Jan. 5, 2018 – These philanthropists—including former eBay president Jeff Skoll and Patagonia C.E.O. Kristine McDivitt Tompkins—serve the good of the people in a wide variety of causes.
In his manifesto “The Gospel of Wealth,” published at the peak of the Gilded Age, Andrew Carnegie outlined what he saw as the responsibilities of people who had made great fortunes. They should live modestly, he declared, and they should recycle wealth back into their communities—and do so during their lifetimes. It’s a message that has never worn out from overuse. Carnegie, once the richest man in the world, lived by his own precepts, giving away the great bulk ($350 million—more like $80 billion in today’s dollars) of his fortune by the time of his death, in 1919.
