The Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy has received a $600-thousand grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The award will be used to expand the capacity of the Center, which is nationally recognized for its research on the patterns of charitable giving by wealth holders. Among other initiatives, the grant will fund an unparalleled wealth study - the first large-scale survey to focus exclusively on households with at least $25 million in net worth, with a considerable portion of those respondents above $100 million, including some billionaires.
The groundbreaking survey will explore the spiritual formulation of wealth for individuals and the new cultural underpinnings of wealth for society. The objective is to better understand wealth holders’ decision-making about allocation of resources and how they fashion a moral biography of wealth for themselves that generates care for others. In short, this study will provide a basis for the advancement of a social movement of thoughtful philanthropy and assist wealth holders in understanding their place in this movement.
This project is aligned with the goal of expanding philanthropy by providing benchmark information for wealth holders and professionals who work with them. According to Schervish, director of the Center, the project’s findings are also for the general public due who may not be technically wealthy but for whom the use of discretionary resources is an increasingly pertinent spiritual question.
"We are grateful to the Gates Foundation for enabling us to expand the body of our knowledge through this groundbreaking work," Schervish said. "The grant will allow us to expand the reach of the our message throughout the world, both through our research publications and through our executive education programs for development officers, wealth holding households and financial professionals.”
“The Survey on Wealth, Spirituality, and Philanthropy,” to be directed by Schervish and John J. Havens, Senior Research Associate and Senior Associate Director of the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College, was launched in January 2007, and is expected to be in the field by September and published in the autumn of 2008. The project ties directly to the past efforts of the Center to interview and survey wealth holders. This survey will ask behavioral and attitudinal questions about the little understood dilemmas, obstacles, opportunities, and spiritual understandings of wealth and will tender a rare insight into the financial and philanthropic counseling needs of ultra high net worth households.
"This study is significant," said Schervish, "because its findings will provide a window into the cultural horizons of wealth and can directly help wealth holders use their resources as a tool for nobler purposes into the 21st century.”
