Just giving isn’t enough for the new philanthropists

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The Australian ethical philosopher Peter Singer, arguably the world’s most influential voice in the redefinition of philanthropy, makes the point that “most effective altruists are millennials”. As she dissects the motivations of the sort of hardcore do-gooder who adopts 20 troubled kids, risks their and loved ones’ lives in a leper colony, or donates more than 50 per cent of income, MacFarquhar accepts that “very few people believe they owe as much to strangers as to family”. He argued: “It makes no difference whether the person I can help is a neighbour’s child 10 yards away from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, 10,000 miles away.” In Singer’s early work, the warm glow of proximity and familiarity that opens your purse to a badged carol singer is not a virtue but a vice. Yet, as MacFarquhar writes, human nature revolts: “We are creatures of kinship and loyalty, not blind servants of the world.” Singer has since retreated from the front line of extreme giving towards 10 per cent of income, the traditional “tithe”, as a target for donations.