Silicon Valley startup culture is changing philanthropy

It is hard to make a billion dollars. It is also hard to give it away sensibly. “I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar,” wrote Andrew Carnegie, a plutocrat-turned-philanthropist, in 1889. Nor was he fond of “indiscriminate charity”, such as handouts for beggars. “It were better for mankind that the millions of the rich were thrown in to the sea than so spent as to encourage the slothful, the drunken, the unworthy.”Over a century later, a are wrestling with the same issue. Tech founders dominate the list of the world’s wealthiest people (, which maintains one such list, puts 12 tech moguls among the world’s top 25). A strong culture of charitable giving in , tech’s spiritual home, means that, when it comes to donations, they punch above their already considerable weight. In 2021 those who made their money in tech accounted for nearly three-quarters of the money given away by America’s 50 biggest donors. That tide of money brings with it the worldview and assumptions of the industry that created it.