Giving It All Away; For young high fliers, philanthropy is just another form of business.(Cover story)

Byline: Rana Foroohar

Philanthropists Used to Dole Out charity from the comfort of their leather armchairs. Not so John Wood. A Microsoft millionaire and head of business development for the company in China, Wood decided to start his own nonprofit back in 1999 during a trek to Nepal, where he saw firsthand the poverty and lack of opportunity. Wood handed in his resignation, cashed out $50,000 worth of shares and started Room to Read, now a $10 million organization that has opened thousands of libraries and schools for children in six countries around the world.

Wood runs Room to Read like he ran his Microsoft business. Overhead is kept in the single digits (compared with 20 percent or more for some NGOs),"investors"--a.k.a. donors--are provided with regular success metrics and, when Wood sees a market opening, he goes for it. When he couldn't find enough local-language kids' books to stock libraries in Nepal, he hired native authors and turned out his own. "Our goal has always been to become the Andrew Carnegie of the developing world," he says. "To do that, we also had to be the local-language Dr. Seuss."

Wood is one of the new crop of younger, more hands-on rich who, like their role models--people such as Bill Gates and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar--made their money young and now want to give back via a crop of more ...