Gates Foundation’s Rosen said scrutinizing specific estates is secondary to the bigger picture.
“Looking at the complexity of each estate might miss the bigger point around what we’re trying to do and making sure that this is in many ways an incredibly powerful and yet incredibly simple proposition,” Rosen said.
Club Mentality
Associating with the world’s greatest investor and its richest person could mean billionaires are drawn in by the public accolades, with the act of charity a lesser consideration, said Pablo Eisenberg, Senior Fellow of the Center for Public & Nonprofit Leadership at Georgetown University.
Leonard Tow and his wife Claire became billionaires through Citizen Utilities Inc. and Century Communications Corp. in the 1990s. In 2012, he signed the Giving Pledge with Claire, who died last year. He declined to disclose how much they gave or plan to give away. Their Tow Foundation has net assets of $196 million and has doled out $85 million since 2001, according to tax returns.
“It’s like joining a club, that’s all it is,” said Tow in an April phone call. “There wasn’t any thinking about it.”