Private wealth has never had more capacity to act on social problems. Michael Macfarlane opens this Wealth Office X conversation by pointing to the more than US$100 trillion expected to pass between generations over the next two decades, and to the growing share of new wealth emerging in Asia. Capacity is only half of the equation, however. The question Kedge Martin and Jamie Webb keep returning to is distance, meaning how far the person making a decision sits from the people that decision is meant to help.

The ivory tower problem

Macfarlane calls it the Davos problem. Privileged people gather in comfortable rooms, discuss the world's difficulties at length and talk too little about solutions, even though they hold the resources to pursue them. The people living with those difficulties are absent, and the perspective in the room is still largely Western.

Martin gives the problem a concrete form. A celebrity supporting a charity she worked with in Lesotho gathered bundles of clothes from friends in America and paid large sums to have them shipped over. Martin worked out afterwards that the money spent on the gesture would have done more good given directly. Her diagnosis is a lack of understanding that comes from failing to listen.

We're not in anyone else's shoes. And I think it's very important that people get out and visit before they start their philanthropy journey.

— Kedge Martin, Wealth Office

Webb offers a larger example of the same failure. He cites Mark Zuckerberg's US$100 million commitment to the school system of Newark, New Jersey, made with the best intentions but with too little engagement on the ground, and followed by a significant backlash. For Webb the lesson concerns method. Philanthropy, he says, should not be done in a bubble or in isolation. It requires humility, partnership and a willingness to listen to people on the ground.

Visibility without proximity

Both guests have worked close to royal patronage, and they are clear about what it can do. Webb's view is that visibility does mobilise philanthropy. He worked for the Prince's Trust during the 2008 financial crisis, when youth unemployment was high, and later at Help for Heroes after the war in Iraq. In each case the profile of the patron mattered. It worked because an urgent need existed and a trusted organisation was already in place to meet it.

That is a useful corrective for principals who assume their name or platform is the main thing they bring. Profile amplifies an existing capacity to respond. It cannot replace one. Martin adds that networks can matter as much as profile. She describes a private equity investor with little public presence who used his connections to build a global movement against child trafficking.

Learning before scaling

If proximity is the remedy, the practical question is how to build it. Martin's answer is early and personal exposure. She describes a family with four children, the eldest 18, who held quarterly meetings on philanthropy and asked even the youngest about their project for the week. It might be a local animal rescue centre and £5 of pocket money. The scale hardly matters. The habit of seeing and choosing is what she believes makes giving sustainable and successful.

Webb tells the story of a philanthropist from a successful German business family who spent around six months working at a drug rehabilitation facility in the United States. What he saw there about the failure of prisons to rehabilitate people with severe drug problems led him, back in Germany, to set up institutions where young offenders live with families, start early, and take part in physical and practical work such as carpentry. The model has been licensed by a German state government. In Webb's account, exposure gave him both the passion and the knowledge to design something that worked.

Macfarlane describes an ultra high net worth individual who is now doing something similar by design: running a small portfolio of modest grants, visiting each project and only then deciding where to commit substantial resources. Webb's advice to a founder who has just sold a business follows the same logic. Take time to reflect, learn from peers, join a network and talk to other families. Be careful of the ego that may have powered business success, because it will not go down so well in the non-profit world.

Proximity sustains commitment

There is a second reason proximity matters, and it concerns the donor as much as the recipient. Martin's experience is that donors who see where their money has gone tend to give more over time.

I think cheque signing works very well for some people who want to be anonymous and be distanced and then you can be much more integrated and on the ground and then people get addicted to it. Doing good can be addictive.

— Kedge Martin, Wealth Office

Macfarlane reports the same pattern from advising clients on their reputations. Those who only sign cheques often lose interest quickly. Those who become champions for a cause develop a sense of ownership, and their commitment grows. Webb links this to emotion. In his experience, a personal connection to a cause is the chief driver of philanthropy, and long-term commitment to trusted organisations is one of the most valuable things a private donor can offer, particularly when institutional funders move on after a couple of years.

None of this argues against scale. Webb points to MacKenzie Scott's rapid distribution of billions to charities, with a team that investigated organisations without demanding huge volumes of information, as giving that has made a large impact on the non-profit sector. The lesson is about sequence. The families most likely to give well at scale are often those who first went to look, listened and learned what the people they wanted to help actually needed.