The Pickens Touch
Last month, the Association of Fundraising Professionals announced that T. Boone Pickens of Dallas, Texas, would receive the 2008 Paschal Murray Award for Outstanding Philanthropist at the AFP’s annual conference which is wrapping up today in San Diego.
Based on size of contributions, Pickens would certainly qualify for an award. In 2007, he ranked 8th nationally in total individual giving, behind George Soros, Sandy Weill, and Michael Bloomberg, and ahead of Eli Broad, David Koch, and Pierre Omidyar, among others, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy . His new eponymous foundation ranks as the 5th largest single donor “hedge fund foundation,” trailing those of George Soros, Julian Robertson, Jim Simons, and Robert Wilson (and it is also smaller than the multi-donor Robin Hood Foundation founded by hedge fund magnate Paul Tudor Jones).
With billions in disposal income and a fertile mind for financial innovation, Pickens casts an increasingly large shadow over personal and corporate philanthropy. But is the impressive Pickens largesse matched with an equally impressive approach to innovative or ethical practice?



