IF you are reading this and you are on today’s Sunday Times Rich List, you are probably one of the wealth creators contributing to the growth of our economy. Fantastic.

Many of you will have fulfilled your material goals: the houses, the cars, the boat and maybe even a plane — whatever turns you on.

The real question now is: what next? Entrepreneurs are a restless, competitive bunch, always looking for the next challenge, but if you have already made your fortune, what’s the point? When I cashed out first time round I started to get begging letters: a strip for a football team here, a school there, a hospice to support.

I responded. The cheques went out and the emptiness grew. Was I making any difference, was the money wasted, had I been conned? I was 37 and needed a challenge. I needed to make more money, but I wanted a purpose for that creation of wealth. I found it in philanthropy.

But rather than “giving” the money away, I was intent on investing it — Scots don’t like to give anything away. It would be like ordinary investment in business, but with the returns calculated differently — in saving lives or educating children.

Applying business principles to investing money for the common good can yield unbelievable results. My first philanthropic investment after selling Sports Division gave me more pleasure than receiving that £290m cheque from Dave Whelan of JJB Sports.

The godfather of philanthropy, Andrew Carnegie, said: “He who dies rich thus dies disgraced” — in other words, money isn’t ours to keep. For me he was right but only up to a point.

Carnegie also said he had “resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution”. He also decided to endow foundations that lived on beyond him.

Well, in my experience entrepreneurs don’t like giv- ing up wealth creation, nor do we like giving money to others for them to give away.

There is always a point that triggers the move to philanthropy. My own turning point, barring that cheque from Dave Whelan, came when I met Vartan Gregorian in New York at the Carnegie Corporation, where he is president.

I was a young entrepreneur, wet behind the ears, just cashed up and wondering what on earth I was going to do with the rest of my life.

“Tom, you do realise this is not your money. This is money you need to invest for a good purpose to help people to help themselves,” said Gregorian.

Initially, I thought I had met a madman. But when he explained why, I knew he had hit the nail on the head: the virtuous circle of start-up, build, sell and then reinvest — just a different form of reinvestment.

There are three motives that will drive you to philanthropy. First, why leave the wealth for some- body else to invest when you can have the fun of making a difference yourself? Second, as Bill Gates put it, if we knew how the other 4 billion people in the world lived would we, the 2 billion in the developed world, let it happen? And, third, once you have met all your material needs and put a modest sum by for your children, what else are you going to do with it?

Do you really want to give your children all the well-documented pain and suffering attached to enormous wealth? While admiring Carnegie, I disagree with him on two points. First, there is no way I would give up wealth creation to concentrate solely on philanthropy. But I will say this: my passion for wealth creation has been redoubled by knowing that every penny I make from West Coast Capital is to be invested for the common good. With a purpose like that you get a hell of a lot tougher in business.

Second, why would you endow an organisation so that you personally don’t get the satisfaction from investing the money in good causes? Nor would I want to leave it to be invested after the old mortal coil has been shaken off. Why wait until you’re dead and let someone else have all the fun? But as entrepreneurs we all have our areas of interest that we focus on, many of us doing great things privately. Needless to say, it would be good if a few more raised their heads above the parapet to inspire others.

Indeed, we all have our causes to support. It may be art or the environment — anything, come to that — but for me it’s education. But it is not about giving people cash, it is about enabling them, with the tools, to create their own solutions. Don’t give them the fish, give them the fishing rod.

So why don’t others take up the challenge of philanthropy? In my view, it’s not that they don’t want to, it’s possibly the fear of not knowing how to and where to start — the same fear I experienced.

But if you stick to your business principles — hire a great chief executive, build a plan, enact it against performance targets and evaluate and adapt at speed, you can literally change the world and get great pleasure from doing it. The exact same skills that created the wealth can be applied to philanthropy.

So, as you sit ruminating your position on the Rich List over your cornflakes this morning, at least give a thought to joining the “Giving List”. Trust me, you will never make a better investment.

Sir Tom Hunter is chairman of The Hunter Foundation and West Coast Capital

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