Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, the daughter of real estate billionaire John Arrillaga, Sr. and wife of Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, wants a new generation of tech titans to direct more of their passion for changing the world into philanthropy, the New York Times reports.

Drawn to philanthropy as a discipline after her mother, "the public face" of her family's giving, died of cancer, Arrillaga-Andreessen, author of a new book titled Giving 2.0: Transform Your Giving and Our World, has given philanthropic advice to a number of tech industry leaders in recent years, including Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who gave $100 million to Newark public schools in 2010, and former eBay chief and California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman. In addition to the example provided by her parents, much of that advice is informed by Arrillaga-Andreessen's experience at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she started an organization to teach philanthropy. Today that organization, SV2, boasts some 175 donors and provides start-up funding to nonprofits using strategies borrowed from the region's venture capital industry.

Indeed, while the take-no-prisoners tech industry is often criticized for being stingy when it comes to charity, Silicon Valley has emerged as the epicenter of a new kind of philanthropy in the United States, as a growing number of tech leaders from the region apply their business and entrepreneurial skills to their giving — a development that some attribute to Arrillaga-Andreessen. For example, the Omidyar Network, which was founded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam, uses a market-based approach to invest in for-profit companies and uses some of the profits to award grants to nonprofits. Similarly, the Skoll Foundation, which was created by former eBay president Jeff Skoll, supports social entrepreneurs in much the same way that venture capitalists invest in for-profit startups.

"As attractive and innovative and glamorous as Silicon Valley is, it's a really tough, competitive place where there's tremendous pressure to make money," Bradford K. Smith, president of the Foundation Center, told the Times. "But having accumulated the money, there's a real practical problem: How do you find meaning in your life? How do you give it away?"