Page 122 - Ray Dalio - Principles

WRESTLING WITH THE QUESTIONS

OF PHILANTHROPY

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My first exposure to “philanthropy” occurred back in the late
1990s when I was approaching fifty. At that time, Matt was
sixteen, spoke Mandarin, and visited a Chinese orphanage to
help someone, where he learned that a $500 surgery could
save or radically improve some lives. We and our friends gave

him money to help. Then, my friend Paul Tudor Jones taught
Matt how to create a 501(c)(3) foundation and Matt, just a
junior in high school, created the China Care Foundation in
2000. Matt brought our family to the orphanages, so we had
close contact with these special-needs children and fell in love
with them. We also watched Matt struggle to decide which

children would live and which would die because there wasn’t
enough money to save them all. Imagine being faced with the
choice between a big night out on the town or saving a child’s
life. That was essentially the choice we constantly faced. This
experience led us to become more involved with philanthropy,
so in 2003 we set up our own foundation to provide support in
more organized ways. We wanted to do our philanthropy

together, as a family activity, which has proven to be fabulous.

Figuring out how to best give away money is as complex an
undertaking as figuring out how to make it. Though we now
know a lot more about it than we did when we started, we still
don’t always feel capable to make the best decisions possible,
so my family and I are still feeling our way through it. I will
give you a few examples of the questions we have been

wrestling with and how our thinking about them has evolved,
starting with the question of how much money should be
saved for my family relative to how much should go to people
and causes that are more distant, yet more desperately in need.

Long before I had a lot of money, I had determined that I
wanted my sons to have only enough to afford excellent health

care, excellent education, and an initial boost to help their
careers get started. My perspective was influenced by my own
journey through life, which took me from having nothing to
having a lot. That taught me to struggle well and made me