定我们的慈善决策的质量而烦恼，我总是用同样的方式作出这些决定，正如我在工作原则里解释的—为决策制定正式的原则和政策。举例，因为捐款需求太多而我们没有时间好好审视，我授权了一项政策不予理会未经邀请的捐款请求，这样我们的管理团队就有时间用于我们需要专注的领域。我们持续的提高所有我们的原则和政策，我梦想为我们的慈善事业建立决策制定算法，尽管那时这是超越我们的研究范围的。
你可能会猜测，我们也曾尝试从哪些最有经验和受尊敬的人哪里尽可能取得建议。比尔盖茨和那些我们参与过程中遇到的人，美菱达盖茨，沃伦巴菲特的承诺哪里得到启蒙。其他人比如尤努斯，保罗琼斯，杰夫司克乐，奥米迪亚乡亲，以及ted的人们都是非常有帮助。最重要的事情是做慈善没有一条所谓正确的路，而有很多错误的方式。
捐赠出我一生获得的金钱-并用好他—已经成为一项乐趣，一个挑战，在目前阶段最恰当的事业。
读后感：
雷老爷子在慈善上做了很多，也非常苦恼，因为慈善不像投资没有一个衡量的标准，没有明确的收益，而成本或支出则是实实在在的，这多少让老爷子不舒服，因为超出了他的掌控，为此他想设立规则，然而慈善的规则似乎没有规则。
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