Scrutiny Around Billionaire Giving—A Good Idea?

Hi All,

I recently read The Business Of Changing The World by Raj Kumar, and was convinced by his arguments that there should be greater scrutiny (ie ‘detailed tracking’) of billionaire philanthropy, and, eventually, scrutiny around the effectiveness of that giving.

I’m thinking of starting a project whereby this data is collected and made available publicly—initially likely just in the form of a table/​spreadsheet and potentially later in a more ‘processed’ form, such as a website.

I’m interested in the opinions of the community around:

1. Do you agree this would be overall a good thing? My hope would be it would encourage more billionaires to give to (hopefully) effective causes, and engender a more positive conversation about the philanthropic activities of the ultra-rich, each of whom potentially could have the annual aid budget of a small country. But there are concerns the information could be used negatively, or could have unintended negative consequences.

2. Do you think the data is publicly available? Vox and Forbes among others frequently write articles stating the amount certain billionaires have given away which implies the data is there, but it might be hard to obtain.

3. Would you like to help? If your answer to 1 and 2 is ‘yes’ and you’d like to get involved please let me know!

Thanks,

Rob