I feel Bill Gates’ philanthropy is completely genuine—his
motivation, as I mentioned in class, seems to be driven by an honest desire to
improve the world around him, not by ego. He deflected attention from himself
and back onto his works in India whenever possible. Through his extreme wealth,
Gates seeks to build new, better systems to improve lives on a massive scale. An
$100,000 gift is beyond the ability of most Americans; it’s barely a drop in
the bucket to Gates.
On this thread, a man like Nick DeBenedictis is
wealthy, and would easily be willing to donate almost $1 million to build a new
wing on a Philadelphia-area health center. His philanthropy is locally-focused
in order to benefit others from similar backgrounds to him. Gates’ goals are
much larger—his philanthropy is focused on creating systems that change the
world. A gift from DeBenedictis might help 100-200 people; a project Bill Gates
supports could benefit millions of underprivileged Indian men, women and
children. The scale is difficult to fathom, and for me is almost overwhelming.
For one person to be able to use his wealth to not just benefit people, but
entirely change the culture and standard living of an entire country, is the
epitome of the definition of philanthropy: “the love of humankind.” Somewhere
between DeBenedictis’ and Gates’ philanthropy would be organizations like
UNICEF, which work to benefit on a larger scale, but not to the system-changing
degree of the Gates Foundation.
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