#5/24 featuring controversies surrounding feminism, Marlene Engelhorn, and donations in the welfare state

Dear Readers,

It is vacation time - we are doing something for ourselves and our families, and have more leisure time than usual. Wouldn't now also be the time to think about our own giving, instead of squeezing it into the hectic end of the year?

For this, there are a few promptings again today. I send warm greetings from our new bcause office on Berlin's Kudamm to all your vacation spots!

Best regards, Felix

A number that sticks in your mind: 75%

This is the share of transactions made by women at bcause. Much more than on online donation platforms and certainly more than at traditional foundations. I am interested in the reasons for this: Is this just a coincidental result? Or a consequence of growth through networks taking place at bcause? Or are we seeing the beginning of a digital "female philanthropy"? How big is the "female founder gap" in Germany? And: Why does more female philanthropy not automatically mean more feminist philanthropy?

I want to focus more on this in the coming months. Especially regarding the last question, I am grateful for the impulse from Karin Heisecke. She led the MaLisa Foundation of Maria and Elisabeth Furtwängler, and she has put together recommendations on bcause for organizations working for gender justice. And I look forward to more exchange with the founder Ise Bosch, whose annual donation list on gender diversity and BiPoC  is also on bcause.

What do you think? Why do so many more women get involved on bcause, and why does this not automatically mean more funding for organizations that particularly support women?

A person who inspires me: Marlene Engelhorn

Speaking of pioneers: In ten episodes, Janina Breitling and I have now shed light on the "New Giving", discussing with many smart people how to improve the world with money. But no episode has occupied us as much as last week's with Marlene Engelhorn . Here you can listen in.

Because the state does not want her money, the heiress says she asked fifty citizens to distribute 25 million euros, almost her entire wealth. And if this "Good Council" project is already radical, she adds rhetorically: "How can I imagine that I know better where money should go? I find that disgusting."

Marlene has been in the press a lot recently, garnering admiration but also criticism. She avoids interviews in the meantime, so I am particularly grateful that she really opens up in our podcast.

I admire her consistency, but I also have a different opinion: "The existence of private wealth is not per se a failure of the state," quotes me here the Swiss business magazine BILANZ. "Private money can do different things than state money."

And the episode has already triggered a small discussion on LinkedIn. I look forward to further opinions!

An idea to think further:

Why do Germans donate so much less than similarly rich societies? "After all, we already pay so much tax in Germany, which is why we donate less than countries with lower taxes and a weaker social state." I have encountered this opinion so often in recent years that I did some research. Is there actually a correlation between donation volume and tax ratio, social spending or per capita income? To find out, I loaded data from the World Bank, OECD and the World Giving Index from CAF into an AI and got a surprising result: there is no correlation.

(For those who want to know exactly: A very weak correlation of 0.25 for per capita income, an even weaker one of -0.15 for the tax ratio, and 0.01 for social spending)

I am sure this analysis can be done even better, but apparently no one has tried yet. So, keep thinking. And keep donating.