The Millionaire Giving Pledge
July 13, 2010 – 8:34 amMy column in this week’s Chronicle of Philanthropy focuses on the Gates/Buffett Giving Pledge and argues that the real impact of the Pledge is the potential for it to spur more every day donors to give more rather than simply trigger the giving of the billionaires which the Pledge focuses on.
I tried to calculate the potential dollar impact of a shift in the giving of every day donors and argued that it could result in a 100% increase in annual giving vs. a maximum of a 10% lift if every billionaire fulfilled the pledge. But yesterday Ryan Allis, writing on the Social Entrepreneurship blog at Change.org gave a more compelling break down of the numbers that illustrates how vastly more important the giving patterns of major donors is compared to the ultra, ultra wealthy.
There are 10 million millionaires in the world, with a total net worth of $39 trillion according to the 2010 Merrill Lynch and Cap Gemini World Wealth Report. The average millionaire has $3.9 million.Excluding the $1.3 trillion of the Forbes 400 [Sean: these are the billionaires targeted by the Giving Pledge] from this $39 trillion, there is $37.7 trillion in assets among millionaires globally. What if there were a Millionaire Pledge?If through a directed effort we can get 20% of global millionaires to commit to give