With Purpose Success, part 79

Those pithy words hit Hunter like a bolt of lightning. After many long and intimate discussions with his wife Marion about what they might possibly do with the rest of their lives, they both began to feel energized by the idea of working as hard and as smart at giving their money away as they had worked to make it in the first place-for the betterment of others and their own fulfillment. 

To better understand the challenge in front of him, Sir Tom met in New York with the head of the Carnegie Foundation, Vartan Gregorian, who urged Hunter and his wife, Marion, to think about what they wanted to accomplish. Gregorian also gave Hunter a whole new way to think about his wealth. "He challenged me," Hunter says. "He said it wasn't really my money; I just held it in trust for the common good. That was a big shock for a Scotsman-being told my money wasn't actually mine." 

Hunter took those words to heart, though, and in 2007 announced that before he died he would give all of his money away. One of his principal benefactors so far has been the Scottish educational system, which in his view needs a dramatic overhaul to prepare students for draconian changes in the Scottish economy. Sir Tom became determined to introduce enterprise and entrepreneurship into school curriculums to prepare the nation's youth for the information-based world they would graduate to. He invested in pilot school programs that proved so successful that the government agreed to adopt and fund them. 

Hunter has other acclaimed philanthropic interests as well. For example, he is investing $100+ million in Africa through partnerships with the Clinton Foundation, UNICEF, and others. He mobilized popular support for aid to Africa and is committed to sparking substantial and sustainable economic growth there, beginning in Rwanda and Malawi, where governments have pledged their full support for his programs. 

Hunter's mission, in concert with the Clinton Foundation, is to develop programs that produce profits from agriculture and provide greater access for the poor to better nutrition and health care and clean water. In one year his efforts helped Rwandan farmers increase their crop yield by 240 percent. 

What's most fascinating and exemplary about Hunter is that while he has worked so hard to make his fortune, he doesn't simply want to give it away. Instead, he approaches all of his giving as an investment-not charity. 

He sets goals and demands measurable results, much like running a for-profit company. He says he would have cut off funding for his Scottish education initiatives had they not shown demonstrable progress. In this way, he embodies the new breed of twenty-first-century philanthropreneur, who seeks social change through targeted investments in people. 

You can be a philanthropreneur too-for as little as $25-through innovative organizations like kiva.org and microplace.com, which fund third world business start-ups. I'll talk more about those in chapter 7.