Charity needs cheques but time is precious, too

The results of the Evening Standard's Christmas charity auction are both impressive and heartening: more than £158,000 donated to help some of Africa's poorest schoolchildren.

It's a fair bet that a good chunk of that money came from City workers. I know that the City can be generous, and that should be an important part of its values. But I do hope the giving continues after the Christmas season. And I hope too that the City contributes in ways beyond just writing a cheque.

Because Londoners who haven't earned a £1 million bonus this year - or any other year - feel left out in the cold when they hear of bankers and financial wizards in the City collecting more in one pay packet than most workers in the UK do in four or five lifetimes. The sense of Dickensian division is particularly strong this Christmas. Northern Rock, the credit squeeze, the threat of a downturn in house prices - or more general consumer gloom - all add up to some very icy winds.

It's not snowing yet - and may never freeze - but there's no disguising the chill. So, headlines that tell us that J Alfred Moneybags from Global Greed Inc is heading off to the Bahamas for the holidays with a sackful of loot - even if he has made some charitable donations - are not welcome.

That's a caricature, of course; but there is a real fear that the gold-plated City is too isolated, too distant from the real problems of Londoners who have to worry about the mortgage, the job, the car repayments and finding the money for next term's school trip.

True, as Lord Mayor of the City of London I live in a mansion opposite the Bank of England. But my grandfather was a Welsh tenant sheep farmer who eked out a living in the valleys and whose sons all faced unemployment in the 1920s, so my family knows what life is like on both sides of the VIP barrier.

You can argue (and I frequently do) that City of London workers lead the world in hard-to-find skills and that the giant tax share contributed by the UK's financial services success pays for our hospitals, schools and roads.

But it's not enough - Londoners want to see the big City earners really contributing to society and to the city they live in. Yet more could do so.

I am not talking about those who donated thousands to the Standard's campaign. Or about Arpad Busson, the EIM hedge-fund manager and founder of Ark (Absolute Return for Kids), who raised a world-record £28 million at one dinner this year. Or financier John Studzinski (a global head of mergers and acquisitions for Blackstone), who has just donated £5 million of his own money to the Tate Modern's new extension. Or the 100 ancient and modern livery companies in the City who this year gave around £41 million to charity, threequarters of which went to welfare and education, including to six City academies and 200 other schools and colleges. And my own Lord Mayor's charity (jointly in aid of the flying eye hospital Orbis and the Wellbeing of Women charity) has raised £2 million already.

Londoners - especially those in the poorer inner-city areas - quite rightly ask: "What about us?". A new report by the Policy Exchange think-tank (Give and Let Give: Building a culture of philanthropy in the financial services industry) says City high-fliers need to do more across their whole careers, with exposure early on to the culture of giving. The research, funded by the City of London Corporation and others, highlights a weakness in a City culture that leaves philanthropic giving to later in a career. My colleague Michael Snyder, policy chairman of the City of London, is also working with Whitehall to help harness the energy (as well as cheque books) of more City workers.

Every year the Lord Mayor's Dragon Awards celebrate the very best in corporate community involvement and thousands of City workers from all levels are involved in long-term projects helping the inner city. The City Corporation itself works with neighbouring boroughs to foster regeneration through skills development, business support and education.

Indeed, its City Action programme makes it the only local authority to offer a free employee volunteering broker service to their businesses. Meanwhile, the Heart of the City programme, cochaired by former Bank Governor Lord Eddie George, leads the field in sharing best practice among firms involved in or about to be involved in corporate social responsibility.

Yet my fear is that as financial times get tougher and some Square Mile workers lose their jobs, we will hear the sound of the collective ladder being drawn up as those still earning retreat to looking after themselves and their own families first - and forgetting the wider bonds of the community.

The fragmented careers of many modern City high-fliers are worlds apart from the 40 years in one firm that was my own experience. The frequent jobchanging has broken down the mentorapprentice relationship that I benefited from - through which so many of the positive values were transmitted.

When I started work in the City, my senior took me in hand and made sure I got involved in pro bono and charity work. It was expected - not for the rewards of status it might bring, but because it was the right thing to do.

Today, especially in tougher times, it is vital that those lucky enough to have been educated in the skills that the City prizes so highly give something back - even quite a lot.

We not only work in the City, we are citizens, and the licence that society gives us to operate depends on the general approval of society for what we do. In fact, we can only earn our big fees and large salaries if we show this brings direct benefit to the wider society. Big giving is not enough - it has to be seen to be enough.

But there is a deeper reason to give, one that that a former Dean of St Paul's knew well. When we are successful it's easy to believe that, as human beings, we are separate from others, apart from them, even better than them. This view leads to a miserable, impoverished view of our own lives. Dean John Donne was living at a time when early scientists and navigators were discovering that islands and continents were only apparently disconnected. Under the ocean they were all joined in one Earth.

This Christmas, the City needs to remember its obligations to London and the wider society, and rediscover its tradition of philanthropy.

David Lewis is Lord Mayor of the City of London.