Philanthropists, they say, make money with their heads and give it away with their hearts. But what compels billionaires to part with their money at all? And what, if anything, do they seek in return? New 杏吧原创 talked to three philanthropists for whom science and technology are either the source or beneficiary of their fortune: Gordon Moore, founder of Intel; Azim Premji, CEO of India鈥檚 IT giant Wipro; and the investment guru John Templeton. Each is on a mission to change the world 鈥� with a little help from their cheque books.
Gordon Moore
Gordon Moore, 76, is widely known for Moore鈥檚 law, in which he predicted that the number of transistors that could be placed on a computer chip would double every 18 months. In 2000 he and his wife founded the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which provides grants for conservation projects. Based in California, it has an endowment of around $5 billion and gives away $225 million every year (). Interview by Sylvia Pag谩n Westphal
How much time do you dedicate to philanthropy?
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It鈥檚 hard to say. Probably three or four days every month.
Do you feel a responsibility to give?
I guess I really do. The world has been very good to me. It鈥檚 falling apart pretty darn fast and if we don鈥檛 do something about it, it鈥檚 going to be a vastly different place to live. I also thought I could do a better job spending the money than the government could.
How do you go about starting a charitable foundation?
It鈥檚 an interesting thing to do. We hired mostly people without previous foundation experience who had a lot of on-the-job learning to do. I鈥檓 sure we upset several potential grantees in the process because we kept changing our methodology and made them jump through hoops to get an award from us.
When did you start to think that you could make a difference with your money?
I got involved in a small way at the local level where you could really see the difference you could make. I supported a local land trust that was preserving undeveloped property. I got involved with Conservation International shortly after their founding. I like their approach to international conservation and I鈥檝e been on their board for quite a long time. There you can see on a larger scale how it鈥檚 possible to achieve significant conservation results.
How do you decide which wilderness causes to support?
An important criterion is to be able to make a difference. We have turned down a lot of important things where we know we cannot make an impact. Global climate change is one example. We had a group in the beginning that was pushing for this, but it鈥檚 hard to see how a relatively small amount of private money can have any significant impact. We want to have an impact on as large a scale as possible. The Amazon Andes is the largest wilderness area left in the world, but it is under a lot of threat. Soybean farms are moving in and so are gold miners. Will we save enough of the jungle to keep the ecosystem? I don鈥檛 know. But quite a bit can be accomplished if we get out there now.
What difference do you hope to make in the Amazon?
We鈥檙e making a better world for people to live in, for the long term. By long term I mean 10,000 years. If all we do is prevent the forest from getting cut down for 20 years, we鈥檝e wasted our money as far as I鈥檓 concerned. The difference has to be permanent.
Can you remember going somewhere that was paradise and returning years later to find it had become Vegas?
Costa Rica. I first went there in the late 1960s or early 1970s when there was just one small fishing camp on the entire Pacific coast. Now that coast of Costa Rica has resorts end to end. Another example is Baja California in Mexico. Cabo San Lucas was a sleepy little town. Now it is like Cancun, way overdeveloped. Having an opportunity to save some of this for future generations was one of our main thrusts when we set up the foundation.
To what extent to do you think money for science and conservation is going to depend on people like you, on private money as opposed to government?
Governments have far more resources than individuals like me and Bill Gates, but they don鈥檛 seem to be able to initiate much. Private money can get something going. It can take a lot more chances. We鈥檙e like the venture capitalists for a lot of these conservation efforts.
How does it feel on a personal level to be able to change the world?
It鈥檚 what I鈥檝e been doing for 40 years. The semiconductor industry where I spent most of my career has changed the world perhaps more than any industry. In that respect, I was involved in changing the world a lot more in my professional career than I am as a philanthropist.
Azim Premji
Forbes magazine rates Azim Premji, 60, as one of the world鈥檚 10 most powerful billionaires. He owns more than 80 per cent of Bangalore-based IT conglomerate Wipro. The Azim Premji Foundation aims to reform India鈥檚 primary school curriculum and find every child in the country a place in a primary school (). His donations come from an endowment of some $120 million. Interview by Ehsan Masood
How does philanthropy in eastern cultures differ from that in the west?
It tends to be much more localised. In India, there are few national philanthropic organisations operating on a significant scale. Most are built around one person who can often be highly individualistic, but has a dedicated team of men and women around him. This is an important issue in our foundation because we are also helping some 1700 NGOs. It can be quite a challenge. I think a second difference is that many philanthropic organisations here are oriented around religion.
Why did you decide to focus your philanthropy on education?
I have a passion for education. But equally important is the fact that quality primary education is a fundamental thing in our country, where there are 200 million children below the age of 14. Quality education is critical to better healthcare, to a more educated people who can take the country forward, to better-planned and smaller families and to a higher standard of living. In other words, it is critical to nation building.
Isn鈥檛 primary education compulsory in India? Why the need for private funding?
It is compulsory on paper. But in practice we have huge drop-out rates and 40 million children below the age of 14 are not in school. Fewer than half of India鈥檚 children complete eight years of elementary education, and only 31 per cent complete 10 years. So while education is compulsory, there is a huge gap in how it is implemented. One of the things we do is invite local authorities to join our Learning Guarantee Programme, where we coach them to improve attendance levels, improve children鈥檚 ability to learn, improve community involvement in education and other things. So far we have helped 1.7 million children in 11,000 schools and helped to train some 30,000 teachers.
As an IT entrepreneur, you might be expected to be putting computers in schools.
Initially we financed computers but now these are being paid for by central and state governments. We are providing software, and we have developed some 90 CDs of learning materials that we give out free to schools. Each CD is a geography lesson, a physics lesson, a maths lesson, a history lesson, a community lesson. They are designed to supplement what is in the textbooks. We also teach state government officials and teachers how to use computers.
Do you find it easier to make money or give it away?
It is a bigger challenge to give it away. When you give away money, you are doing it with a purpose, so it involves a lot of participation to ensure that it is well implemented. Giving away money for us does not mean simply writing cheques.
John Templeton
John Templeton, now 92, was once described as 鈥渁rguably the greatest global stock-picker of the century鈥�. In 1999 he sold his funds to concentrate full-time on his Philadelphia-based John Templeton Foundation, which provides grants for projects that seek to understand religion using scientific enquiry (). He gives away $40 million each year from an endowment of nearly $1 billion. Interview by Sylvia Pag谩n Westphal
What are you trying to do with the Templeton Foundation?
The aim is to generate progress and innovative dynamism in matters of the spirit, where scientific methods can help. What we do has to be based on 100 per cent true scientific rigour. That is a bottom line for us.
When did you decide to make this a philanthropic mission?
As a youngster, I learned the spiritual benefits of gratitude and the joys of giving. It was in seeking to produce benefits for others that I began to seek out important but neglected ways of making a contribution. A constructive engagement between science and religion was largely neglected so I became interested in this. Now we are just beginning to see the fruits.
Why is it so important to bring science and religion together?
For a very simple and hugely important reason: science creates vast power rapidly. Sixty years ago it was nuclear bombs; now it is bioweapons. Along the way, science and technology have created vast advances in useful things that are a great blessing. The amount of practical progress I have seen in my 92 years is so vast as to be almost unbelievable. But science does not itself create 鈥渟tewardship鈥� 鈥� the wisdom and capability to direct power towards beneficent ends and to prevent it from serving malevolent ends. To invest in advancing power without investing in stewardship is folly. As an investor, I sometimes think of this as material wealth versus spiritual wealth. That is why I am donating all of my wealth towards spiritual progress.
What kind of research do you support?
A very promising new line of research we are supporting has to do with the spiritual theme of purpose. Does our universe have or serve a purpose? Do we have a purpose? Can science explore such topics? One area we are funding that has an impressive scientific record in regard to this is the so-called biocentricity hypothesis: are the physical and chemical properties of nature fine-tuned for life, such that if they were slightly different life could not have existed?
Do the people receiving your grants need to be religious?
No, we make awards to all kinds of people. What matters is the dynamism of the recipient and the dynamism and promise of the ideas. Lots of our grant recipients are people who are not a part of any formal religion.
Have you been criticised for promoting this research?
We have not faced a lot of criticism. Our work is done very carefully. Typically, critics imagine that we are pushing some specific religious position, or that we try to get scientists to prove ideas chosen in advance. Neither is true. But some people think that science is a kind of ultimate priesthood in itself and that it should be the ultimate religion and pay no attention whatsoever to God. That is a kind of fundamentalism of its own.