How to add brains to generosity
Financial Times, 10/20/07
Four years ago, when Pfizer bought Roger Newton’s company Esperion Therapeutics for $1.3bn, the pharmacologist and co-discoverer of the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor was deciding how to use his share of the windfall. “My wife and I had always been philanthropic, but we’d never had the ability to do so many things,” Newton says.
His private wealth adviser introduced him to Foundation Source, the Connecticut-based philanthropic advisory firm. With its help, Newton created the Esperance Family Foundation, using 25 per cent of gross proceeds from the company’s sale.
Newton, who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, credits Foundation Source with providing the knowledge and administrative ease he needed to run a family foundation. “It was the link between Lehman Brothers and Foundation Source that allowed us to make astute investments,” he says. “I learnt I could work with a central organisation that would do all the accounting and reporting, cut all the checks, collaborate with my bankers and introduce me to a network of foundations with mutual interests.”
Everyone from Aristotle to Andrew Carnegie has bemoaned the challenge of giving away money wisely, and the recent proliferation of specialised non-profit organisations both nationally and abroad presents untold complexity for the more than 75,000 private foundations in the US. With $455bn total assets under management and annual giving of $25.2bn, results-oriented foundations are turning increasingly to philanthropic advisers to help define and implement their charitable goals. Many donors say these advisers allow them to indulge in the joy of giving without getting mired in the minutiae of administration.
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