Blog Entry

Monitor Institute’s Future of Philanthropy Workshop

Last Thursday, I had the pleasure of participating in the Monitor Institute’s gathering on the next 10 years of philanthropy. Representatives from institutional and individual philanthropy along with folks like me came together to talk about how philanthropy can adapt to the rapidly changing world.

In the afternoon, we broke out into teams. Our task was to come up with an innovative way of addressing a specific challenge. At the end of the day, we would vote on the most viable ideas. The winner would walk away with applause and chocolate.

Making Followership Sexy

I ended up with a great group of folks: Lance Fors of Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund’s, Bob Hughes formerly of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Mayur Patel of Knight Foundation, Sean Stannard-Stockton of Tactical Philanthropy, and Kelvin Taketa of Hawaii Community Foundation.

After some discussion instigated and facilitated by Monitor consultants Gabriel Kasper and Edward Wexler-Beron, our group decided to focus on followership. Specifically, we wanted to dispel the notion that leadership is about doing something first or by yourself.

The most prominent example of this was Warren Buffett’s decision on June 25, 2006 to give away most of his fortune (about $30 billion) to the Gates Foundation, esentially doubling its already massive endowment. Why not give his fortune to his own foundation? Buffett explained:

I came to realize that there was a terrific foundation that was already scaled-up — that wouldn’t have to go through the real grind of getting to a megasize like the Buffett Foundation would — and that could productively use my money now.

…

If you think about it — if your goal is to return the money to society by attacking truly major problems that don’t have a commensurate funding base — what could you find that’s better than turning to a couple of people who are young, who are ungodly bright, whose ideas have been proven, who already have shown an ability to scale it up and do it right?

You don’t get an opportunity like that ordinarily. I’m getting two people enormously successful at something, where I’ve had a chance to see what they’ve done, where I know they will keep doing it — where they’ve done it with their own money, so they’re not living in some fantasy world — and where in general I agree with their reasoning. If I’ve found the right vehicle for my goal, there’s no reason to wait.

Buffett’s decision went a long way into making followership sexy, but in some ways, it seems strange that this announcement made news at all. In finance, this stuff is de rigeur. As Sean explained in a great blog post, investors follow the “smart money” all the time. For a variety of reasons, this has not been true in philanthropy. We wanted to change this.

The Smart Money Award

Our idea was simple. We would create the Smart Money Award, recognizing outstanding examples in philanthropy of followership.

We felt it important to make cash part of the award, so we tapped into the vast financial resources at the table (our wallets) and managed to scrape together $50. We wanted a nice certificate, so we recruited Lynn Carruthers, our graphic facilitator, who did an outstanding job under extreme duress.

We needed an outlet for publicizing the award, and so everyone around the table committed to blogging about the winners.

We needed a process for deciding who would get the award, and we decided that initially, we would do.

Finally, we needed an inaugural recipient. This was the fun part. There were a lot of great stories of followership in the room, and we rapidly converged on a winner… the Kellogg Foundation for its pledge last year to spend $16 million on the Buffett Early Childhood Fund:

Sterling Speirn, Kellogg’s president, says he saw no reason to start from scratch when a good approach to advocacy and education was already in place.

The Kellogg Foundation accepts the inaugural Smart Money Award from our team.

Or as Anne Mosle, Kellogg’s vice president of programs, stated, “We don’t believe we have to lead everything.”

We made our pitch — one of ten teams to do so. Anne and several others from Kellogg were there, and they graciously and enthusiastically accepted the award.

After votes were counted, not only were we the winner of the competition, several people had thrown in some cash with their votes. Total amount: $50, just enough for our next award!

Working with these guys on the Smart Money Award was a ton of fun. Everyone was sharp and committed. Not only did we align quickly, but we weren’t satisfied with simply making a pitch. It was a simple idea with a potentially powerful impact, and we all believed in it.

So we did it. And we’re going to keep doing it. After all, we have another $50 to give away.

If you have stories of great followership in the philanthropic sector that you think we should know about, email them to smartmoneyawards@gmail.com. We’ll consider them for the next award

Update

April 5, 2010: Here’s Sean’s post on the Smart Money Award.

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