Giving Compass' Take:

• At the World Economic Forum, James Chen urges donors to take a page out of Bill Gates' giving playbook, which employs catalytic philanthropy for preventing future crises.

• How can we learn from our global unpreparedness during coronavirus in preventing future crises? What can you do to learn more about catalytic philanthropy to work towards preventing future crises like coronavirus?

• Read on about why now is the time for you to double-down on your giving for COVID-19 prevention efforts.

The annual global cost of pandemics is anywhere between $570 billion and $4 trillion per year, depending on severity. Looking at the economic paralysis that has gripped so many countries across the world in the past few months due to COVID-19, it’s easy to understand why.

The SARS and MERS outbreaks of the past two decades were fatal warnings that a global epidemic of this scale could be lurking, while the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa took more than a year to contain.

Bill Gates explained that the high mortality rate of Ebola meant the spread ultimately contained itself. “Next time, we might not be so lucky,” he said.

Gates is the leading voice in the current generation of private philanthropists around disease prevention and response. His capital contribution has been very successful in crowding private sector investment in disease control. It is this type of giving, which stimulates change through “high risk, high-reward” action, that should define what it means to be a true philanthropist.

Like any early stage business venture, this approach – what I call catalytic philanthropy – involves putting in loss-absorbing capital and building domain expertise on an issue to bring about long-term change. It is about investing time, nurturing expertise and aligning your investment with your values and insights while expecting no financial gain in return.

Unlike others, Gates’ years of commitment to tackling infectious diseases means that when he redeployed his resources into finding a COVID-19 vaccine, it could be considered as more than just charity, but real change-making philanthropy.

There is a tremendous opportunity and necessity for the world’s philanthropists to embrace the catalytic philanthropy approach and take the lead in focusing on many other challenging issues, in health and beyond, facing our world today.

Read the full article about preventing future crises by James Chen at World Economic Forum.