The great give away

Tonight sees the annual CEO Sleepout take place around Australia for charitable organisation St Vinnies.

The idea is simple – a group of CEOs, from billionaire Andrew Forrest to Fairfax chief Brian McCarthy and Villa & Hutt chief Franz Madlender – will rough it for one night in order to raise much needed funds for Australia’s 10,000-plus homeless.

It’s a great cause and a great initiative, and we hope all the CEOs involved can get some rest on what is likely to be a chilly night in many parts of the country.

But while Australia’s CEOs are trying to snatch a few hours of sleep tonight, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates hope that American billionaires have something else keeping them up – the idea that they should give away 50% of their fortune to charity.

Overnight, Gates and Buffett formally launched something called the Giving Pledge, which asks US billionaires to publicly commit to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropic and charitable groups within their lifetimes or after their deaths.

There are plenty of US billionaires who have already committed to give away a big chunk of their fortune, including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, investor Ronald Perelman and David Rockefeller.

But in an article in the Wall Street Journal overnight, Marc Benioff, founder of Salesforce.com Inc – who is planning to give $US100 million to a children’s hospital being built by the University of California and will donate the majority of his wealth in his lifetime – made a very interesting point about whether the Buffett/Gates push will actually work.

“This is in many ways like a religion – you either believe or you don’t. People are not easily swayed in one direction or the other.”

The subject of giving money away is an extremely difficult for many entrepreneurs, who must juggle a number of questions when deciding where their money should go. How much should be reinvested into a business? How much should go to children or other relatives? How much should go to charities or other worthy causes?

On top of this, entrepreneurs have very different ideas about supporting charities. Some like to do some in a very public way, others anonymously. Some like to give a big sum to one cause, others like to spread it around through foundations.

It’s a very personal thing, and the idea of being lectured by two of the world’s richest men on the subject of philanthropy may rile some entrepreneurs.

However, that might be missing the point. Even if Gates and Buffett don’t success in getting many actual pledges, they will succeed in at least getting more wealthy people to think about this idea of giving.