Philanthropy - Charity
Thinking Allowed
BBC
4.4 • 997 Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Philanthropy & charitable giving: Is there such a thing as a free gift? Laurie Taylor talks to Linsey McGoey, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex and author of a study of contemporary philanthropy. The amount of money placed in philanthropic trusts helps make the charitable sector one of the fastest growing global industries. Is this a new 'golden age' of giving which promises to replace the role of government as provider of social welfare? What are the potential conflicts between good deeds and hard profit? They're joined by Tom Hughes Hallett, philanthropist and Non Executive Chair of the Marshall Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Also, John Mohan, Professor of Social Policy at the University of Birmingham, discusses his British study into the logic of charity in 'hard times'.
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a Thinking Aloud Podcast from the BBC and for more details in our terms of use and much, |
| 0:06.2 | much more about thinking aloud. Go to our website at BBC.co.uk. |
| 0:11.6 | Hello, some 20 years ago it must have been I received a phone call from a charity that solicited |
| 0:18.0 | money for people suffering from a particular type of physical disability. |
| 0:22.6 | Would I be so good as to come up to the Charities London office |
| 0:25.6 | and have a chat with the chief executive about a social survey they wish to carry out? |
| 0:29.6 | Well, it seemed an easy enough way to rack up a good deed so I traveled down to London |
| 0:33.4 | and sought out the head office. Well it was I discovered located in an architecturally |
| 0:37.5 | splendid building in one of the most expensive areas of the capital. An attractive |
| 0:41.9 | upper-class young lady led me past numerous |
| 0:44.2 | well-appointed offices which also appeared to be occupied by rather similar well-bred |
| 0:48.4 | young ladies. No one, no one I saw en route appear to have any sort of |
| 0:52.3 | physical disability whatsoever. |
| 0:55.0 | Neither was there anything about the chief executive which spoke of need or handicap. |
| 0:59.4 | He was the epitome to my eyes of an establishment grandi, booming voice, burgeoning, waistline, thoroughly |
| 1:06.0 | well-developed sense of entitlement. I was quickly offered a substantial sum to organise a survey |
| 1:11.4 | which appeared at a little point or purpose before I was rather |
| 1:14.8 | summarily dismissed. Apparently my host had a rather pressing matter to attend to. |
| 1:20.3 | He's lunch. It was an experience I often recount when conversations turn to |
| 1:25.8 | discussions of charities and their management and I now realize I can only get away |
| 1:30.0 | with such a very partial representation of the charity sector because there's so much |
| 1:34.4 | general ignorance about its true nature. But I can hopefully now remedy that deficiency because |
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