Posted on 5th March 2009
A new proposal to encourage wealthy donors to give more to tackle world poverty was launched in London this week.
The scheme would leverage government’s international development budget to match fund donations by individuals and businesses to causes supporting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Devised by Sir James Mirrlees, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and Renu Mehta, founder of Fortune Forum, a networking organisation for the ultra-wealthy, the proposal has been endorsed by several influential figures, including Lord Stern and Ban Ki Moon, UN Secretary General.
Fortune Forum believe that the scheme could raise an additional £5 bln for overseas development. It would be open to all levels of donations, though the largest donors could choose to target their gift toward specific MDG areas.
However, the proposal has been received cautiously by the Treasury. Highlighting Gift Aid and other existing charitable tax reliefs, it said, “The government is always open to new ideas for charitable tax reliefs, but with the current economic conditions does not consider it a good time to introduce potentially costly new tax reliefs.”
The proposal was launched at the 2009 Fortune Summit, whose keynote speaker Ted Turner was interviewed by Carol Vorderman.
Turner made headlines in 1998 when he pledged $1 bln to the United Nations, to compensate for the US then being about $1bln in arrears in its payments to the organisation. However at the time the UN was unable to accept donations from individuals or companies, and so Turner instead used the money to set up the United Nations Foundation, which works in partnership with the UN and a range of charity and government programmes to tackle climate change and other global issues.
Guests at the Summit included Easyjet’s Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, actress Milla Jovovich, fashion designer Dame Vivien Westwood, Saudi Prince al-Walid Bin Saud al-Saud, and singer Joss Stone, who also gave a live performance.
