Reading Philanthropy: A Conversation with Authors Amy Schiller and Tim Schwab
Channel: Institute for Policy Studies
Date: 01/04/2024

In conversation with authors Tim Schwab and Amy Shiller, IPS' Charity Reform Initiative’s associate director, Bella DeVaan, hosted this webinar about how the philanthropic system allows richer than ever donors to exert and concentrate influence, launder their reputations, and preserve their wealth, thereby forgoing solutions to root causes of inequality that necessitate philanthropy in the first place. 

Tim Schwab is an investigative journalist based in Washington, D.C. His reporting on the Gates Foundation has been published in The Nation, the Columbia Journalism Review and the British Medical Journal. His book, The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire, received an “editor’s choice” designation from the New York Times, and The Telegraph called it “an extraordinary and detailed work of investigative journalism into an underexplored nexus of influence in global affairs.” The book is being translated and sold in a dozen different territories, from India to Germany to South Africa to Spain, and has been reviewed by dozens of news outlets around the world.

Amy Schiller is a writer and political philosopher who is currently a Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College. She has held additional fellowships at Stanford University, Bard College and City University of New York, where she received her Ph.D. Her writing — philanthropy-focused and cultural criticism — has been published in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Daily Beast. She has also had a 15-year career in major gift fundraising consulting.

Bella DeVaan is the associate director of the Charity Reform Initiative at the Institute for Policy Studies and a co-editor of Inequality.org.