J P Getty

Brief description of achievement:

Sir J Paul Getty died on 17th April 2003, aged 70.

He was Britain's greatest private philanthropist and a champion of unpopular causes, giving away over £200 million in the last twenty years of his life. He created a new model for effective private philanthropy and, as well as being a direct benefactor, he had his own charitable foundation - the J. Paul Getty Jr Charitable Trust. To this day much of his giving will remain unknown.

Detailed description:

The J. Paul Getty Jr Charitable Trust started distributing funds in 1986. It is known as 'Unpopular Causes', as it only donates to causes that Getty believed others would not donate to. These include, AIDS and HIV charities and organisations offering valuable help to those suffering from the afflictions of drugs and alcohol, homelessness and mental health issues.

Getty donated according to his own personal principles - with thoughtfulness and personal consideration, not giving to causes that would clearly have been supported by someone else, that his giving should enhance in perpetuity the UK nation and community, and that benefactors should not have to jump through hoops to receive a grant. Subsequently he donated £50 million to the National Portrait Gallery.

He was also a powerful force in lobbying successive Ministers for the Arts with whom he argued the case for improved tax arrangements in the UK with respect to charitable donations.

Getty established philanthropy as a modern profession, dependent upon individual judgement, human reaction and the passions of trusted friends.

"Paul Getty established a new era in public philanthropy in the UK. But it will be impossible, I suspect, for anyone else to reproduce his style of giving, which was deeply personal and always based on complete commitment to the task at hand. He always gave adequately. He always made sure that the cause, whatever it was, was just, whether popular or not. He shrank from public recognition and never bargained with the beneficiary to build in a special preference of his own. Thus he provides for posterity the model of a fully professional philanthropist, and without equal either in generosity or goodness of heart."

Anthony Smith, President, Magdalen College, Oxford University

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