social welfare research institute - Boston College

The findings of the study are based on confidential personal interviews with 28
high-tech wealth holders involved in philanthropy, as well as two co-participating
spouses, and several well-informed individuals who work with and among high-tech
philanthropists. As an interview-based study rather than a field study, the focus of our
findings is mostly on how high-tech wealth holders view the meanings and practices of
their commercial and philanthropic biographies. The findings are not about the
organizational dilemmas and strategies of high-impact philanthropy as it is being
conducted in the field. In short, the findings are more about the subjects of high-impact
philanthropy than about the objects, more about the donors than about the recipients.
The underlying assumption of this, and indeed all interview research, is that respondents
can knowledgeably report their meanings and motives, and that an attentive listener can
gather the pieces of their narratives into a more or less coherent portrait of a broader
cultural pattern.
The theme of this report is captured by its title: in both business and philanthropy,
high-tech donors are engaged as agent-animated producers. They scrutinize a market of
needs and attentively deploy the lever of intellectual capital to address those needs.
Contemporary high-tech donors, of course, are not unique in trying to find that product-
market niche where demand outstrips supply. Nor are they unique in translating an
outcome-focused business orientation into outcome-focused philanthropy. Many of the
early twentieth century captains of industry and finance, and many experienced
philanthropists, who have derived their wealth from the last half-century of economic
growth, were and are engaged in impact-driven business and philanthropy. What is
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