Let's all make it a bumper year for good causes, says man who gave away £30m

Leading by example: Trevor Pears, at the Pears Foundation in Hampstead, pledged £1 million to the new Give More website
13 April 2012

Millionaire Trevor Pears swapped his business career to become a full-time philanthropist.

He might be said quietly to embody the philosophy of 19th-century British financier Moses Montefiore who, asked about his worth, famously declared: "We are worth what we are willing to share with others."

As chief executive of the Pears Foundation, set up with his brothers Mark, 49, and David, 44, he has given away £30million to charitable causes in the last five years.

Last year he was made Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in the Queen's New Year Honours for "services to the community". He also received a Birkbeck Fellowship and an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in recognition of his "outstanding commitment to social justice".

Yet very little is known about this intensely private family, ranked 18th on the 2009 Rich List and with an estimated combined fortune of £1.6billion. The William Pears Group, started by their grandfather 60 years ago, owns several thousand properties including the Coronet Cinema in Notting Hill and Coutts Bank in the Strand, but the brothers have always declined interviews in the past.

Trevor Pears rose from his desk in his Hampstead office, a glass garret with sweeping panoramic views of London, and greeted me gingerly. "I feel anxious, like I'm going to the dentist," he said. "Some people call us secretive but we're not, we're private. I'm actually a very open person."

He agreed to break the habit of a lifetime because he is leading a new campaign that encourages people to share their passion for the causes they care about by making a public commitment to give more, and to get us all talking about giving. The Give More campaign, which has its pre-launch tomorrow, asks us to go to its website and pledge to give more time, money and energy to charity this year.

People and groups supporting Give More include Esther Rantzen, Martyn Lewis, BT, and the Royal Free charity. "It's a rallying call to action for everyone, not just the rich, and you can be as specific or general as you like," said Mr Pears. "Charities are struggling terribly, need is up, resources are down. Rather than create a new charity that competes with the 190,000 existing ones, this is an attempt to lift the tide for all ships."

The idea was born out of the Philanthropy Review, a think tank comprising luminaries from business and the charitable sector that sought to re-energise philanthropy. He was tasked with leading the initiative and agreed that the Pears Foundation would back it with £1million. He invoked the Evening Standard's Dispossessed and Get London Reading campaigns as "exemplars of how the public can be stirred to action", saying: "You highlighted poverty and illiteracy in London and asked people to respond. This is what we are trying to do, on a more general national basis. The most amazing thing about the Dispossessed is not just the £7.3million you've raised, but the thousands of people you've activated to give time and money and the buzz you created."

Mr Pears grew up in Hendon, the middle son of Clive and Clarice, and like his brothers went to the private City of London School for Boys before reading business law at City Polytechnic. His grandfather, Bernard Schleicher, emigrated from Austria to London and settled in Hackney where he changed his surname to Pears because he felt it was more English. "He started a greengrocer business and called it William Pears because that's a type of pear, but contrary to what some believe, there is no William Pear in our lineage."

It was the sudden death of his father from a heart attack at 48 that propelled Mr Pears into the family business. "These things shape your life," he said. "I was 19, Mark 21 and David 16. The one thing my dad wanted was his three boys to go into the business, which had changed from a greengrocers to a substantial property company. Mark became MD, I headed the residential pro-perty division, David joined straight from school."

Three decades later, the company is in rude health and the brothers are still close. Mr Pears, his wife Daniela and their three children aged 16, 14 and 11 live in Hampstead, as does David, while Mark is in Totteridge. Last year The William Pears Group made £42million pre-tax profit on turnover of £182million and the brothers split salaries and dividends of £9million equally. "We get on well," explained Mr Pears. "The secret is that we divide responsibilities and importantly, our egos are under control."

Philanthropy took over his life by stealth. The Pears Foundation was begun in 1992 but took off in 2000, when he decided to give 10 per cent of his time. "Before I knew it, it was taking 90 per cent of my time and it was like the blinkers coming off. My world view changed from one narrowly focused on family and business to one that looked at the world and tried to make it a little better."

Apart from £20,000 to support David Cameron's Tory leadership campaign in 2005, he has kept himself aloof from party politics. Asked what percentage of his giving goes to Jewish causes, he says: "My Jewish identity is important to me personally, but not to my philanthropy. About 20 per cent of our budget is spent in Israel, but the recipients aren't necessarily Jewish. One of our seminal programmes there is with Hebrew University in which we've supported about 80 students from Africa and Asia to do a Masters in public health and agriculture and then return to their countries with the skills they've acquired."

So what is he hoping to achieve? "My goal is to have half a million people sign up to Give More and generate a huge collective response. We're trying to be the catalyst. I am simply giving it a £1million nudge in the right direction."

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