The Guardian: Letters
Friday April 18 2008
Tristram Hunt misses a key point when he suggests governments and charities are better suited to tackling social issues than the growing breed of “philanthrocapitalist” – who are applying business and market thinking to social issues (The business of giving, April 17). Many of these new actors have been motivated precisely because governments and charities have failed for decades to deliver, particularly in the developing world, where the delivery of aid has an atrocious record. Do we want to continue with the status quo or apply some fresh, inherently efficient and potentially very effective thinking to find new solutions to old problems? I would suggest the latter.
Kurt Hoffman
Director, Shell Foundation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/apr/18/2
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This website and sisters royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
The “Shell Foundation” is a classic example of how modern corporations seek to create a halo effect around their global brands implying a high degree of altruism exists, whilst in reality making the absolute minimum amounts of funding available. Shell’s rhetoric, exemplified by Mr Hoffman’s self-congratulatory letter and the very name of the initiative (suggesting something analogous with genuinely big charitable enterprises like the Ford Foundation or the Gates Foundation) is misleading in the extreme.
The Shell Foundation was launched with deliberately headline catching numbers implying a $250 commitment. In reality this was a capital set-aside which made little or no impact on Shell’s Balance sheet or P&L account. In fact the annual expenditure of the Foundation is a paltry $16million. To put this in perspective it is roughly equivalent to what Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer pays himself every eighteen months!
It would be churlish not to welcome the existence of the “Shell Foundation” and there is no doubt that what it does in the way of grants and facilitating services is valuable – but it is very small indeed. Let’s place this tiny initiative in context. Hoffman says that “governments and charities have failed for decades to deliver, particularly in the developing world, where the delivery of aid has an atrocious record.” He then implies that business initiatives like his Foundation are better placed to help than these traditional players – a curious claim. UNICEF which has a noble history of helping the world’s children, spends around $1.6 billion dollars every year – one hundred times the Shell Foundation’s total expenditure. The British Government has an overseas aid budget of nearly $5 billion every year. Whilst nobody would claim that every dollar spent by charities or governments is well spent the very scale of their contribution shows how insignificant the Shell Foundation’s activities are.
The Gates Foundation spends around $1.6 billion every year and the Ford Foundation about $260 million. These enterprises are far more significant examples of what successful businesses can do than Shell’s similarly named but in all other respects quite dissimilar so-called “Foundation”. Shell’s profits in the last year were $27 billion – so the Shell Foundation’s $16 million expenditure was .06% of this figure!
Shell is not alone amongst multinational corporations in seeking to create reputational advantage without really spending any seriously big money. But the sheer size of Shell’s business, and their huge financial resources and trading performance, surely requires that if they really do seek to be seen as offering “some fresh, inherently efficient and potentially very effective thinking to find new solutions to old problems” (as Mr Hoffman claims) then they need to make a far, far greater financial commitment than at present.