The Giving Game
Bloomberg Markets, February 2007
Philanthropy advice is booming as U.S. hedge fund managers, real estate moguls, and entrepreneurs demand that their charities perform as well as their investments.
Melissa Berman bears the burdens of the whole world. Right now, she’s figuring out how to prevent children from becoming soldiers in Darfur. She’s working to bring sustainable power to poor Sri Lankan villagers. She’s trying to reduce environmental health risks in post-Katrina New Orleans and stem a loss of nurses that will leave U.S. hospitals in crisis by 2020.
Berman, 51, who leads Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors in New York, is working for millionaires who’ve done well - and are now eager to do good. And with philanthropy in vogue, her phone keeps ringing with more calls from hedge fund managers, real estate moguls and technology entrepreneurs.
“It’s getting intense,” says Berman, who holds a Ph.D. in English literature and once lived in Sweden deciphering Old Norse. Her 36th-floor corner office on Madison Avenue is piled so high with files and books that she can barely take in a view that includes a sliver of the East River. “There’s a lot of new wealth, and people are very focused on doing something with it while they are alive,” she says.
Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, a nonprofit charity that was split off from the wealth management office of Rockefeller Financial Services five years ago, helped steer about $150 million to U.S. and international chrities in 2006, twice the amount of 2002, Chief Executive Officer Berman says.