In 2010 I was approached on behalf of a Russian multimillionaire offering £30m. I’d recently launched a philanthropic foundation to help grassroots charities cope with the aftermath of the financial crisis.
We attracted a lot of support from individuals with genuine motives, but soon we were being approached by professional philanthropy advisers – a recently established money-making trade created by wealth managers and “private offices”. But on this occasion an adviser from a luxury concierge firm told us it had a Russian client willing to give us a huge sum to help us start up.
