Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett on The Giving Pledge

Historic announcement: 'Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett...asking America's wealthiest people to pledge at least half of their net worth to charity.' Called 'The Giving Pledge' which 'encourages donors to give to their favorite cause but not to any particular foundation.' Structure: 'Does not ask for specific grants it simply asks for a moral commitment.' Early adopters: 'Four pledges already acknowledged...Eli and Edith Broad, John Doerr, Gary Linfest and John and Tashia Morgridge.' Potential: 'If successful the pledges could generate 600 billion dollars for a wide variety of specific needs.' Foundation: 'Historic partnership between the Gates and Buffett began in 2006 when Buffett pledged 99 of his 40-plus billion fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.'

Buffett's philanthropy plan: 'It's something I've always planned my wife Susie and I had planned that whatever I made would go back to society and...originally...I thought she would outlive me and she'd make the big decision on it...but...since her death I had to...rethink the best way to get the money into society and have it used in the most effective way.' The Gates solution: 'I had a solution staring me in the face and I'd seen Bill and Melinda...do what they have done with their foundation they've...done it with their own money they poured themselves into it the decisions are great their goals are similar to mine.' The decision made sense both strategically and personally.

Melinda Gates on impact: 'For us it's just fantastic because we look at it as doubling the impact the diseases we've already been working on and the education and the inequities we've been looking at for so long just basically double by Warren's gift and it's incredible the depth that we'll be able to go to on some of these global health issues.' Bill Gates on responsibility: 'It's a huge responsibility and in some ways if you make mistakes with your own money you don't feel as bad about it as if it's someone else's so now we're...even more intent on doing it right.' The opportunity: 'It's a very exciting time the advances in...medicine and other things we can do to relieve poverty...we've been making good progress and with the doubling of resources...we think our impact can even more than double.'

Genesis of the pledge: 'Warren initially started that conversation with us and we said well let's get some other people together to talk about this...this first dinner which David Rockefeller hosted and then from there it kind of just took on a life of its own.' Dinner format: 'I asked each either couple or individual to sort of give a story of the evolution of their own philanthropic thinking and how they got where they are now and...what they hope to accomplish.' The energy: 'It was probably two hours to get around that table...people they wanted to talk about their ideas and they wanted to listen to the others...they were just as interested when the other person was talking as when they were.' Impact: 'If this sort of enthusiasm and commitment could be talked about to others...there might be many people out there who really have sort of postponed thinking about what they're going to do with their wealth...to get active now.'

Website structure: 'There's a website called givingpledge.org...we will put up all the pledges so the people who sign the letter that say I'm going to give away 50 the letter will be up there...then people will write a bit like a one page or two pager about how their philosophy of giving those will all be up on that website.' Support resources: 'Website will link to other places...like bouldergiving.org that actually helps people think about how do you give your money away.' Adoption: 'We already have four people that have said to us look we want to be included in trying to help get others to give.' Warren's philosophy: 'You should do it only if it appeals to you personally it's your money and I'm not going to tell you how or why.' The pledge is personal choice, not obligation.

Buffett on society's role: 'I think it's useful for people to think that they are where they are in life partly because they won what I call the ovarian lottery...I mean there was a 50-to-1 chance at least that you or I would be born in the United States rather than Bangladesh or someplace else.' The debt to society: 'The fact that we've got a system and a country that has enabled me or Bill or anybody else to make the money we've made this society did a lot for us.' The alternative: 'If I'd been born in some different place and time some warlord would have taken me out or I would have been in...Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia.' Conclusion: 'The market system that enabled us to do it owes something to the fact that 300 million Americans contributed to it.' Society made wealth possible; wealthy owe society.

Social influence mechanism: 'Peter Singer talks about in his book about...saving lives...we do what our reference set does and so if you do see somebody in your reference set doing what feels right to you and you see them having success in it actually making change you're more likely to act and you're more likely to be at your best.' The dinners: 'For us sitting around that table we were sitting with our reference set and we were hearing amazing things we didn't expect to hear.' Learning from peers: Stories 'about in some cases education in the United States...or climate change...here's where I started...I didn't really know where to go...here's how I learned and then somebody else would say oh but I thought of that in education too how did you tackle this particular piece.' Success metric: 'Giving pledges that we've gotten people earlier in their life...to think earlier in their life about how they're going to give money back.'

Buffett on estate giving baseline: 'In 2008...the estate tax forms that were filed less than 40,000 of them showed estates of about 230 billion dollars that's one year in the United States about 12 of that was left to charity of that 230 billion.' The opportunity: 'I would hope 10, 20, 30 years from now that that number's a lot bigger than that and I'll bet it will be.' Only 12% ($27.6B) going to charity from $230B in estates shows massive untapped potential. Giving Pledge could fundamentally shift these norms over coming decades.

Historical impact: 'The history of philanthropy is an amazing thing...the libraries in America Carnegie had a lot to do with that some of the medical research...Rockefeller had to do a lot with that...highlighting causes that later became something that the government got involved with looking at the schools that the blacks were going to in the South Rockefeller gave a lot of money to that and really showed the incredible injustice that was there.' Modern era: 'We're building on a legacy of some brilliant work that really made a difference and even in this era...people like George Soros who've been creative going into the new societies in Eastern Europe and trying to get those going...took a big risk that's so creative and people like Chuck Feeney who've done amazing things.' Philosophy: 'We want diversity we don't want people to fall into exactly the same patterns that other people have because the new ideas are so catalytic.'

Capitalism's virtuous cycle: 'It really makes a difference and...it's kind of the best of capitalism somebody makes money which is very enjoyable and you get as Warren said...you lack for nothing and then hopefully you're taking that ability and you're being smart that you say okay...I was lucky now let me create good circumstances for other people.' Impact areas: 'In education...I know there's a lot of philanthropists that are...funding things it's making a huge difference in global health and climate...there's a broad set of things that would never happen without philanthropy.' The model: wealth creation → recognition of luck/society's role → using resources and skills to create opportunity for others.

Historical transformation: 'If you look back 250 years ago...Adam Smith used to say that it was almost futile to even know what was going on around the world because you couldn't reach out and help somebody on another continent with their issues.' Modern reality: 'Well now we're so connected as a world both from transportation to communication we even have people at very small levels...you can go up on the website and give something through kiva.org and help...a woman with her farm in Africa or in the US teachers now post what they need in their classroom and through donorschoose.org I can go say...I want to make sure she gets the lesson plan funded that she needs or her science lab.' The moment: 'We're that connected so whether you want to give in your local community...United States...across the globe it's easy to do now and...that's the moment in time that we're at now in philanthropy and that's why this is so exciting.'

Universal application: 'This is 50 of wealth being pledged but there...are people who've got similar impulses that just don't have money but they can...pledge 10 of their time or something of the sort.' Philosophy: 'The idea is really to have everybody thinking about the subject now we're not...we can't do it totally retail but there...everybody has the opportunity...whether it's to mentor some young kid or whatever it may be.' While Giving Pledge targets billionaires, the principle of giving back applies universally - time, skills, mentoring all count. Not just about money.

Charlie Rose's calculation: 'If you just took the number...on the fortune 400 list of billionaires...they would make this pledge about 600 billion.' Annual distribution: 'Have a need people give at least five percent because that's the minimum distribution so you...30 billion coming out of a number like that.' Impact scale: '$30 billion a year is a phenomenal number even if you're splitting it amongst dozens of causes...the catalytic change that would come out of that would be huge.' Geographic scope: 'A lot of that would be spent in the United States some of it would go outside the United States and...there's fertile territory...in both places.' The 5% rule means $600B endowment → $30B annual giving, sustained indefinitely.

Collaborative improvement: 'Don't forget also about foundations pushing on each other and pushing each other's things to improve constantly improve we've learned from so many people that got on early on in the charter school movement or the Broad Foundation in education we share a lot of goals but they look at it in a slightly different way.' Example partnership: 'Chris Hohn and Jamie Cooper-Hohn out of London they have the Children's Investment Fund we happen to hook up with them on some HIV AIDS grants they have made our grants better by pushing on our thinking about how we give that money out and how our grantees use the money.' Specific learning: 'They'll say...you're giving your money in this way but how does the HIV piece hook up with nutrition the mother has to be able to eat and feed her baby...are you really thinking about the linkages...they had gone one step further than we had...we backed up...and said okay let's look at our grants in that way...we thought we were great at measuring turned out they were slightly better we learned from them.'

Long-term compound effect: 'That 600 billion right there's new wealth being created all the time so that sets the tone for countless...trillions over time because it isn't just a static one-time thing...there will be more coming next year and the year after and they will look at what people did before.' The objective: 'What you hope to do is establish a new norm let's establish a new norm in terms of what's appropriate.' The 50% threshold: 'How did you settle on 50 percent...we talked about it in that group...that number came out of the group...out of the dinners.' Not a maximum: 'It's not a maximum...I think there will be some people to come...Chuck Feeney already has...virtually way beyond 50.' The sentiment: 'Get people in because...once you get in it'll be rare that somebody will stop at' exactly 50%. Start with achievable threshold, let momentum build from there.