Philanthropy.

After browsing the Bill & Melinda site I get the feeling that he may not be quite as evil as SlashDot try to paint him and that on a smaller scale (see FT note below) Philanthropy is very much alive.

Better to give conspicuously than not to give at all
By Jonathan Guthrie
Published: October 12 2004 03:00 | Last updated: October 12 2004 03:00

The purpose to which Roger de Haan will put some of the £1.35bn proceeds from the sale of Saga, which was announced last week, chimes perfectly with the contrarian impulses that made the group successful. Saga built a business selling holidays and insurance to old people when everyone else was wasting millions marketing to the fickle young. In commercial radio it even took on the purveyors of pounding house anthems with a handful of Perry Como records, and won a respectable audience.

Fittingly, Mr De Haan is not, for the moment, planning to spend any of his jaw-dropping wealth on a superyacht, a football team or a space mission. Instead, he is going to give his home town, the crumbling seaside resort of Folkestone, a bit of a spring clean. He has bought the harbour for £11m and intends to pump money into two struggling schools. He will buy hundreds of houses for arty types to inhabit in an attempt to make Folkestone a little hipper.

It is just my fantasy, but I imagine the 55-year-old billionaire getting busy on those chipped seafront railings with a brush and a tin of one-coat gloss. If this were America, you could bet a feelgood film would follow with Tom Hanks as Mr De Haan.

Most wealthy entrepreneurs I have met feel it necessary to have an executive aircraft tucked away on an airfield somewhere. I found it hard to believe Mr De Haan was not buying even one teeny Learjet to celebrate his windfall. "Roger lives in Folkestone and works in Folkestone, so he doesn't need a Learjet to get around," a Saga PR woman responded, a little tartly.

Even entrepreneurs who boast a helicopter, yacht and stately home, such as John Caudwell, owner of Phones 4U, the mobile phones retailer, do their bit. On Sunday Mr Caudwell began a 1,800-mile sponsored bike ride to raise £300,000 for his charitable trust which helps sick and disabled children. The trust had raised £1m a year in the three years of its existence, he told me, before setting off. Why not just donate money and save his calves? "I want to be involved personally," he said, "and, beyond that, my intention is to create a broadly based charity that will continue once I am gone."

Tim Watts, chairman of Pertemps, a big private recruitment business, has, for his part, channelled about £200,000 into a £5m restoration of derelict baths in the rough part of Birmingham where he grew up. The building will become a battered wives hostel, a crèche and a community centre. "I have had a reasonable run in business and I want to give something back," he said.

One might imagine from all this that philanthropy is a growing phenomenon among successful entrepreneurs. Certainly the government has had some success in winning sponsorship from them for new schools. Sir Peter Vardy, chief executive and significant shareholder in Reg Vardy, the car dealer network, has helped fund two schools in the north-east where, controversially, the Creationist doctrine is on the syllabus. Last month, Philip Green entered the arena as the backer of a £15m training college to teach teenagers workplace skills. James Dyson has hinted he could pursue a similar project in design and technology education.

But Cathy Pharoah, research director with the Charities Aid Foundation, says that, while a revival in private philanthropy has been much trumpeted and new agencies set up to promote it, there is as yet little statistical evidence for the trend. She says: "The top 1,000 wealthiest people in the UK give roughly £500m a year, or 2 per cent of their wealth." That is no better than it has ever been.

Ms Pharoah thinks one disincentive is that philanthropy is often interpreted cynically in the UK compared, say, with the US where it is more established and respected. This is a pity. Conspicuous giving may well be a form of showing off, but so what? So is swanking around in a floating gin palace, but without any benefit to widows and orphans. Ms Pharoah says: "We need to accept that wealthy philanthropists are meeting their own needs, and that wanting to give something back is perfectly healthy."

Private philanthropy has a satisfying directness. Corporate social responsibility, the equivalent in the quoted sector, is a questionable distraction for managers whose central duty is making profits for shareholders. The entrepreneur who is both executive and owner faces no such conflict.

The jargon pervading CSR reflects, I suspect, an embarrassed fear of appearing paternalistic. It is hard to imagine that great Victorian philanthropists such as George Cadbury ever lay awake dogged by this worry. When I moved a few years ago to Bournville, the urban village Mr Cadbury built for his chocolate factory workers, a descendant sent me the leaflet he used to issue to new arrivals. It exhorted me to labour manfully in my garden, to ensure my trousers were not overtight and to forswear carbonated drinks, which, ironically, the business went on to manufacture as Cadbury Schweppes.

Mr Cadbury also provided inhabitants with two schools - one with an array of bells playing the pop hits of the day - a church, a Quaker meeting house, swimming baths, a row of shops and a medieval manor house relocated from several miles away, just to lend a touch of class.

His actions may well have been paternalistic. They were also splendid. The chocolate tycoon made only one mistake: to imagine locals would flock to the "temperance pub" he erected in the middle of the village. It is now a hotel. There is a real pub, serving real beer, at the end of my road, just outside the estate. I can get there in five minutes if I walk briskly. jonathan.guthrie@ft.com