Work Reform

Clare Woodcraft, a fellow at the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy at the University of Cambridge, said wealthy people’s philanthropic efforts had a “bad reputation” because the industry was “poorly understood, poorly executed and poorly regulated”.

“There is often, unfortunately, too much focus on the passion behind philanthropy and the feelgood factor and not the actual need,” said Woodcraft, who works as an adviser to the super-rich. “Philanthropists are all too keen to jump in when they surmise that there might be a need, without actually having the data.” Clare Woodcraft, second from the right, is a fellow at the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy at the University of Cambridge. Clare Woodcraft, second from the right, is a fellow at the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy at the University of Cambridge. Photograph: Aidan Synnott

She said many rich people wanted to set up their own educational or health foundations without checking whether there was a need or an existing charity or government-funded programme working to address the issue.

“I still see way too often family offices that come to me and say: ‘We want to do education, we want to set up a foundation and we want to do it in market X’,” she said.

Woodcraft said in these cases she would ask the family for their rationale, only for them to reply: “It doesn’t matter. Let’s just get some quick wins, let’s get the money out there.

“That is the challenge. We need to step back, and have a clear methodology for investing philanthropic capital, because that’s how you’re going to maximise impact and hence mitigate some of the risks of reputational damage.”

Clare Woodcraft seems to think that philanthropy is the solution to inequality, but individuals helping in ways that they want is just giving them more power to decide the fates of the vast majority of people. Systemic change is needed to take power away from the bourgeoisie and give it to the masses to decide their own economic futures.