Examples of these trusts are: massive long-term support for the country’s National Gallery, where there is now a new Sainsbury wing; The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia; and The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. In 2001, the Sainsbury Trusts donated some $90 million to a wide range of good causes both in Great Britain and abroad. The flagship of this fleet of trusts is the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.

Lord David Sainsbury, who is going to accept the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy today on behalf of the family, established Gatsby in 1967. He was twenty-seven years old, and he used his own inheritance to do it. In 1993, David Sainsbury made a further gift to Gatsby of over $300 million. At the time, this gift was the largest single philanthropic donation ever recorded in the UK. Each year since then, Lord Sainsbury has donated at least another $10 million to the trust.

Gatsby is one of the most interesting grantmaking institutions in the world, guided by principles that sound as if they could have come out of the mouth of Andrew Carnegie himself: First, Gatsby is very focused. Its trustees concentrate on a limited number of areas, such as plant science, mental health, or help to Africa. Second, Gatsby is proactive. Rather than awaiting proposals, its trustees identify areas for action. Third, the trustees are not afraid to experiment and take risks, both of which are generally outside the comfort zone of most government bureaucrats. Finally, the trustees look to the long term. They believe that many things worth changing can take ten years or more to improve substantially. Clearly defined aims, not the length of the grant, are important to the trustees.

The Carnegie institutions are deeply grateful to the Sainsbury family for the enormous generosity they have shown to the world over the years.

His convictions have permeated every aspect of his life and his work. Like Andrew Carnegie, Inamori began his own company at an early age—he was just 27 years old. And, like Andrew Carnegie, he was not born to wealth. Indeed, he started his company with a loan of $10,000 from a friend who gave him just one stipulation: “Never be a slave to money.” What began as the Kyoto Ceramic Co. in 1959, has grown into the multinational, multifaceted, high-technology, Kyocera Corporation. In 1984, he also founded KDDI, which has become Japan’s second largest telecommunications carrier.

With each new step in business, he has advanced his core belief to give back to humanity. The same year that he established the Inamori Foundation, he promoted education by endowing the Kyocera Chair of Ceramics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and shortly thereafter established similar chairs at Case Western Reserve University and the University of Washington. In 1995, Inamori wrote his book, A Passion for Success, which outlines his philosophy on the key to success. It resonates strikingly with Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth.