Philanthropy

In the race for the accumulation of wealth, the front-runner set the pace, establishing the goals and definitions of success for those who followed in the annual list of the world’s richest individuals. For much of the time Microsoft founder Bill Gates held the number one position, the zeitgeist was about making more and more money, breaking records, moving decimal points. When Gates decided to use all this money and all of his intelligence to help others and when Warren Buffet, long number two on the list, announced the same plans as Gates, the race just to get rich came to an end. The objective was no longer just to accumulate. From then on, business leaders knew that the world would divide itself into two: the philanthropists—the generous—and those who are not: the gives and the give nots.

Working together with the region’s opinion makers and political and business leaders, PODER aims first to unlock the range of complex factors that hinder private and corporate philanthropy in the region today, enabling a subsequent generation of innovative and creative approaches to wide impact grant-making to be implemented to contribute to a socially responsible Western Hemisphere of tomorrow—one underlined by positive social change, vibrant civil societies and a learning network of scholars and practitioners involved in those issues across the hemisphere.