"In 2023, Salesforce CEO and philanthropist Marc Benioff complained about crime, homelessness and drugs in San Francisco, even threatening to move the Dreamforce Conference to Las Vegas. The city panicked. Then Mayor London Breed pushed back, saying that things were getting better. Nonetheless, the city moved at lightning speed to appease Benioff, much to his satisfaction. "Why can't San Francisco be like this every single day?" Benioff asked Governor Gavin Newsom in a Dreamforce interview."
"Jobs wrote an essay in the Wall Street Journal stating, "That's the quiet corruption corroding modern philanthropy: the ability to give as a license to impose one's will. It's a kind of moral laundering, where so-called benevolence masks self-interest." Ten years ago, Steve Heilig of the San Francisco Medical Society wrote an op ed piece about adding the name Zuckerberg to San Francisco General Hospital."
Powerful donors have prompted rapid municipal responses in San Francisco, with high-profile funders leveraging contributions to demand attention to crime, homelessness and public safety. City officials reacted quickly to placate major donors, provoking debate about unequal access and special treatment. One donor suggested National Guard involvement and later apologized after criticism. A leading philanthropist criticized the trend of using philanthropy as leverage, calling it moral laundering that masks self-interest. Medical community voices described naming rights and direct intervention as meddling, while some philanthropists pursue anonymous or no-strings gifts to avoid imposing conditions.
Read at ABC7 San Francisco
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