Disruptive Philanthropists
A KPMG report revealing how a new wave of modern philanthropists are shaping tomorrow.
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Doing well – how philanthropy is integral to success
In 2021, KPMG’s Global Family Office and Private Client Group, undertook a global survey of philanthropists from more than 20 different countries.
Disruptive Philanthropists captures the essence of what drives and motivates modern day philanthropy. We interviewed participants from differing cultures, varied ethnicities and personal circumstances, and identified several common traits that global philanthropists shared.
These traits, or commonalities, have both ‘selfish’ and ‘selfless’ motivations. ‘Selfish’, because philanthropy was seen as personally rewarding and meaningful as an expression of ‘family’ values, and ‘selfless’, as philanthropy involved a deep engagement of time and a commitment to the cause beyond the transfer of ‘financial’ resources alone.
We consider ourselves as social investors… we think of ourselves as investing both capital and our efforts, contacts and networks… our social capital.
An Australian perspective
In Australia, for more than 20 years, these traits have been emblematic of families in managing their private ancillary funds (or PAFs). With nearly 2000 separate PAFs now in existence in Australia it is natural that the sophistication and impact of philanthropic giving would increase through the benefit of ‘shared knowledge’.
In this report, Roger Massy-Greene AM, Deanne Weir and Catherine Fritz-Kalish share their perspectives on what philanthropy means for them and their families, and what they have learnt from their experiences.
In our study, Wealth in Transition – Family Offices in Plain View, respondents highlighted the increasingly important role of ‘philanthropy’ and that resting on the achievement of financial success alone is no longer enough for many families.
The impetus to consider how wealth is applied, comes from both within the family (as the new generation becomes involved) and without. Externally, at an economic and environmental level, our consciousness is provoked by inequality, resource scarcity and the sense that no one has a right to consume that which cannot be justified as reasonable.
Philanthropy integral to defining success
Both in how ‘wealth’ is created and how it is applied, ‘families of wealth’ look to be ‘doing well’ in the broadest sense of the term – ‘doing well’ financially; ‘doing well’ by the way they represent themselves and exert influence and ‘doing well’ by helping address deep rooted social problems.
Wealth now comes with a ‘social contract’ and a breach comes with consequences.
How one’s wealth is applied is, for many, becoming more important than how it may be preserved.
Philanthropy is becoming an integral element of how success is defined and what it means to be ‘doing well’.
