The U.S. government had ignored its bills, leaving a widely respected international institution facing a deficit, and one billionaire media mogul was so concerned he opened his checkbook.
The year was 1997, the institution was the United Nations, and the donor was Ted Turner. The CNN founder committed $1 billion over the next 10 years to fund programs to eradicate polio, protect the white rhinoceros and educate Bangladeshi girls. He later wrote that he acted out of concern “our country was losing its place as a world leader because it had decided to disengage.”
Perhaps that moment has lessons for today.
Last month, after President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement for the second time, another billionaire media mogul, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, announced that Bloomberg Philanthropies — and other unnamed funders — would cover the United States’ dues to the United Nations, as Bloomberg also did during Trump’s first term. Based on past payments, the total will likely be more than $30 million over four years.
The move was met with immediate praise from several philanthropic and nonprofit leaders, particularly within the climate space. It also prompted the latest resurgence of an age-old debate about whether billionaires should step in when a government steps back — and the repercussions when they do. It’s a topic that has prompted little in the way of public musings from most major donors or philanthropic leaders, but many academics have jumped in with vigor, albeit with varying conclusions.
The discussion comes amid an unprecedented push by the Trump administration to halt or review all funding currently flowing through federal agencies to nonprofits as part of a slash-and-burn approach to shrinking the U.S. government. Exhibit A is the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where most staff have been laid off or put on indefinite leave while Trump has called for the agency’s closure.
With Trump’s cuts leaving vast unmet needs around the world, including in the fight against climate change, the big question right now is whether more private grantmakers will follow Bloomberg’s lead and step in to fill gaps. Perhaps this clamoring for megadonor saviors is another sign that the billionaire backlash is cooling? Yet, amid current desperation, some are questioning the impulse to turn to the ultra-wealthy, or at least sounding the alarm that there are costs to doing so.
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Questions about where to draw lines between public and private dollars have been around — and causing controversy — since the establishment of modern philanthropy, said Benjamin Soskis, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute and historian of philanthropy.
Between 1906 and 1914, a John D. Rockefeller philanthropy funded the extension of a successful intervention against the boll weevil into Southern states in a bid to boost farm productivity, a move the USDA did not have authorization to support, according to a research paper by Soskis published by the Chandler Foundation. When Rockefeller’s backing was revealed, there was public uproar about a government partnership with the deeply unpopular oil baron.
Some reactions to Bloomberg’s funding echo that sentiment. “And so it… expands. Oligarchs making foreign policy,” wrote Lucy Bernholz, a senior research scholar at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, in a LinkedIn comment on a post about Bloomberg’s funding. (She was not available for an interview.) “I agree with climate commitments and Paris, but will disagree with a great deal of these.”
Some see today’s situation not as a call for billionaire donors to step up, but for philanthropy to push for systemic change. Megadonors cutting checks for these funding cuts, “although laudable and needed in the short term, could ultimately exacerbate the problem,” wrote Benjamin Bellegy, executive director of WINGS, in an op-ed for Alliance magazine.
“Seeing unelected private wealthholders replacing democratic governments in their international responsibility will certainly fuel the profound lack of trust that led to the situation in the first place,” Bellegy wrote.
For Bellegy, that means foundations should invest in groups and platforms that work to mobilize new donors “to grow the pie.” That is, perhaps, an unsurprising conclusion for a man who leads a global network of philanthropy support and development organizations.
Others, though, take a more positive view, seeing gifts from megadonors like Bloomberg in the context of broad and deep international support for those priorities. Helen Mountford, president and CEO of the international regrantor ClimateWorks Foundation, emphasized the widespread support that still exists for taking climate action that helps lower household energy bills, create jobs and grow nascent industries.
“It’s encouraging to see leaders step up from philanthropy — as Michael Bloomberg has done with his commitment to fund the UNFCCC — along with the many U.S. businesses, cities, states and other leaders who are clear that they are ‘still in’ to tackle the climate crisis,” she said in a statement. Again, this is perhaps a verdict we should expect, given Mountford leads an institution that exists to channel funding, often from megadonors, to climate causes.
Stanley Katz, a Princeton lecturer who studies philanthropy, lauded Bloomberg for a clear and consistent vision for his giving. He saw that in Turner’s early grants, too, though he finds it lacking in many of today’s other megadonors — and he thinks a lack of coherent approach is part of what has opened the door for figures like Trump and Musk.
“Philanthropists used to look at what government was doing and say, ‘OK, if I share certain goals with the state, where is it I can intervene, to insist, to assist, replace, whatever,” he said. “But we don’t have that framework anymore.”
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The example Ted Turner set for other billionaire donors
Soskis worries current concerns about billionaire influence are somewhat “abstracted” from the present reality. He believes that donors can meet many current funding gaps, foreign or domestic, and do so without disrupting the balance of what are considered public versus private funding responsibilities, particularly given that the current administration has no interest in funding such programs at all.
“Its more of an act of protest than anything else,” he said. “It’s a bit of a red herring to worry that this is going to… give [public sector] leaders an opportunity to kind of slough off their own responsibilities.
To be clear, Turner’s $1 billion pledge to the United Nations did not cover the United States’ outstanding debts to the organization. Yet the CNN founder apparently did help resolve the payment standoff. In 2000, he offered $35 million as part of a negotiation that resulted in the U.S. paying $582 million in back dues to the U.N.
His $1 billion pledge also set a philanthropic standard that few other ultra-rich donors have reached. He committed one-third of his fortune when he was 58 years old — and actually fulfilled his promise within the next decade. He called it “the best investment I’ve ever made.”
Many billionaires now pledge an even greater share through the Giving Pledge, which asks signatories to commit half of their wealth. (Turner, now 86, is a signatory.) Yet few carry out the pledge with the same speed as Turner, while some high-profile philanthropy pledges go unfulfilled. Turner also did so despite his fortunes falling after the disastrous AOL Time Warner merger.
He also displayed a welcome sense of perspective. Appearing on CNN’s Larry King Live after his U.N. announcement, he said the money he pledged was equivalent to what he would earn in interest on his wealth in the coming years — and that his wealth had already risen $1 billion since the beginning of the year.
“I’m no poorer than I was 9 months ago, and the world is much better off.”
Note: An earlier version of this story included an incorrect title for Benjamin Soskis.
