Dame Louise Richardson writes about the opportunity and obligation of philanthropists to use wealth wisely and to act with speed and flexibility, unhindered by partisanship, and with an eye toward those who are being overlooked
Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth is as relevant today as the day it was written more than 130 years ago. Toward the end of his life, he resolved, in his own words, “to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution.” He used his wealth to create, among other institutions, Carnegie Corporation of New York to support education and promote peace in order to do real and permanent good in the world. It is a great privilege and an even greater responsibility for us today to use his wealth wisely to achieve the immutable objective of improving the world around us.
It is a great privilege and an even greater responsibility for us today to use Andrew Carnegie’s wealth wisely to achieve the immutable objective of improving the world around us.
There has never been a time of greater need for philanthropy. The pandemic has eroded years of progress in reducing educational disadvantage, war is raging in Europe, and economies are reeling from the twin effects of the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Increasing polarization in countries around the world has exposed the fragility of democracy. Meanwhile, droughts, floods, and wildfires have reinforced the urgency of the global climate crisis. Philanthropists have an opportunity and a responsibility to act; we can often do so with greater speed and flexibility than governments, unhindered by partisanship, and can help to identify those missed out by government interventions.
Like Andrew Carnegie, and like my beloved predecessor, Vartan Gregorian, I believe in the transformative power of education. Like them I see education both as an end in itself and as an engine of social mobility. It was for me. I was able to fund my own undergraduate education in Ireland by working two jobs during term, and full-time during the holidays. But my entire graduate education in the U.S. was funded by scholarships provided by generous philanthropists. I would never have gone to graduate school, or had the career I have had, without them.
Until now I have spent my career in universities. I left Tramore in County Waterford, Ireland, shortly after my 17th birthday to hitchhike to Trinity College, Dublin, and I have been at universities ever since. I have watched the life chances of my scholarship students being transformed before my eyes. I’ve also seen firsthand the lasting impact of philanthropy on institutions. At Oxford, gifts given six, seven, and eight hundred years ago to create colleges are still providing for those colleges today. I believe that there is simply no greater investment than education. I have also seen how philanthropists rapidly appeared to back some little unknown Oxford medics as they sought to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. Thanks in part to their support, the team developed a vaccine that by the end of 2021 had been distributed over three billion times and had saved an estimated 6.3 million lives.
The scale of the global problems we face is beyond the ability of any one foundation to redress. We know how devastated Carnegie was by the outbreak of the First World War in spite of all his efforts to try to prevent it. But we can and we must make a difference. By being focused in our interests and targeted in our interventions, by marshalling other foundations to join us when the needs are greater than we can provide, by being disciplined in evaluating the impact of our work, we can fulfill our responsibility wisely to distribute our resources for social good.
As Carnegie said: “All we can profitably or possibly accomplish is to bend the universal tree of humanity a little in the direction most favorable to the production of good fruit under existing circumstances.” I am fully confident that with our dedicated board of trustees, our talented and committed staff, and the support of the broader Carnegie family, this is the very least that we will achieve.
Dame Louise Richardson, a trustee of Carnegie Corporation of New York since 2013, joined the Corporation as its 13th president in January 2023. She served most recently as vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford from 2016 to 2022.
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