Viewpoint: How billionaire philanthropists could really make an impact

Friday, March 17, 2017

Tom Hall of UBS argues that if the likes of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg were to put their money into impact investment instead of grants they could make a real contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals

For the past three years I have had the privilege to work at UBS, the largest global wealth manager, where we have provided philanthropy and impact investing services to clients for the last 18 years. Over that time we have seen social impact become an increasingly important topic to our client base, right across the globe.

Over 90% of our clients are active philanthropically and in a recent survey of our top 270 family office clients, 30% are already actively engaged in impact investing, with a further 30% identifying impact investing as something they are likely to become active in within the next two years.

As a business we feel that one of the biggest social contributions we can make to the world in general, and the furthering of the Sustainable Development Goals in particular, is to help our clients give and invest for social impact more easily, efficiently and effectively.

Source: Ethical Corporation (link opens in a new window)

Categories
Impact Assessment, Investing
Tags
ESG, impact investing, philanthropy, SDGs