No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy - Linsey McGoey.epub

The charitable sector is one of the fastest-growing industries in the global economy. Nearly half of the more than 85,000 private foundations in the United States have come into being since the year 2000. Just under 5,000 more were established in 2011 alone. This deluge of philanthropy has helped create a world where billionaires wield more power over education policy, global agriculture, and global health than ever before.

Charities link the farmers in Africa to the boardrooms of corporate foundations and the corridors of the World Economic Forum at Davos. Far from being selfless, plutocratic philanthropy may be the ultimate profit-making tool.

In No Such Thing as a Free Gift, author and academic Linsey McGoey puts this new golden age of philanthropy under the microscope—paying particular attention to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As large charitable organizations replace governments as the providers of social welfare, their largesse becomes suspect. The businesses fronting the money often create the very economic instability and inequality the foundations are purported to solve. We are entering an age when the ideals of social justice are dependent on the strained rectitude and questionable generosity of the mega-rich.

PRAISE
“The charitable model represented by the Gates Foundation is failing to address the root causes of inequality and ecological crisis. This path-breaking book is a sorely needed, historically grounded investigation into the difference between philanthropy and justice.”
– Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine

“Picking up the cudgels wielded by Ida Tarbell and her fellow trustbusters, McGoey produces a startling report.”
– Kirkus Reviews

“Fierce...provocatively examines the power imbalances and ambiguities of charitable giving...a clear-eyed and much-needed study.”
– Andy Beckett, Guardian

“A brave, intelligent and important book that raises vital questions about the full impact of a key source of the world’s public health funding. As the book shows the drive to do good can raise a host of ethical and policy questions—many of which have not been considered or even acknowledged prior to this book.”
– Arthur Caplan, New York University

“A book that is by equal measure provocative and compelling that finally gives a voice to concerns that many have silently harbored ... charts the speed of the Foundation’s emergence and influence with conceptual fluency and historically referenced gusto that in parts left me gobsmacked.”
– Sophie Harman, Queen Mary, University of London

“Impeccably researched and beautifully written, Linsey McGoey’s book is the best and most complete examination of the Gates Foundation and the workings of big philanthropy. A must-read for anyone concerned with where the world is heading.”
– Michael Edwards, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Demos

“A timely criticism of a society that allows an individual to accumulate such a distorting amount of financial power; it is an indictment of unaccountable power.”
– Maclean’s