The Nigerian sky is flat and threatening. Palm trees flail in the wind. With 14 million inhabitants, Lagos, the nation’s largest and most overpopulated city, seethes with diesel exhaust, oil money, and desperation. Inside the walled compound of the Eko Hotel, where Russian oilmen sit poolside in Speedos as bored hookers in evening wear ply the bar, a commotion erupts in the marbled lobby. The Goldman Sachs event planners, fresh from a run to the tourist stalls (“Ivory real, not bone!” says the saleslady), are turning fierce scrutiny on a box of fanny packs.

For three days, Goldman’s advance team of marketing executives, P.R. specialists, and event managers—along with its hired camera crews, van drivers, and security personnel in wraparound shades—has been prepping for the arrival of a half-dozen of the investment bank’s top executives. They are coming to town for the first stage of a project called the 10,000 Women initiative, the biggest and boldest philanthropic effort that Goldman has ever attempted. The firm has pledged to spend $100 million over five years to educate 10,000 women in developing countries about business and, in so doing, raise their standards of living. Toward that end, the Goldman team has secured $600-a-night hotel suites, set up the media center, reviewed the briefing books, and drawn up the reception menu (surf and turf with mushroom sauce; brownies for dessert). The camera guys have done their blocking shots. Now the big boys, as the advance team calls them, are landing at the airport, and security needs to move out! We’re on a tight schedule, people! It’s dangerous to be on the road at rush hour. But damn it, those fanny packs need filling.

Out come the nuts, the bottled water, and the sanitary hand wipes. Francesca Pedemonti, Goldman’s diminutive and focused head of event planning—she regularly does this sort of thing in London, Paris, and Moscow—is stuffing goodies into the Goldman-logoed fanny packs. As part of the program, Goldman is arranging partnerships between business schools in the U.S. and Europe and those in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia, offering classes in financial planning, market research, writing business plans, and accessing capital. For two days in late July, the Goldman executives will visit their first class of 25 “Goldman scholars.” They are going to need those fanny packs.

My photographer and I, who have been invited along to witness this mission, are ready to hit the road to the airport. But before we can board the van, our handler, Gia Moron, steps between us and our open ride. “I don’t know,” she says uncertainly, “if they’ll want their photos taken after 12 hours of flying.” She casts a help-me glance at the Afrikaner security men, who really don’t care one way or another. It’s a good point, I say diplomatically, but let’s have the executives themselves make that call at the airport. “Look, I want what you want,” Moron replies. But then she adds, “Maybe it’s not safe. Do they even allow photos at the airport?” The head of security, an affable former member of the South African Special Forces Brigade named Cobus Claassens (who once, for a client, retrieved a drillship that pirates had sailed off with in the Atlantic), begins saying it might be tricky but can be done if... And then he gets with the program. “Maybe not a good idea,” he says.

A lesson: The Goldman way is the controlled way; it is not about candid shots. And so the Goldman bubble surrounds us with its protective membrane. “We will all be better off,” says Moron, smiling. The fanny packs sail past us, and the caravan hits the road.

Throughout the boom years, Wall Street was among the most ostentatious purveyors of philanthropy. Hedge fund money turned the Robin Hood Foundation’s annual gala into a $72 million evening last year, the proceeds from which were earmarked to help fight poverty in New York City. The Blackstone Group’s Stephen Schwarzman pledged $100 million and got the New York Public Library’s main building renamed for him. Last year, Lehman Brothers gave Spelman College, a predominantly black Atlanta liberal-arts school for women, its biggest pledge ever: $10 million to develop the Lehman Brothers Center for Global Finance and Economic Development.

But of all the Wall Street firms, Goldman was the best known for making philanthropy an essential part of its culture. Last year, the firm gave more than $100 million to charities in education, the arts, and social services. Half of that went to Goldman Sachs Gives, a $279 million public charity that administers individual accounts for employees who direct grants ­to nonprofit groups. The 10,000 Women program took Goldman’s giving to a new level, in terms of both charitable donations and P.R., which the bank has historically shunned. When the firm launched the project, in March, with an elaborately staged coming-out party at Columbia University, ­it earned headlines around the globe. Goldman flew in a dozen female entrepreneurs from Nigeria, Egypt, and Afghanistan and streamed the event to employee “watching rooms” for the benefit of its 30,000 workers. C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein stood before a riser of multicultural inclusion, backed by smiling—sometimes bewildered—women in headscarves and bright ethnic dresses.