Nadia wrote an excellent article on philanthropy: many of my ideas resonate with hers.
As a European, I have a state mindset, i.e. belief that the state performs the most important functions in society and that's it. When I visited the USA, I was struck by the answer of one official from the State Department to my question "Why will the USA stop working on climate problems because of the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement?" (I was stupid then and considered climate change the biggest problem of mankind - No, I don't think so). To which the official replied, "If the state does not deal with this, this does not mean that the country does not deal with it, because we have a business and a non-profit sector." And this answer amazed me - public functions can and, in my opinion now, should be distributed among the all three fundamental providers of social services evenly - the state, business and non-profits.
What services and to what extent should each agent provide? Economists are still wrestling with this question, but I will express the obvious thoughts. Private initiative is always considered more innovative, due to its greater ability to take risks and be creative. Therefore, it can be said that startups are driving the private goods market, and philanthropy - the public goods one (and research confirms this). The only thing we should take in consideration, as Nadia rightly noted, is not to confuse charitable giving and philanthropy - charity helps those in need directly, while philanthropy creates an infrastructure for a new solution to a social problem or the discovery of a new social opportunity. In essence, philanthropy consists of social startups that may even be for-profit.
Of course, this does not mean the absence of the state in the process of creating (social) innovations - the symbiosis of the state and start-ups / non-profits is important. However, a dance without one partner ceases to make sense.
Now in the tech more and more attention is paid to philanthropy (Patrick Collinson, Sam Bankman-Fried, Jed McCaleb, Bezos, Peter Thiel and others) and this seems to be a good trend. After all, if basic goods like taxis or personal finance are disrupted, then social institutions remain rigid and do not reveal human potential in the modern age. Therefore, we should start building new institutions by changing existing social practices and structures. Moreover, the usefulness of such projects seems to be many times greater than from any average new application now. To build, now it is not necessary to make via for-profit, rapid growing startup. And in my opinion, the impending institutional "explosion of the Cambridge" will allow us to solve many problems of the 21st century and restore confidence in the traditional model of Western civilization, which neatly balances between a strong society, that is, a strong private and public initiative, and a strong state.