Private foundations the charitable impulse – FT.com This is not a company, it is a private foundation the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Yet the foundation sector is growing elsewhere, too.

In the UK, rising numbers of rich individuals and shrinking government funding for social services have prompted the growth of foundations. Government spending is $3tn

– Mark Kramer

In India, institutions such as the Azim Premji Foundation and the Shiv Nadar Foundation have risen to prominence as vehicles for private donations. In many Latin American countries, the absence of tax incentives for charitable giving and a traditional reliance on the government and the church to deliver social services has stunted the growth of private foundations.

“The landscape in Latin America is primarily corporate foundations,” says Sean McKaughan, chairman of the board of the Brazil-based Avina Foundation, created by Stephan Schmidheiny, the Swiss entrepreneur, in 1994.