 WINTER 2008 VOLUME 2, ISSUE 1 HAPPENINGS W&GF families convene in Prague, Czech Republic
W&GF was General Partner of this year's Forum 2000 conference thanks to our founder's generous support. Forum 2000 was established as a joint initiative of President Václav Havel, Japanese philanthropist Yohei Sasakawa and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel to prepare leaders for the challenges we faced on the threshold of a new millennium. One of our participants, Union College senior Katie Loeb, told our gathering that Forum 2000 "opened my eyes to some of the most profound issues in the world today: poverty, the environment, war... that gathering showed me that we have a huge opportunity — Now is the time for change." Katie's parents, Michael and Margie Loeb, have attended past W&GF gatherings and, on the Board of Echoing Green, actively support the work of groundbreaking social entrepreneurs. The Loebs joined W&GF Founding Members Don and Shelley Rubin, Jerry Hirsch and Ben Fisher, Eva and Yoel Haller, their granddaughter Helaina Roman, Nathan Otto and Amber Lupton, Omar Amanat, Nancy Petchek, Robin Christopher, Ethan Nadelmann, former Bulgarian President Peter Stoyanov, and Jean Guillaume de Tocqueville for a rich discussion of Freedom and Responsibility in politics, business, law, media and philanthropy. W&GF thanks Caroline Stoessinger for organizing and coordinating its participation in Forum 2000. With almost equal doses of chilling insight and rousing hopefulness, delegate discussions and W&GF's private events were lively and enriching opportunities to reflect on values and opportunities to make a difference. W&GF guest and conference speaker Jean-Guillaume de Tocqueville best summed up the group's experience: "I was always brought up, in the heritage of uncle Alexis, in a tradition of tolerance and openmindedness, and I find exactly the same values in the Wealth & Giving Forum." Aspen Institute teams up with W&GF to host Philanthropy Seminar, July 27-29 W&GF will join the Aspen Institute as a collaborating sponsor of the third Aspen Philanthropy Seminar on July 27-29, 2008 in Aspen, Colorado. Read more Designed to engage both emerging and experienced donors, the seminar will be informed by Aspen's renowned text-based approach to exploring personal and intellectual themes in philanthropy. The Seminar will also benefit from a new partnership with Global Philanthropy Forum, whose co-founder (and W&GF advisor) Jane Wales has recently become Executive Director of Aspen's Nonprofit Sector and Philanthropy Program. The unique collaboration between Aspen, GPF and W&GF will shepherd a select number of invited participants in a deep exploration of their philanthropic missions and strategies. Participation will be extremely limited so please look for your invitation in the coming weeks and reserve your place early. Wealthy families: no longer the "most noticed and least studied" The Wealth & Giving Forum and the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College launched a study of families with net worth of $25 million or more funded by the Gates Foundation and Calibre-Wachovia. Titled "The Joys and Dilemmas of Wealth," through in-depth interviews with principals and financial advisors the survey seeks to uncover how the motivations, aspirations, preoccupations and practices of high net-worth donors are reshaping the philanthropic landscape. The study will provide W&GF with findings and insights that can enhance the relevance, specificity and quality of our programs. A digest of the results will also be disseminated back to the participants and eventually to the broader philanthropic community, including organizations that provide philanthropic advice and assistance to high net-worth donors. We invite all qualified families to participate. Respondents have until February 15 to complete their surveys. Contact Jean Yong at jyong@wealthandgiving.org; 212.792.4081 for your username and password. W&GF at Investors' Circle in San Francisco, May 5-7 W&GF will compose a panel of philanthropists, leaders and experts to discuss "Strategies for Supporting Social Entrepreneurship: Lessons from the Field" the Education Day of Investors' Circle's Spring Conference. Veterans will share their personal case studies with investors interested in serving the poor both domestically and abroad. Investors' Circle is comprised of angel investors, venture capitalists and others who are using private capital to promote the transition to a sustainable economy. Their annual Spring Conference will be held at Hotel Nikko in San Francisco on May 5-7, 2008. Watch your email inbox for your invitation to participate in coming weeks. Save the date! W&GF will host a panel discussion on mission-related investing followed by cocktails and dinner on May 21, 2008 in New York City. NOTES FROM THE FIELD Member of the W&GF community tends gardens and changes lives in Senegal by Brad Carlson
with several rooms, a few bare fluorescent bulbs, an actual toilet, cold running water, and an Internet connection. The paint is peeling, the beds are sagging, and ants, spiders and giant roaches crawl about, but at least we have a solid roof rather than tin plates with tires stacked on them. I've gotten used to the smell of burning trash, which permeates the air. There is trash littering the roadsides and the aqueducts. There is trash virtually everywhere. And there is dung everywhere, too, from the goats, pigs, and donkeys that roam the mostly unpaved streets. A few days ago I saw the gardens in Dakar which Laura and Jenna Bush visited during their stay in Senegal last June. The gardens are quite impressive. Recently, the hospital in Ziguinchor is the place where Steve has been doing most of his work. There are five or six women who come to the garden each day to tend to it. They range in age from 26 to 52 and each one of them dresses immaculately in colorful African fabrics. After seeing how they live, it's incredible to me how much pride they manage to take in their appearance. One of the women, Aness, is especially beautiful and has a magnetic personality. She is president of the garden. She told me she lost her husband to AIDS, as have her co-gardeners. Most of the women were infected by their husbands, some of whom probably knew they were infected, but never told anyone because of the stigma of having HIV. There seems to be some HIV education here (on posters and placards, at least) but, like in the US, few people will actually acknowledge being infected. Among the women I met, the fact that DIG helps HIV-infected people is something of a secret. Nobody wants their families, friends or neighbors to know. Yesterday we planted seedlings of a variety of vegetables in the elevated beds that had been prepared earlier; then we watered. Today, we watered the entire garden again and then prepared the makeshift seed-sprouting containers (using cut-open water bottles) where the seeds are allowed to germinate. We also prepared some natural pesticides designed to get rid of aphids and spider mites, which seem to be prevalent and often ruin some of the crops. The pesticide we made today consisted of onions, liquid soap, dried hot peppers, and tobacco from a pack of cigarettes that we unfurled. We visited the home gardens of three women, including Aness's, which was almost as impressive as the one near the hospital. She has done a fantastic job taking the growing techniques she has learned to her home. She is growing a variety of healthy vegetables, some of which she feeds her family and some of which she sells. Because there is no running water near her home she has dug a well, about ten feet deep, from which she scoops milky-gray colored water. I'm told Aness is the only wage earner in her family. There are people of all ages living together in each household. There are children playing in the dirt in front of virtually every home. Some of them look at us white guys with intense curiosity. Everybody is friendly, and shakes our hands, but they are not intrusive. At Koumba's house I met a man who was 100 years old. Everyone is very gracious and kind, and we were offered food at one of the gardener's homes. Today, we took a day-long tour of the mangroves on the Casamance River, and visited villages in these more remote areas, as tourists. Thursday, we'll take a taxi to Cap Skirring, about an hour away. I'm told Cap Skirring is a resort community frequented by French tourists. We'll have a couple of quiet days there on the secluded beaches. I will catch my flight back to Dakar on Saturday (via jet rather than prop plane!) at about midnight. My flight from Dakar to Atlanta departs at 3:30 AM. That's the news from Ziguinchor today. It's difficult not to feel discouraged by the immense need that is evident here. At times, it seems like a bottomless pit, but it's clear that the work of DIG is having an impact on the lives of some women and their families. These women, despite the difficulty of living with HIV, have become leaders and wage earners in their families and communities. The gardens give them something to work on, something to nurture, something to be hopeful about. Brad Carlson, who participated in W&GF's October 2005 gathering and joined us in Prague for Forum 2000 in 2006, has recently taken a position on DIG's Board of Directors. He lives in New York City. Community News 
Geoffrey Tabin, who spoke at W&GF's 2006 Scottsdale gathering, was featured in Jeffrey Sachs's September, 2007 Time article, "A Global Coalition of Good," for his work to improve eyesight in Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan and Ghana. "In the skilled hands of Tabin and his team, the eyesight of a village is restored in days at a tiny cost per person." See article. W&GF Founding Member, Angelica Berrie, announces the 12th anniversary of the Russ Berrie Award for Making a Difference. Nominations are due February 29, 2008. Angelica Berrie's personal and professional life has always been about giving and W&GF was proud to welcome her as a Founding Member in June of 2007. Angelica is President of the Russell Berrie Foundation, created to express the values and passions of her late husband, Russell Berrie, through social investments in innovative ideas. She has served as Board Chair of the Gilda's Club Worldwide, a support community for families living with cancer, and helped create the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital. The Russ Berrie Award for Making a Difference provides cash grants to people who dedicate their lives to helping others. The Russell Berrie Foundation will announce up to three major awards of $50,000, $35,000, and $25,000 and sixteen runner-up awards of $2,500, to recognize unusual heroism and community service by New Jersey citizens. Learn more!
Mario Marino, the visionary founder and chairman of Venture Philanthropy Partners, spoke at W&GF's inaugural gathering in October 2004. VPP has an opening for a Vice President of Development and Investor Relations. Based in Washington, DC, VPP is a nonprofit philanthropic investment organization that provides growth capital and strategic assistance to high potential nonprofit organizations serving the core developmental, learning, and educational needs of children of low-income families in the DC region. In addition, VPP is joining with other organizations nationwide to inspire philanthropists, corporate and nonprofit leaders, and public policymakers to help increase the effectiveness and the flow of capital, talent, and other resources to nonprofits meeting the core needs of children. For more information visit VPP's website.
The nonprofit she founded at age 8, Tree Musketeers, received a generous contribution from L'Oreal Paris. Learn more about Tree Musketeers and the other honorees at the Women of Worth website. OF INTEREST: MEASURING GOOD "Can Foundations Take the long View Again?"
As business leaders like Ted Turner, Bill Gates and George Soros have moved vast swaths of their private wealth into the philanthropic sector, market expertise has migrated there, too. As a result, foundation directors, trustees and advisers from corporate America have taken a stance that the return on charitable dollars should be tangible and measurable, and should drive capital flow in much the same way that earnings figures do in commerce. But a small and increasingly vocal group of foundation leaders is challenging the benefits of this approach. "In the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a huge push for private philanthropy to be more accountable and to spend more time being goal-driven," said Kathleen Enright, the executive director of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, a Washington-based coalition of foundations that promotes ways to improve nonprofit results. Advisers and trustees compelled foundations to redirect their unrestricted grants to more discrete, short-term projects — for example, distributing mosquito nets in malaria regions — that would deliver a measurable bang for the buck. "The reason the nonprofit sector exists at all is because it can fund and invest in social issues that the for-profit market can't touch because they can't be measured," said Paul Shoemaker, a former Microsoft employee and entrepreneur who is now executive director of the Seattle affiliate of Social Venture Partners International, a philanthropic network. "The nonprofit 'market' is not designed to be efficient in that way. Yet we're applying the same efficiency metrics to both sectors." As a consequence, when foundations switched to project-based accounting, they forced grantees to sacrifice long-term effectiveness for short-term efficiency, Ms. Enright said. Nonprofits could no longer afford to focus on important strategic activities like advocacy or working for social change, which require "deep resources and the ability to change tactics overnight if the situation demands it," she said. In addition, critics say, project-based funding allows grantees to collect only a fraction of their real overhead costs. According to "In Search of Impact," a 2006 study of foundation grant-making practices from the Center for Effective Philanthropy, foundation chief executives will allow a nonprofit to add only 10 to 30 percent of direct project costs for overhead. Some refuse to provide any operational costs at all. The financial strain knocks many promising nonprofits out of business. "Everyone is managing against the perception that nonprofits are supposed to be low-cost and low-overhead," said Thomas Tierney, chairman and co-founder of the Bridgespan Group, a Boston-based consultancy and search firm for nonprofits that was founded at Bain & Company. The only way for nonprofits to increase their working capital is to take on more projects, which in turn keeps increasing the amount of capital they need - a "vicious cycle that perpetually starves them of capacity," Mr. Tierney said. The issue is not a lack of charitable capital. In 2005, grant-making foundations distributed more than $36 billion on assets of $550 billion, up from grants of $1.94 billion on assets of just over $30 billion in 1975, according to the Foundation Center, an organization based in New York that maintains a comprehensive database on the philanthropic sector in the United States. Based on its data, the Center for Effective Philanthropy concluded that the present situation was limiting the effectiveness of those charitable dollars. After surveying nearly 20,000 grantees of 163 foundations and interviewing 79 foundation chief executives and 26 leaders of nonprofits, it recommended that to maximize the impact on grant recipients, foundations "should make larger, longer-term operating grants" of unrestricted funds that can be used to support the organization and its overall mission, not just specific projects or programs. Two other recent publications reached the same conclusion: the "General Operating Support Action Guide" for foundations, published by the Grantmakers group in July 2007; and "Daring to Lead 2006," a survey of nearly 2,000 nonprofit executives conducted by CompassPoint Nonprofit Services and the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation. Their findings echo the experiences of a handful of foundations at the vanguard of the movement to provide more operating support to charities over the last 10 years. They include the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, the Philadelphia Foundation, the Whitman Institute and organizations like Social Venture Partners. These grant makers have successfully shown that providing nonprofits with operating support "does not mean forking over tens of thousands of dollars and relinquishing expectations for results," the Grantmakers' report said. Instead, they have built due diligence and accountability measures into their agreements that go much deeper than simple project budgets and reports. The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation in New York, for example, has created a detailed system for evaluating results of general operating support grants to organizations that work to improve the lives of low-income youths. David Hunter, the former director of assessment at the foundation, said in an interview published in the Grantmakers' report that agreements between the Clark foundation and its grantees include specific milestones that are clear indicators of progress. They include benefits for the youths who benefit from the nonprofit's charitable work, not just "process milestones for the organization." Each of the three reports concluded that general operating support yielded better results for foundations and grantees alike, particularly as larger grants are offered over a longer period. Yet in 2005, according to the Foundation Center, only 20 percent of grants from the largest private and community foundations were designated for general operating support. A majority of foundation leaders polled in the studies acknowledged that unrestricted operating funds were better and more effective for grantees. But they continue to focus their grant-making on project support, they said, because they prefer its clear-cut results and because their boards often mandate project support as a way to show a foundation's prominence in a specific funding area. While this may be good for a foundation's image, Ms. Enright said, it can turn nonprofits into glorified vendors that provide only the services the foundation requests, sapping the sector of both passion and innovation. "The presumption is that the donor knows more about how to address a given problem than its grantees, and I think that's usually not a correct presumption," she said. "More operating support can shift the locus of action and ideas to the people who are closest to the problem." Denise Caruso is executive director of the Hybrid Vigor Institute, which is a not-for-profit think tank and consultancy dedicated to the practice of collaborative problem solving. The Institute is focused on twin goals: one, to build a global network of diverse thinkers and practitioners who embrace collaboration; and two, to establish new methods and best practices for knowledge sharing and decision making in academia, private industry, philanthropy and government. This article originally appeared in the New York Times on January 6, 2008; it can be found online at www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/business/06frame.html ON THINKING THE IMPOSSIBLE Remarks from W&GF's July, 2007 gathering
The following are the remarks made by W&GF's president, Glen Macdonald, at the Wealth & Giving Forum Gathering held July 5-8, 2007 at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia. This commentary sums up the spirit of the event and the collective aspirations of its participants. I'd like to begin by thanking our special guests. First of all, Ken Behring, for sharing your inspirational story and wisdom with us. And we still have you to thank for the heartfelt "kickoff" to our inaugural event back in October 2004. We're glad you and your wife, Pat, have come back to be with us again. Next, I'd like to thank Jeff Flug of Millennium Promise, for your hopeful message and for reminding us that our gatherings find a generous and productive life — and in very faraway places — months and years after we convene. And thanks to the UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University, and Bennett College students — Emily, Sharrelle, Lindsay, and Lennon — for sharing with us your stories about how you came together to adopt a village in Africa to lift its people out of poverty and despair. Let me also thank Robert Kennedy, Jr., for joining us and for his thoughtful and inspirational remarks this morning. We can all thank him and his family for inspiring so many of our generation to serve our nation and all humanity — and for doing so with genuine passion and decency. I'd now like to welcome a few special guests from around the world, and I'll go in the order of distance traveled:
I'd like to spend a few minutes to update you on the Wealth & Giving Forum — a mini "state of the state." We've accomplished quite a bit in the past year.
Before I close, let me talk a bit more about what we are up to this weekend. To do so, I turn back to Robert Kennedy and to a disconcerting passage he wrote in the book The Riverkeepers back in 1997. It's a bit of a warning and a call to action:
We are all just as concerned as RFK is about the plight of humanity. That is why we have come together this weekend, as we have done in the past. I wonder at times, when we set our sights so high or when we try to do too much, whether or not we are tackling the impossible and just being downright unrealistic. And so my next question is whether the more erudite, with deeper knowledge and a more expansive view, might be thinking the same way. And then one Sunday, December 17, 2006 (to be exact), some seven months after our community posed this question in a dialogue with Google.org's Larry Brilliant at our Scottsdale gathering, I unbundled my New York Times, and there it was on the cover of the Sunday magazine: a piece entitled "On Giving," by Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University. There was that perhaps more erudite person who was thinking and writing with the same ponderous verve as the rest of us. In his insightful and engaging exploration of the fundamental essence of giving, Professor Singer winds up coming to conclusions similar to those many members of our community have. Here's what Professor Singer had to say:
Professor Singer goes on to say that "measured against our capacity, the Millennium Development Goals are indecently, shocking modest." And he concludes his piece by arguing that just halving extreme poverty by 2020 is not enough, since "virtually no one should live in such degrading conditions" when the goal of eliminating them "is well within our reach." So what does all this have to do with what we are up to this weekend? Well, everything. But let me be a bit more specific. It is a hallmark feature of Wealth & Giving Forum gatherings to afford individuals and families of means the opportunity to reflect on what their wealth is about and what they want it to do for them and for their communities. For this gathering, we'd like our guests to go even further, and, to echo Jeff Greenfield's remarks this morning, to suspend disbelief and to explore not just possibilities but impossibilities as well — i.e., to explore not just what is possible, but how to explore, take on, and address what we consciously or subconsciously consider to be impossible. In the three-some years I've been at this, it's been easy to come to the conclusion that, with the exponential growth of affluence, the capital is available (many times over) to address some of humanity's most intractable ills. All we need is the inspiration to seek and the will to find solutions. And over the course of the next couple of days, I believe you will hear, both from practitioners with decades of experience and from energetic and innovative newcomers, that so much of what we label impossible is in fact so very possible. So I ask you to engage with us this weekend in this exploration, and to ponder your own contribution to taking on the impossible. OUR MISSION The Wealth & Giving Forum was founded in 2003 to promote greater generosity among individuals and families of significant means and to make more resources available for good causes. Through invitation-only gatherings, regional and thematic events, publications and collaborative partnerships, the Forum provides a thoughtful, private meeting ground for philanthropists to reflect with their peers on how best to allocate their wealth to do good in the world. The purpose of this newsletter is to promote a regular exchange of information and ideas within W&GF's network and to keep in touch with our members, friends and supporters. This is the first electronic issue of the Wealth & Giving Forum's periodic newsletter. As always, your comments and suggestions are welcome! As a final note, thank you, Jean Yong, for two wonderful and productive years of service as the Wealth & Giving Forum's office manager! W&GF MEMBERSHIP The Wealth & Giving Forum is an independent not-for-profit organization. We are member supported. Membership is available to philanthropic individuals and families by invitation or referral. Please contact W&GF's president, Glen Macdonald, or executive director, Tara Church, for inquiries concerning terms of participation or to receive a membership packet. |
This past October, twenty-two Wealth & Giving Forum participants joined former Czech President Václav Havel, CNN's Christiane Amanpour, Madeleine Albright and other political, philanthropic and thought leaders in Prague for the Forum 2000 Conference on "Freedom and Responsibility."
I've been in Senegal six days with DIG (
Scott Harrison, founder of 
W&GF professional advisory board member Christine W. Letts, Associate Dean for Executive Education at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, wrote the foreward to Randall J. Ottinger's new book, Beyond Success: Building a Personal, Financial and Philanthropic Legacy. Learn more at 
Tara Church, W&GF's Executive Director, was recently honored by L'Oreal Paris as a "Woman of Worth" for her philanthropic work on behalf of the environment and children.
by Denise Caruso
by Glen Macdonald
|
NEWS Back to News Main Page |
