"You wouldn't need charity if the world was just."

Who said it? "You wouldn't need charity if the world was just." - Brendan Robert Hewson (Bono’s dad)

Charity is often celebrated as generosity. But what Hewson captures is the uncomfortable truth: charity only exists to patch over injustice.

For me, it is important to look beyond benevolence to the systems that create the need for it in the first place. If the structures we build in business and society are unjust, undervaluing certain work, excluding certain voices, compounding intergenerational inequity, then charity becomes a sticking plaster.

But if we design for justice, fair access, equity by design, dignity as a principle, then we’re not relying on after-the-fact generosity. We’re creating systems where people don’t need “lifting up” because they were never pushed down in the first place.

This is where pre-distribution and post-distribution come in. Philanthropy is post-distribution: wealth is first concentrated and then some of it given away. It matters, and it does good. But pre-distribution asks us to fix the root, to design fair systems at the outset, so wealth and opportunity are more evenly shared in the first place.

To be clear, this isn’t about criticising charity. It is absolutely necessary while injustice exists. But it cannot be the end of the story. We need both: charity to address the immediate gaps, and systemic redesign to make charity less necessary over time.

As business leaders, the question becomes: are we content to donate to charity, or are we also prepared to re-engineer the systems that make charity necessary?