Anand Giridharadas, an American author, is well-known for criticising the great and the good who gather at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos every year. “I have a feeling,” he wrote in one philippic, “that girls in Africa are tired of being empowered by men in Davos.” Mr Giridharadas probably did not expect anyone to test his hypothesis. Nonetheless, your correspondent had a go.

A morning spent in the slums of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, asking young women to reflect on Mr Giridharadas’s comment yielded mixed results. Rose, 17, says that if she were in the donors’ position, she would do the same. She goes on, “I would start a programme. I would build schools. I would try to empower girls.” Eunice, 15, is baffled that anyone would care who funds the work from which they benefit—work that in her neighbourhood includes schools, community halls and a hospital. “It has never crossed my mind,” she goes on. Terry, 17, just wishes foreign donors would do more. Boys in the neighbourhood need a lot of help, too, she says.

The poll is hardly scientific, but it proves a point. In an ideal world, girls in Africa would not need outside help. Given that they do, it does not matter if it is men in Davos or someone else who helps to improve their lives. What matters is that the rich give, that they do so with a view to using their money effectively, and that the recipients are empowered to improve their own lives.

Done well, philanthropy can achieve great and diverse things. It was an American heiress who funded the research that led to the contraceptive pill in the middle of the 20th century, when birth control was deemed too controversial for governments to get involved. The Carnegie Corporation paid for research into education through television and ended up creating the production house that produced “Sesame Street”, a much-loved children’s show. Today, the Gates Foundation is funding vaccination drives and surveillance systems that could help eradicate polio.

This special report has laid out a variety of approaches that donors are experimenting with today. Multi-year unrestricted funding is certainly allowing non-profit groups to grow and innovate. But some donors who want to keep control over how their money is spent will probably stick with the more bureaucratic, business-like approach of philanthrocapitalism.

Larry Kramer, until recently head of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, points out that just because philanthrocapitalism is going out of fashion does not mean it has been a failure. Mr Kramer compares it to punk music in the 1970s. Many people expected it to take over the industry, which it did not. But enough elements of it stuck around and influenced other genres that we still talk about it today. Thanks to philanthrocapitalism’s methodical approach, ngos gather data on everything they do. Recipients are being judged on the impact they have, rather than the amount they spend on overheads (as if paying staff well or buying laptops is a waste of donor money).

There is no one right way to give. As John Arnold, one of America’s most generous philanthropists, puts it, variety is a good thing in philanthropy. His group, Arnold Ventures, focuses on influencing policy and tackling the root cause of a problem, like poverty. That relies on other givers meeting immediate needs, such as funding food banks and shelters. “There is value in having people working on different slices of a problem,” he says.

Variety matters. At the moment, big-time donors are nervous about experimenting. The way in which billionaires give money away is constantly picked apart. Foundations are routinely accused of piling too much paperwork onto recipient groups. Concerns that the Gates Foundation, having invested $2bn in fighting covid-19, has excessive power over elected governments drifted into conspiracy theory during the pandemic. Even MacKenzie Scott, one of the most generous givers ever, faced censure after she gave away billions during that time. Because she handed out grants with nothing but short blog posts to explain the logic behind them, her philanthropy was said to lack transparency. (She has since set up a website with a searchable database of her gifts.)

What about the miserly moguls who give nothing? The spotlight never lands on the 127 of the 400 richest people in America who, according to Forbes, have given away less than 1% of their fortunes. Several of those occupying the top spots on the global rich list—Bernard Arnault, a French luxury-goods tycoon, and his family (net worth $185bn); and Jeff Bezos of Amazon (net worth $170bn)—have not signed the Giving Pledge. In a new biography by Walter Isaacson, another of the wealthiest, Elon Musk, head of Tesla (net worth $244bn), refers to philanthropy as “bullshit”.

Yet nobody makes headlines for refusing to sign a pledge. As Henry Timms, chief executive of the Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts in New York City, says: “The very wealthy person who spends all [their] time on a yacht burning money gets no scrutiny whatsoever.” It is these people that the needy girls in Africa resent. Save the tongue-lashing and finger-waving for them. ■