> there is a parable i cant quite remember, but something along the lines of "the starving kid does not care where the food comes from".

A lot of the money never goes to the starving kid, it goes into foundations that act more as tax shelters than they do actual charitable organizations.

> who cares whether the billionaire did it because they are truly generous or because they thought "this will look good in the news"?

It matters when the scope of their giving doesn't match the PR-generating pledges they make, which is the real point of my post.

If someone gives their money away to a good cause, I don't care what their real motivation is, but if they say they are going to give >50% of their wealth to charity to generate PR and then they never do that (true for the majority of Giving Pledge pledgers) that is behavior I think it contemptable and worthy of being called out.

>A lot of the money never goes to the starving kid, it goes into foundations that act more as tax shelters than they do actual charitable organizations.

this is covered by the "actual, real charities/non-profits/good causes" caveat in my comment.