When Oracle’s billionaire boss Larry Ellison began boasting of his intent to donate $115 million to Harvard back in May 2005, the gift was hailed as the largest ever for an institution already graced with a bountiful endowment worth north of $25 billion.
“It’s absolutely going to happen,” Ellison told The Wall Street Journal last July.
Almost a year later and it absolutely hasn’t. And according to this story in the San Jose Mercury News, little is known about the reason for the delay — presuming it’s only a delay. What is known is that three senior managers Harvard had hired to help run the Ellison Institute for World Health have already found themselves out of jobs.
Oracle had no comment for the Mercury News story.
“One of the great problems of philanthropy is that we measure the wrong thing,” Ellison added in that Journal interview. “We measure the inputs, not the outputs. The obligation of the philanthropist should not end when the check is written. There should be some accountability for how that money was used and how much good was done.”
Another problem for philanthropy is the counting of chickens before checks are cashed.
