EMB
DEVELOPMENTAL
PSYCHOLOGISTS, HAVE ONLY
RECENTLY IDENTIFIED A NEW
LIFE PHASE WE ALL GO THROUGH,
A PHASE THEY CALL LEGACY
BUILDING.
the use of money…Not enough foundations think strategically
about how they can create the most value for society with the
r esources they have at their disposal. Little effort is devoted
to measuring results. On the contrary, foundations often
consider measuring performance to be unrelated to their
charitable mission.”
Author Eric Friedman puts it even more bluntly: “Philanthropy
is broken,” he says, “and almost everyone involved knows it.”
This explains why many high-profile executives have begun to
take center-stage to outline their views on business as a key
player in the social arena.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is the most recent high net worth
individual to wade into philanthropy with a business message,
but it was the Iranian-American entrepreneur Pierre Omidyar,
founder of the auction site eBay, who said it best:
“I have learnt that if you want to have a global impact you can’t
ignore business. I don’t mean corporate social responsibility
programs, but business models that provoke social change.”
THE CONCEPT OF ALTRUISM
AND GIVING FOR THE GREATER
PUBLIC GOOD HAS CHALLENGED
ECONOMISTS FOR MORE THAN
A QUARTER OF A CENTURY.
THEY JUST DON’T GET IT.
It’s the energy and drive of entrepreneurs such as Omidyar
that clearly caught the attention of Klaus and Hilde Schwab
who started the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship
in 1998.
“My husband Klaus Schwab and I started the Schwab
Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship because, although
the World Economic Forum had engaged leaders from
traditional civil society organizations for many years, we
sensed that a distinct, more entrepreneurial approach to
alleviating problems associated with poverty was beginning
to take hold,” says Hilde Schwab.
But she stresses that social entrepreneurs face obstacles
too. They frequently work in relative obscurity in their home
countries, and this creates an ongoing challenge. “Often
they had trouble accessing high-level decision-makers who
could help them scale their efforts, and they are frequently
misunderstood by the press and the general public, who view
them as traditional charities,” continues Hilde Schwab.
Legacy Builders
In short, many, if not most, social entrepreneurial projects are
too small to make an impact. And that’s why we’re now seeing
legacy builders taking to the global stage. Legacy builders like
Saurabh Srivastava.
Srivastava has spent his entire professional career serving India.
He is one of the fathers of the Indian software industry and among
other things founded NASSCOM, the National Association of
Software and Service Companies in India, more than a quartercentury ago. So it came as no surprise to those who know him
when, in 2015, he received a lifetime achievement award, from
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for his service to Indian IT. Then,
earlier this year, he received the fourth highest civilian award
that the Indian government can give, Padma Shri.
But Srivastava hasn’t been serving India in a way that looks like
the work of a traditional philanthropist. He has been building a
legacy—and not unconsciously.
“I think legacy is very important because none of us lives
forever,” he says. “The fact is we can make our thoughts—
things that we think we've learned, things that we think may
be of value to somebody else—live forever. If we can create
a legacy, if we can institutionalize a way to take it forward,
even when we're not there, that's what makes a legacy really
powerful.”
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