I want to be a donor.
Money doesn't multiply. Or has money ever been caught in the act? There you go. So what does money do all the livelong day? Does it do good, or does it just lie around pointlessly?
If someone had asked me — the six-year-old I once was — what I wanted to do with my life, I’d have said without hesitation: “I want to be a philanthropist.” Unfortunately, no one asked me, and besides, I had no idea what a philanthropist was. It was only later that I took a real liking to the idea. Whoever has a lot of money — or far too much of it — has, first of all, power, and with that, a certain sense of entitlement. Wealth can lend a person weight. Or something like that. Money wants to be invested, say the advisors with a flair for it. Fair enough. But does the money have to multiply in the process? Or is it enough for the owner to watch a previously struggling situation bloom into something flourishing — just from a well-placed injection of funds?
Basel is the city of philanthropists.
And that can be backed up with numbers. Numbers with something to back them up are very popular with enlightened readers. In Switzerland, the number of foundations per 20,000 inhabitants stands at 15.1. In Basel, that figure reads an impressive 42.9 foundations. Basel beats the average three times over. Even more striking is the absolute number: 900 charitable foundations in the city of Basel alone. Alongside Christoph Merian and his foundation, several families have set about enriching life in Basel — cultural life above all. The Oeri and Hoffmann families are just two examples. Then there’s Peter Staechelin, and his Globe Air crash of 1967. The man ran into financial trouble, so he offered the city of Basel two Picasso paintings for 8.4 million francs. Ideas for fundraising formed almost immediately. The city organised “beggar festivals,” shoes were polished in exchange for donations, meals were offered, wine cellars were emptied, and on the tram ticket, passengers voluntarily paid a Picasso surcharge. Basel’s chemical industry rounded the amount up by 2.4 million francs. Fair enough — but six million francs were still missing and would have to come from public funds. A referendum was called, and lo and behold: on the 17th of December 1967, 54.2 out of every hundred Baslers said yes, that seemed perfectly fine. Pablo Picasso followed all of this from far away in Mougins. He invited the then museum director Franz Meyer to his home and gifted Basel four additional works. Yes, as a gift. The seventh Picasso in its new home of Basel was a gift from the patron Maja Sacher.
Basel, 1967. The world, 2026. Different scale, same question. What Basel has built over its history in terms of foundations and patronage ought to be a compelling draw for billionaires. The Bezoses, Musks, Zuckerbergs, Thiels, and Gateses of this world surely have large departments full of industrious people working on the problems that money could solve. Famine, investment in the climate emergency, in healthcare, in culture, in the reduction of poverty as such. How proud they must be — the men who, with the money left over, are reshaping the world they’ve helped to shape with their financial largesse.
The headline writes itself:
1% of the population looks after the remaining 99%.
The financial commitment is nowhere near as large as assumed. For the one-percenters among billionaires, this is already heading into postage-stamp territory. With just 170 billion dollars a year, poverty could be reduced to one percent of the world’s population. With 114 billion a year, the infrastructure for clean water could be secured.
These are just a few examples of how dear old money could make for a better world. If it were made available.
Yes, I’m a dreamer, and I’d love to be a philanthropist. But I’m not alone.
