How Efficient is Charity?

At one time many people actually believed in the divine right of kings.  This was a belief that the king was the best possible person to rule a country because the kind was selected by God.  Today we find it improbable that the first-born son of a monarch would happen to be the best person in a nation at governing it because even if the present king is a great ruler (and few were), the skills of governance are not inherited well.  We no longer expect that political and managerial skill is passed from father to son just as we don't expect that the greatest basketball players' kids will inherit their place on their
professional teams.  But if someone has the skills (or luck) to become rich, does that correlate with the skill to create public goods well?  Why should we even expect the rich to be good at creating public goods.  For example, rich athletes fare poorly at philanthropy.  Many of their foundations serve more as a means to bring in donations and publicity than as a means for helping others.  The Boston Globe found that: 

...many nonprofits that help burnish the reputations of pro athletes fall well short of [recommended minimum standards for philanthropic foundations], the Globe review found. Among the 50 nonprofits examined, nearly half spent less than 65 percent of revenues on charitable programs and donations.
For example: New England Patriots receiver Deion Branch formed his own foundation in 2006 — the year after he was named the Super Bowl’s most valuable player — aiming to aid children who, like his son Deiondre, suffer from the effects of meningitis. Branch speaks about the cause with obvious sincerity, but just 28 percent of funds raised went to charitable efforts between 2006 and 2009, before revenues dropped to a level where the foundation was no longer required to submit full financial reports. Half of the money given to charity was directed toward initiatives unrelated to meningitis, such as supplying sports equipment to schools.
A foundation started by New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez gave only 1 percent of proceeds to charity during its first year of operation in 2006, then stopped submitting mandatory financial reports to the IRS and was stripped of its tax-exempt status. Yet the group’s website still tells visitors the A-Rod Family Foundation is a nonprofit organization.
When Baltimore Ravens receiver Anquan Boldin won a team award for charity and volunteerism in 2010, his nonprofit gave away less than a fifth of the money it raised. A celebrity golf tournament ate up most of the funds.

Beckett’s bowling event does the same. And though the Beckett Bowl is the only event on the foundation’s yearly calendar, the organization has consistently reported to the IRS that executive director Jason Oberle, Beckett’s boyhood friend, devotes an average of 20 hours per week to foundation-related work, on top of his other jobs as a luxury real estate agent and president of a sports marketing firm. For his effort, Oberle collected a $50,000 salary from the Josh Beckett Foundation in 2010 ...
But athletes’ foundations often raise surprisingly little money, overspend on fund-raising events, and direct small percentages of revenue toward their stated goals.
“Athletes’ charities are subject to many pitfalls because most of them are not trained in how to raise and distribute money, and it’s difficult,” said Greg Johnson, executive director of the Sports Philanthropy Project in Boston, which has advised Major League Baseball and other sports organizations on charitable best practices. “A lot of them get into expensive golf tournaments and that kind of crap. They can be self-serving as hell.” ...
More often, athletes’ foundations continue to struggle, even as the players are celebrated for their perceived giving.
Boldin’s nonprofit raised $53,005 at its annual Q-Festival in 2010 — the foundation’s sixth year in existence — but spent $46,879 staging the three-day event, which included a golf tournament at the PGA National Resort & Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
Though just 17 percent of the foundation’s proceeds went to charity that year, Boldin, who sponsors and supports a number of charitable activities in the Baltimore community, won the Ravens’ Walter Payton Man of the Year Award, an honor for good works he received again this past season. ...
Some athletes’ self-run nonprofits accomplish so little that their chief function appears to be public relations.
Rodriguez talked openly about his desire to reverse bad publicity in 2006 after being exposed as a member of an underground poker club. He started a foundation and teamed with rapper Jay-Z to host a celebrity poker tournament for charity... The event helped the A-Rod Family Foundation raise $403,862 in 2006, but little found its way to charity, according to IRS records. The foundation gave $5,000 to Jay-Z’s Shawn Carter Scholarship Fund and $90 to a Little League Baseball club in Miami.

 But why should we expect people who happen to be good at sports to be good at philanthropy?  And why would we expect people who are good at making money in business to be good at philanthropy? Sam Walton was a 'self-made' richest man in the world, but neither he nor his wife ever gave much away during their lifetimes.  The six biggest Walmart heirs were still among the richest Americans in 2012 (with more wealth than 42% of Americans combined), and it is even less obvious about what qualifies them to be good at philanthropy.  Even if there were a genetic ability for philanthropy, their parents were bad at it or else they would not still be so rich, and so if anything they have inherited a poor ability to create public goods.  The most famous philanthropic activity of the bunch is the creation of an art museum that has cost nearly a half billion dollars in the Walmart home town of Bentonville Arkansas (population 35,000 when the museum was being built).