Giving Back

In March 2013, one of India’s wealthiest Indians, Azim Premji, announced that he planned to donate the equivalent of $1.2 billion of his wealth to be used for charitable and developmental purposes. By any measure, it was a large amount of money — about Rs. 83,567,400,000. Premji wanted the money to be focused on getting a high quality education to Indian children who weren’t getting it.

In the years since then, Premji has been adding to his pledge. In 2019, he committed 34% of his shares in his company to philanthropy, worth $7.5 billion or Rs 52,750 crores. This brings the total value of his philanthropic donation to a massive Rs 1,45, 000 crores, or $21 billion, among the largest in the world.

But not the largest. That honor belongs to Bill Gates, who has donated $27 billion of his net worth of $84.2 billion to philanthropy. The sage of Omaha, billionaire Warren Buffett, stands at par with Premji with his lifetime donations of $21.5 billion. However, he has promised to give away 85% of his wealth before he died to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

These are some of the richest people on the planet, who have spent their lives making legendary amounts of money, only to want to give it all away in their old age. Charles Francis Feeny, the retail magnate Known as the ‘James Bond of philanthropy’ has probably succeeded more than anyone else in this mission. He has given away $6.3 billion so far, leaving him with a net worth of only $1.5 million.

So you’re wondering Why do they do it? Why would any of the world’s richest men choose to give their hard-earned wealth away, even at the risk of becoming ordinary people again? Why wouldn’t they want to use it to give their children a head-start in life? The answer to this crucial, priceless question will open a window into one of the most difficult of the 11 areas of life — Giving Back.

In this chapter, we will take a deep dive into the world of giving back to society — and why it is so important and life-enhancing. Even if you are not a rich man at all.

The Giving Pledge

In 2013, the world’s two richest people, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, decided that philanthropy needed to be a commitment. Thus started a project called the Giving Pledge, an effort to help address society’s most pressing problems by inviting the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to commit more than half of their wealth to philanthropy or charitable causes either during their lifetime or in their will. Signatories earmark their money to issues including poverty alleviation, refugee aid, disaster relief, global health, education, women and girls’ empowerment, medical research, arts and culture, criminal justice reform, and environmental sustainability. Today, the pledge includes 204 of the world’s wealthiest individuals, couples, and families, ranging in age from their 30s to their 90s. Globally, they represent 23 countries including the USA, UK, Canada, UK, Canada, Australia, China, India Russia and others.

“Here’s a lot of money that has no real utility to me,” says Buffett. “But it has enormous utility to hundreds and millions of people around the world for education, research, healthcare. They can change the lives of other people, but not for my life — anything I can buy, I have. So there’s a million uses for that money that can really change people’s lives.”

Nearly every one of those who have signed the Giving Pledge also believe that their hard-earned wealth should not be handed down to their own children and grandchildren. Buffett has explicitly stated that he doesn’t want his progeny to “fan themselves” on their “grandfather’s wealth”.

So — do you have to be a billionaire to give back?

The principle: Give what you have in abundance

Stories of billionaires who give their wealth can be crushing to those who are not billionaires. I know that some of you reading this may be thinking that it’s easy to give money away when you have so much of it, but what about average people with average incomes struggling under the average burdens of life. Is it fair to ask them to give back too?

I’d like to introduce you to the core principle of giving back — and it isn’t about money. Giving back is all about being generous with whatever the universe has given you in abundance. In the case of Buffett, Gates and Premji, their abundance just happens to be money. But in the case of a doctor, it could well be an extraordinary skill in healing others. For a teacher, it might be a skill in creating a sense of curiosity and wonder about knowledge in others. Even a jobless person has something that he can share— time.

Some examples —

A doctor’s abundance is in his medical skills. He or she could easily set aside hours or even a whole day every week or month for putting his skills in the service of the poor and underprivileged who could not have afforded to pay for it. If he was a successful and rich doctor, perhaps he could collaborate with other donors and open a hospital for those who cannot afford hospitals.

A lawyer’s abundance is his or her ability to analyze and advocate on behalf of his client. Imagine that skill being put to use in creating solutions for society where it needed solutions urgently. Even a busy lawyer could file public interest litigation in courts and play a role in making the country a better place..

A journalist’s abundance is his ability to arouse passion by presenting facts and analysis and stirring people to action. It would be so easy for a journalist to offer a certain number of his words to raising awareness and making change happen in society. Such a journalist would be giving back what he has the most of: his persuasive writing skills.

Even a lowly carpenter has an abundance of something — perhaps in his amazing hands and the skill with which they can re-shape pieces of wood into arts and crafts. A carpenter could easily give back by crafting objets d’art and sell them to raise money for, say, the NGO that works with street children down the street.

Even a family can find small ways to give back. I know one family that has a ritual of leaving a small portion of their daily meals on the terrace where birds and other creatures could eat it before they themselves sat down to eat.

My own company, the RB India Services, earmarks 10% of its annual profits as well as 20% of the yearly salaries of the founders towards supporting education and the upliftment of underprivileged children.

But one activity that really fills me with a wonderful glow is book distribution. Over a period of three years, we bought and distributed thousands of books to needy students in school and college. The books, ranging from general academic to self-help and inspirational books selected by our founder and team members, were freely given away with a wish that one of them would help change the course of someone’s destiny forever.

What you get when you give back

You’re still wondering why anyone must give back. Surely it should be optional; perhaps some people have a temperament not inclined to give anything back. The answer will surprise you. Science itself has borne out again and again the amazing benefits to well-being and health that come with doing things for other living creatures. In his classic book, The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin, father of evolutionary biology, talks about benevolence 99 times. He concluded that love, sympathy and cooperation are biological traits that exist in the natural world. It is the same instinct that makes a pelican feed fish to a blind pelican in its flock.

“Darwin long ago surmised that sympathy is our strongest instinct,” says Dacher Keltner, co-director of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center.

A comprehensive review of more than 500 studies conducted by the University of Notre Dame into why people give conducted by researchers at the University of Notre Dame concluded that people are more likely to give when they understand the need they are fulfilling and when they can relate to the cause they are supporting. More interestingly, the research unearthed valuable evidence that those who give to other experience solid benefits themselves.

A longitudinal study by researchers at the University of Buffalo, USA, found that people who helped others through small acts such as running errands, cooking meals or baby-sitting reduced their mortality rates compared with those who did not help.

A 2007 study published in the journal Science found donating to a charity activates neural activity in areas of the brain that are linked to reward processing. Moll and Jordan Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health were astonished and thrilled to discover that when volunteers in an experiment placed the interests of others before their own, their generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food and sex, as well as the subgenual area, which is stimulated when humans see babies and romantic partners.

In 1989, economist James Andreoni introduced the concept of “warm-glow giving,” which attempts to explain why people give to charity. Moll’s 2006 study strongly supported “the existence of ‘warm glow’ at a biological level. It helps convince people that doing good can make them feel good; altruism therefore doesn’t need to be only sacrifice”. The “joy of giving” is rooted in our brain’s biology; altruism, the experiment suggested, is not a superior moral faculty but rather hard-wired in the brain. Philanthropy is veritably a miracle drug.

In a 1988 article in Psychology Today, Luks looked at the physical effects of giving experienced by more than 1,700 regular women volunteers. Over half of them reported feeling ‘high’ when they helped others, while 43% felt stronger and more energetic. 

Volunteerism and wellness expert Allan Luks began using the term ‘helper’s high’ over 20 years ago to describe the powerful physical sensation of pleasure associated with helping others.  It is nature’s built-in reward system for those who help others.

A 1,000 ways to give back

The greatest minds in the world over the centuries have understood instinctively that we survive as a species when we are actively generous towards each other. Their words have enshrined the spirit of giving back for the rest of us to follow.

St Francis of Assisi included the words in a prayer: “For it is in giving that we receive. . .”

The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy called it “the sole meaning of life”.

The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill captured it inimitably when he said, “We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.”

Nobel Peace Prize receipient Muhammad Yunus said, “Making money is a happiness; making other people happy is a super-happiness.”

The Hollywood actress Goldie Hawn said, “Giving back is as good for you as it is for those you are helping, because giving gives you purpose. When you have a purpose-driven life, you’re a happier person.”

I want to share two examples and many tips about giving back in the hope that they will inspire and empower you.

Achyuta Samanta and the art of giving

Can you imagine one man providing free food, shelter, education and livelihood for over 100,000 students — and claiming no credit for it? Yet Achyuta Samata, one of the most beloved philanthropes of the Indian state of Odisha, was born into a helplessly poor family. He remembers that they had to beg neighbors for saris that his sister could wear when prospective grooms came visiting. They often slept hungry.

Yet this man today is giving back beyond measure to the society he lives in. He founded the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology; the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, which provides free accommodation, food, healthcare, and education from class 1 to post-graduation and includes vocational training; the KIIT International School (KIS), an International Baccalaureate affiliated school; and Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences, a medical college. Achyuta Samanta has virtually built a city based on endless giving.

He promotes arts and culture through Kadambini Media, an organisation he founded. Since 2000, he has organized Nanhi Pari, a Little Miss India competition. He has established 25 spiritual centres and shrines, including a Gandhi Gram in memory of Mahatma Gandhi; a museum to showcase tribal life, art and culture; and a centre for yoga and spiritualism.

India’s stunning mega-kitchen for feeding the hungry

India has a long-standing tradition of feeding the hungry. In a country this vast and with so much poverty, this sometimes calls for mammoth cooking operations at scales so awesome that the National Geographic even did a special feature on it.

At the Sri Sai Sansthan Prasadalaya in Shirdi, Maharashtra, nearly 40,000 fresh meals are cooked daily, besidesthousands of breakfast packets that are distributed free of charge during the early morning hours. The kitchen is unique in its overwhelming use of solar power — 73 solar dishes, each 16 sq m in size, are arrayed across 4 rooftops.

The ‘langar’ (free kitchen) of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab, distributes 200,000 rotis, 1.5 tonnes of dal (lentil soup) and other dishes to 100,000 people every day, using 100 LPG cylinders and 5,000 kilograms of firewood on a daily basis. No one goes hungry, irrespective of caste, creed and religion.

The ISCKON Foundation’s Akshaya Patra runs the world’s largest school lunch programme at Its giant state-of-the-art kitchen in Hubli, Karnataka, turning out 150,000 meals for schoolchildren in less than five hours every day.

Marc Gold and 100 Friends

The first is the story of an American psychologist called Marc Gold, who had reached his middle age in 1989 but was feeling directionless and restless. One day he realized that a large number of ordinary people that he met felt a deep need to do something to help others — but felt that not much good could be done with the few dollars that they could afford.

Marc was inspired to 100 Friends (https://100friends.org) an organization with the sole goal of making big differences with small sums of money. “The idea is really very simple,” says Marc. “Every year many people contribute to the project and I take the money to developing countries and look for the neediest people I can find. I then put the money to work in the most compassionate, appropriate, culturally compatible, constructive and practical manner possible.”

In 2004, after a devastating tsunami destroyed the families and livelihood of the fishing families of Aceh, Indonesia,. Marc Gold was there. He found a fisherman who had lost his entire family of wife and children, and was left with a single boat with no outboard motor. 100 Friends stepped in to re-start his livelihood by buying him an outboard motor. Another fisherman needed just a bicycle to take the catch to the market. These small contributions from families living in far away American gave new life to shattered families in Indonesia.

Marc tells the tragic story of a Nepali woman who had been arrested after killing her husband while protecting her daughter from his violence. Marc bought her a sewing machine, needles and thread as well as admission to a tailoring course — and brought new hope to a widow with nothing to look forward to.

In April 2019, Marc and his wife Rossell were in Lombok, Indonesia, where they met a young boy who had hurt his hand. In the absence of treatment, it had become swollen and infected, preventing him from even going to school. His family could not afford the cost of treatment and were hoping the hand would heal naturally. The cost of treatment? A mere 7$.

That small sum from 100 Friends helped heal that child’s hand and send him back to school and his childhood again.

Marc is not a rich man but he has discovered that his abundance is in his ability to help others to help others.

The power of paying forward

In 2000, a movie called Pay it forward introduced a remarkable idea into philanthropy. A schoolteacher gives his class a novel assignment — each child was to do three deeds that helped others. In return, though, the beneficiaries had to do three good deeds to other people, always something they could not do for themselves. The idea of paying it forward is powerful because, like a chain letter or a multi-level marketing scheme, it creates an ever-expanding ripple of giving that can grow into a tsunami of generosity.

The website https://payitforwardday.com is dedicated to promote expanding the circle of giving using the principle of paying it forward and encouraging the use of Pay It Forward cards, downloadable from the site. Some of the website’s examples how to make paying it forward an active principle in your own life include—

1. Give an umbrella (along with a Pay It Forward card) to someone who does not have one during a heavy rain. (Carry a spare one with you, of course.).
2. Help an elderly neighbor by repairing or fixing something in their home.
3. Donate money to your favorite charity. Better yet, collect donations other than your own from people at work.
4. Brighten someone else’s day. Tell the manager of a restaurant how great your waiter or waitress was.
5. Cook for a new mother. Caring for newborns is tiring and draining.
6. Buy lottery tickets and put each in an envelope with a Pay It Forward Card inserted. Hand it to a receptionist on the way out of a business appointment. You just might change that person’s whole life.
7. Buy a homeless person a meal with a Pay it Forward card.
8. Wash your neighbor’s car — and give them a Pay It Forward card.
9. Mentor for someone who needs some support — and hand them a Pay It Forward card.
10. Work free for someone who can’t afford your services – just ask that they Pay it Forward.

What comes from society

There is a Chinese saying that goes: “If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.” 

We are blessed to live on a diverse planet with a huge population of over 7 billion people. Can you imagine what an amazing regeneration we could see if every human being, not just the billionaires but also the average man and woman, espoused the principle of giving back? Can you imagine the groundswell of change that could transform our landscape and replace despair with hope if people began thinking of others and passing kindness forward?

In India alone, the scope for deep transformation through giving back is immense. The revered APJ Abdul Kalam, once called the “People’s President”, wrote movingly on what an Indian could give back to India in his speech on the country’s 58th Independence Day in 2004. Launching a project aiming for a developed India by 2020, he said, “This is a mission of a billion people…It will be a reality if every Indians gives — through individual, societal and nationwide participation in a national movement facilitated by the government.”

Abdul Kalam captured the essence of giving and gave it a national and developmental context with his inspiring speech. I want to leave you with a simple credo that I have followed for years and which is a doctrine in the companies we run.

What comes from society should go back to society.

References

The 20 most generous people in the world http://tinyurl.com/y25k84hh

The 10 most giving billionaires in the world http://tinyurl.com/y62ledxh

The Giving Pledge https://givingpledge.org/About.aspx

Why Warren Buffett gives his money away http://tinyurl.com/y66ug6fq

Periscoping Azim Premji’s philanthropy https://indiacsr.in/beyond-csr-periscoping-azim-premjis-philanthropy/

The science behind the power of giving http://tinyurl.com/y3tp4ywb

Paying it forward https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_It_Forward_(film)

100 Friends https://100friends.org/about/who-and-how-we-help/

What can I give to my nation? http://tinyurl.com/yyq4u6nf

The secret to happiness is helping others https://time.com/4070299/secret-to-happiness/