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Philanthropy & Funding
The world is rich in problems to address, but poor in clear pathways to do so. For philanthropists, this sobering reality makes figuring out the “how” much harder than deciding on the “what.” The good news is that there is a menu of “hows,” ten distinct ways to place a big bet on social change. All are underutilized—some particularly so.
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Julius Rosenwald is one of our philanthropic heroes.In the early 1910s, having already made businesshistory by transforming Sears, Roebuck & Co.into the Amazon of its day, he set out on an evenmore audacious mission: to remedy the huge gapin elementary and secondary education for AfricanAmericans. In partnership with Booker T. Washington,Rosenwald sparked the creation of the Rosenwald Schools—a term used informally to describe a loose network of nearly5,000 schools established to educate African American childrenacross the Southern part of the United States. He contributedstart-up funding for many of the schools, and, in agroundbreaking move, succeeded in drawing in money fromstate and county governments.
The effect of Rosenwald’s approximately $70 million (intoday’s dollars) big bet was transformative. By 1932, RosenwaldSchools educated more than 35 percent of all African Americanchildren in the South. The gap between the region’s races in“years of school completed” shrunk from three years in 1910to half a year in 1940, with Rosenwald Schools judged responsiblefor 40 percent of these gains.1 Dozens of African Americanleaders who would later remake America were educatedin Rosenwald Schools, including the late poet Maya Angelou,the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist EugeneRobinson, and the long-serving civil rights leader and GeorgiaRep. John Lewis.
Big bets on social change, like the one Rosenwald made, arerelatively rare—despite the great desire of most major donorsto advance such causes.2 That rarity is heart-wrenching, giventhat big bets can have extraordinary impact. They can radicallychange the organizations or social movements they support, creatingleaps in their recipients’ abilities or long-term ambitions.Mind you, it’s not a quick process. The biggest bets generallycome out of years of work and build on multiple smaller grants.
Our research has shown that a median of four smaller grantsprecede a big bet (with the big bet being 10 times the size of theprevious grant), as the donors and recipients build relationshipsand trust, and gain knowledge of what’s required to get results.And those big bets nest within a broader arc of social change—one that’s more appropriately measured in decades than in years.But ultimately, it takes a lot to do a lot. Indeed, historically, bigbets have been a critical input to many of the nonprofit sector’sgreatest success stories.
When philanthropists—and those who help them—think aboutmaking big bets, it’s natural to focus mainly on what they are tryingto achieve—in Rosenwald’s case, dramatically improving the educationand life prospects of African Americans in the South. But thereal barrier, the less examined piece of the big-bet puzzle, is how todeploy their resources. The “how” is indeed where Rosenwald trulyexcelled: building a new field of endeavor, creating standards (suchas school building design), establishing a durable funding model,partnering with an esteemed community leader, and propelling itall with an explicit “giving while living”3 philosophy. His work foreshadowedwhat his audacious philanthropic successors are doing (ortrying to do) to change the world today.
In this article, based on our research of 14 years of big bets by USdonors, we describe the various “hows” donors are using—10 distinctways to place a big bet on social change. They include building afield (as Rosenwald did with public education for African Americans),waging an advocacy campaign, founding an organization, and sevenmore. In a sense, these 10 types are tools in the toolbox of big betting.
We undertook this research in part because we suspected thatdonors wanting to make a big bet have more tools than they may realize—and, indeed, they do. In fact, the big bet types that are most raredrive many of the sector’s most importantsuccess stories. We’rehopeful that deepening understandingof them can help donors achieve theirphilanthropic aspirations. Whether it’seconomic mobility, global humanitariancrises, or environmental sustainability,society faces enormous challenges—and also incredible opportunities forphilanthropists to bet big and, in turn,have a far bigger impact.
The “Right” Type of Big Bet
Just as in the world of business, in philanthropysome approaches are simplymuch more promising than others toachieve a particular goal—in this case,impact. There may be a few types ofbig bets that could effectively addressa given problem, and others that wouldnot. And, some types are a much betterfit for a donor’s preferred engagementmodel. While donors tend to befairly expansive in the societal issuesthey’re eager to address, their beliefs about how change takes place are often more focused and specific.
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For example, some believe that government is the most importantlever for lasting change, while others are generally skepticalthat government can be influenced. An investor may want to providegrowth capital to a promising nonprofit, while a corporate foundermay be more inclined to start a new nonprofit initiative. There arealso real differences in the time, staff, and risk appetite they bringto their philanthropy. For a successful big bet to occur, it must beboth a promising way to address a problem and a good match withthe donor’s engagement model.
Consider Herb and Marion Sandler’s efforts to improve the qualityof investigative journalism in the United States. It was 2007, andthe business model of traditional newspapers was collapsing. TheInternet offered new publishing possibilities, but a dominant playerhad yet to emerge. Providing growth capital to the major newspapersprobably would not have been sufficient to reverse the deep-rooteddecline. But other approaches were more viable, such as subsidizinginvestigative journalism at an existing journal or hosting a competitionto surface new journalism models. Yet the Sandlers decided totake a different course, founding ProPublica, which they describe as “an independent nonprofit newsroomthat produces investigative journalismin the public interest.”
As co-CEOs of Golden West Financial,the Sandlers had built the companyinto one of the most successfuland admired financial institutions inthe United States. They were comfortableoperating organizations and hiringleaders. They had also sold the companythe year before and had the timeto be hands-on in their philanthropicwork. Launching ProPublica was a goodmatch not only for the problems facingjournalism, but also for the Sandlers’business experience and for the ways they were able invest theirtime and talents.
The good news is that there are a number of ways donors candeploy their resources to make a big difference. Below are 10 distinctand significant ways to place a big bet on social change. The listis not exhaustive—but almost every big bet on social change in asample of more than 900 gifts of $10 million or more in our 2000-2013 database falls into one of these categories. Since some fall intomore than one category, we tried to judge which single category bestdescribed the form and purpose of the gift. We present the 10 typesin order of their decreasing prevalence.
Note: To view a larger version of this table, click Download in the menu at the top of this article.
1. Fund Ongoing Operations
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, funding ongoing operations is by far the mostcommon type of big bet on social change—accounting for about onethird of the gift dollars in our database. Providing revenue for ongoingwork is a way to support organizations that will not (and shouldnot) ever be able to thrive without philanthropy. Fortunately, thesegifts are typically easier to make and involve less risk than some ofthe other categories discussed here. They may be hardly “bets” at all.
Sometimes, a steady stream of such large gifts is the main revenuesource for an organization. We see this, for instance, withadvocacy groups like PolicyLink, which advances equity in publicpolicy. These nonprofits don’t have other natural major backers(like government, which may be the target of the advocacy). Andtheir budgets tend to be modest enough that they can survive onphilanthropy alone (versus needing a readily-scalable fundingsource). At most large organizations, by contrast, philanthropyis rarely a dominant revenue source—though it can play a criticalgap-filling role. Consider charter schools, for example. Ultimately,the great majority of funding for these schools, just like districtschools, comes from government. But government per-studentfunding rates don’t always fully cover charter school costs. Facilitiesfinancing, small class sizes, extensive teacher training—elementsthat are critical to achieving the impact that the best charterschools are striving for—often cost more than government provides,and philanthropy closes the gap.
Because funding ongoing operations may seem plain vanilla,donors can be tempted to impose restrictions on grantees that specifywhat their money is buying. Yet attaching strings can hamper a nonprofit’s ability to put the funds totheir best use. It’s generally preferableto pick an organization you believe in soyou can give with minimal restrictions.There’s also the concern that a big betmight ramp the organization’s budgetup to a level it can’t sustain withoutyour ongoing support. Here, strategiescan include bringing in co-funders tomoderate the risk of a future fundingshortfall, or—if you are confident itshould exist in perpetuity—endowingthe organization.
2. Purchase a Physical Asset
For some kinds of social change efforts, assets like land or buildingscan be important. Community health centers, charter schools,conservation efforts—all may require significant one-time investmentsin physical assets. These gifts typically have the advantageof being relatively straightforward to give, with fairly certain andclear results—the building is built, the land is protected.Consider the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund’s $15 million giftto the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy in 2007. The fundswent to establish trail networks and make other enhancements tothe Presidio—a 1,491-acre national park in San Francisco—in linewith the Haas, Jr. Fund’s priority of bringing outdoor experiencesto youth, families, and underserved communities. Robert D. Haas,a fund trustee, emphasized at the time that the gift was “to helpensure the Presidio will be a place that is used and enjoyed by theentire community.” Today, the Presidio attracts park-goers from allover the San Francisco Bay area, and its camping programs introduceunderserved youth to nature and the outdoors.
Physical assets often bring substantial ongoing operating costs,and a gift to buy one might risk burdening the recipient withexpenses—so that it ends up rich in physical assets but poor infinancial health. The late Joan Kroc addressed this challenge whenshe designed a $1.5 billion gift to the Salvation Army for new communitycenters. She stipulated that half the money go to build thecommunity centers and the other half to supplement local fundraisingfor their operating costs. In other cases—such as health centers(which generate income)—the nonprofit’s underlying funding modelmay be sufficient to fund ongoing operations.
3. Found an Organization
Sometimes a need is clear, but there isn’t an existing organizationwith strong potential to address it. The Sandlers, for example, worriedthat the economic struggles of print media were underminingthe ability of investigative journalism to expose and combat corruption.In newsrooms across the country, budgets were being slashed,reporters laid off, and investigative journalism increasingly viewedas an unaffordable luxury. “We searched for a way to put a spotlighton abuses of the public trust, and potentially stop them,” explainedMarion Sandler, about their decision to found ProPublica.
The Sandlers made an initial commitment of $10 million a year forthree years to what was not only a new organization but an unusualnonprofit model of journalism. Led by Paul Steiger, former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, ProPublica has gone on to breakdozens of important stories, often in conjunction with mainstreamnewspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post, andhas thereby distinguished itself and strengthened the field of investigativejournalism. This April it received its fourth Pulitzer Prize,shared with the New York Daily News, for a series on the New YorkPolice Department’s abuse of an obscure law to force hundredsof people, predominantly in minority neighborhoods, from theirhomes and businesses.
Founding an organization tends to be a major undertaking for adonor—perhaps the most demanding of the 10 types of big bets—making it all the more important to make sure that no other entitythat might be “good enough” already exists. Given that fully 14 percentof the big-bet dollars in our database fell in this category, this bettype may very well be one that donors deploy too frequently. Thereis also the very real threat that donors will be hesitant to invest inanother donor’s signature bet, leaving the founding donor as themain source of enduring support. Birthright Israel, a nonprofit thatworks to ensure the future of the Jewish people by strengtheningJewish identity, Jewish communities, and connection with Israel,managed this risk by recruiting a group of 15 co-founding donorsto contribute a million dollars a year for five years.
4. Give to an Aggregator
Intermediaries that aggregate and strategically deploy resources(aggregators)—like the Robin Hood Foundation, Jewish federations,and community foundations across the United States—are frequentrecipients of big bets. This approach offers donors several advantages—chief among them leveraging the aggregator’s strategic andgrantmaking expertise. Donors, in essence, outsource the process ofdeveloping strategies, searching for a worthy recipient, figuring outhow to structure the deal, and creating and tracking metrics that willtell them if the gift is making a difference. Aggregation also allows adonor’s big bet to be combined with the donations of others, to makean impact that might not be possible with even one very large gift.
These are exactly the benefits that the David and Lucile PackardFoundation reaped from its big bet on the Energy Foundation, anaggregator that promotes sustainable energy and energy efficiency.The late David Packard had deep interests in both China and environmentalwork. As co-founder of Hewlett-Packard Corp., he wasone of the first US businessmen to develop relationships with China,and in his philanthropy supported a myriad of efforts to conserveand protect the earth’s natural systems. After his death in 1996,the Packard Foundation’s board built on these interests by helpingChina explore ways to reduce air pollution and become more energyefficient. The Packard Foundation’s initial $25 million commitmentto the Energy Foundation between 1999 and 2002, plus substantialongoing annual support, allowed it to create a Beijing office staffedentirely by Chinese nationals that has made more than 1,500 grantstotaling more than $230 million. That work has helped China becomethe leading global investor in wind, solar, and electric vehicles.
An aggregator can offer efficiency, scale, and even learning andcamaraderie, but for some donors it may create too much distancebetween them and the work they are supporting. While the bestaggregators are able to involve donors significantly in their work (forexample, by engaging them in strategy development or grantee selection),it may not deliver the same satisfaction as investing directly. Inaddition, for some particular goals, strong aggregators may not exist—and indeed donors sometimes found new ones to fill the gap.
5. Build a Field
In most areas of social change, no one organization is going tosolve a complex problem. Nor is any solution so clear that a singleleader or entity can chart the exact path to a full-scale solution.By investing in building a field, a big bettor can focus on a singleoverarching goal, but encourage and align multiple operators andpathways to achieve that goal. Fields ripe for this sort of investmenttend to be ones where viable ongoing funding models exist but servicedelivery is fragmented, important ideas or practices are not inbroad use, and competitive dynamics do not seem to push towardimproved outcomes.
This was the case for the impact investing field in 2008, whenThe Rockefeller Foundation set out (in parallel with seminal effortsby the Omidyar Network and later by others collectively investingbillions of dollars into the field) to strengthen it. Rockefellersaw the field’s lack of cohesiveness as a major constraint to itsgrowth and efficacy. The foundation committed to deploying $38million over the next five years. Its investments included coiningthe term “impact investing” and developing it into a brand ofsorts, creating common standards and measures to help guide thefield’s many actors, and scaling intermediary organizations thataggregate investors and connect them with investment opportunities.Perhaps its most defining move was to establish the GlobalImpact Investing Network as a prominent platform for sharingknowledge throughout the field. These diverse efforts paid off. A2012 evaluation concluded that The Rockefeller Foundation hadbeen instrumental in propelling the field’s “good progress overthe past four years, with [the field’s] leaders coalescing around acommon understanding of impact investing, mobilizing significantnew pools of private and public capital, and putting in place initialindustry infrastructure.”
Compared to some of the other types of big bets, field buildingcan require a much longer time horizon. This means that buildinga field typically takes not only a lot of money but also a lot of time,and a willingness to stay involved for the mid-course correctionsthat will almost always be necessary in such a complex effort. Butfor funders willing and able to engage in this way, the payoff in termsof societal benefit can be huge.
6. Advance Institutional Research
Of all the big bet types on our list, this is the one that comes closestto blurring the line between big bets on social change and whatwe have termed “institutional giving”—large gifts to support universities,hospitals, and cultural institutions. But we include thiscategory as a way to advance social change for a reason. There aresome problems where research to reframe our understanding of theproblem or to advance the thinking on how to solve the problem canbe the key to creating change in the world.
Such was the case when, in 2011, Silicon Valley investor RobertE. King and his wife Dorothy donated $150 million to Stanford Universityto create the Stanford Institute for Innovation in DevelopingEconomies (Seed) aimed at alleviating poverty in developing nations. The need Seed aims to fill is deeper understanding of the challengesfaced by entrepreneurs and businesses in developing economies, toinform the design of effective poverty-alleviation interventions.“The relationships the university has in Silicon Valley, the range ofexpertise it has among its professors—it can’t be replicated,” saidDorothy King at the time. “The university can make our money morefruitful than we could on our own.” In 2015, Seed engaged nine differentStanford departments and schools in 19 research projects, in19 countries around the globe.
If gaining knowledge is critical to having impact, it makes senseto work with the large institutions that have the most impressivetrack record of developing that type of knowledge. In fact, fundingfor such core research drove the Green Revolution between the1930s and 1960s, saving more than 1 billion people from starving todeath. But there is a potential downside to this type of big bet: giftsto institutions with broader mandates run the risk of serving moreas incremental dollars than in advancing a particular social changegoal that may not be an important part of the institution’s missionand goals. It can be hard to affect the focus of complex entities likeuniversities where funding is fungible and purposes broad. Historytells us it can be done, however, when donor and researcher objectivesare properly aligned.
7. Endow an Organization
Endowing an organization can powerfully advance its long-termability to address a critical, persistent need. This is particularly truefor organizations with an underlying funding model that doesn’tenable them to be sustainable without philanthropic support. It’salso true for organizations with volatile revenue streams, such asgovernment or philanthropically-funded youth-serving nonprofits.The reliable, unrestricted revenue an endowment throws off canhelp this type of organization weather policy changes or choppygrant funding. Even if an endowment covers just a small portionof an organization’s budget, it still can help stabilize finances orsupport work that is hard to raise funds for.
Consider the experience of the social policy research organizationMDRC. At first blush, its endowment might appear to be ofrelatively minor importance, covering fewer than 2 percent of itsroughly $100 million annual budget. But “it is the highest leveragefunding we have,” says MDRC president Gordon Berlin. “It is ourprimary source of flexible dollars for disseminating what we learnto inform policy and practice, doing strategic planning, investing innew research methods, and seeding the development of new programideas—the very things that no one else will pay for.”
A $100 million endowment can translate, fairly conservatively,to a perpetuity flow of $5 million. If it’s hard to find social changenonprofits well suited to rapidly deploying $100 million worth ofgiving, it may be much easier to find such groups that can effectivelyuse $5 million per year on the causes that philanthropistsmost prioritize. Many donors are hesitant about endowment giftsto social change organizations. Among their chief concerns are thatthe organization will end up doing something you wouldn’t want tosupport, and the belief that you could invest the funds for a higherrate of return than the organization could. But the alternative to anendowment—namely a series of individual grants—comes at a veryreal cost to the nonprofit. There’s the extra time needed to cultivateongoing grants, and the risk that annual gifts will cease, constrainingthe organization’s ability to plan long-term or be ambitious.
8. Wage an Advocacy Campaign
For many of society’s biggest problems, lasting solutions requirepolicy or cultural change. In these cases, waging an advocacy campaigncan be the right approach. History tells us that big bets canplay a crucial role in such efforts. A number of high profile, successfulsocial movements, such as the rejuvenation of conservatism in the1970s and 80s, and LGBT rights in the last decade, received big betfunding. More than 70 percent of the social movements we studiedreceived at least one big bet that was critical to success.Consider Lyda Hill’s big bet on the Pew Charitable Trusts toaddress antibiotic resistance. A long-standing Pew funder, Hill hasgiven the trust more than $35 million to support a variety of issueareas, including antibiotic resistance. The US Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention estimates that infections that are resistantto antibiotics (because of their overuse) sicken at least 2 millionAmericans every year—23,000 terminally. To stem this tide, Pewhas worked to end farming practices that regularly give antibioticsto healthy animals, reduce unnecessary antibiotic use in health care,and promote the development of new antibiotics.
In agriculture, for example, Pew’s efforts were key to getting theimportant stakeholders (public health advocates, consumers, the USFood and Drug Administration (FDA), and animal producers) to worktogether to develop solutions. Sally O’Brien, senior vice presidentat Pew, characterizes Hill’s role through it all as, “a constant cheerleader,investor, and driver of this journey in a variety of ways. Wehave a shared vision for the work, and her support (both financialand non-financial) has been integral to its success.” The effort hashelped spur the FDA’s improved management of antibiotic use byanimal producers and to prompt the retail food industry—includinggiants like McDonalds and Tysons—to begin reducing the useof animals that have been fed unnecessary antibiotics.The biggest challenge with this type of big bet is the risk of failure.On many societal issues, particularly those that are culturallyor politically charged, it can be very hard to move the needle. Thegun control and pro-life movements are cases in point. Money can’tbuy change if the opposing groups lack common ground and thepolitical will isn’t there. On the other hand, as the marriage equalitymovement (also fueled in part by a big bet) demonstrated, early“failures” may be essential to softening the ground for later success.This is especially true when the path to success consists of manysmall wins—instead of hinging on a singular, major legislative orjudicial victory.
9. Provide Growth Capital
In the social sector, “growth capital” is often used quite loosely tomean a lot of money. But when used accurately, the term describessomething specific and real: a one-time infusion of capital that ismore akin to investment dollars in the business world. The recipientdoesn’t fall back down to its original state after the growth capitalfunds are spent, but rather sustains itself at the new, higher plane.
Consider the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation’s (EMCF)investments in Youth Villages, a national nonprofit that serves youthinvolved with the foster care, juvenile justice, and mental health systems. Once Youth Villages is established in a state, the greatmajority of its operational funding comes from government. But thenon-recurring and often substantial costs of getting Youth Villagesestablished in the first place can rarely be covered with governmentfunding. That’s been the purpose of the multiple growth-capital bigbets EMCF has made on Youth Villages, and also of the $40 millionEMCF helped secure from 11 co-investors in 2008 as part of itsGrowth Capital Aggregation Pilot. In 2015, with Youth Villages readyfor another tranche of growth capital, a major new co-investmentfund called Blue Meridian Partners, spearheaded by EMCF and 11other philanthropists, invested an additional $36.1 million (the firstpart of a potentially larger investment of up to $200 million) so thatYouth Villages and its partners could provide high-quality services tonearly all of the 23,000 US youth who age out of foster care annually.
Growth capital isn’t just for expanding an organization’s reach.It can also be used to improve a nonprofit organization’s internaloperations. Take IT investments, for example. The Anne Ray CharitableTrust gave more than $30 million between 2012 and 2017 tohelp The Nature Conservancy (TNC) upgrade its core technologysystems. “Competing funding priorities can lead to underinvestmentin technology and core infrastructure,” says Mark Tercek,TNC CEO and president. “Anne Ray understood this challenge andmade a very generous grant that allowed us to modernize our systems.It was an enormously strategic investment that will pay bigconservation dividends for generations to come.”
As successful as these investments have been, not all nonprofitsare suitable candidates for growth capital. The strategy only workswhen the nonprofit develops infrastructure and operations that willstill generate increased impact even after the growth capital is spent.
10. Run a Competition
Many philanthropists feel tremendous urgency to solve pressingsocietal problems—like poverty, disease, and environmental degradation—yet many do not see solutions at hand. A competitionoffers them the chance to galvanize the best thinkers to find solutionsor take bold leaps. It is also among the flashiest strategies inphilanthropy.
Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge is one of an increasingnumber of high-profile philanthropic competitions. More than750 cities in 47 countries have competed for a chance to win a grandprize of $5 million and four $1 million awards, plus coaching andtechnical support, to implement their ideas. The prize also givescities public recognition as leaders in innovation and a chance toparticipate in a network of municipal innovators. Past grand prizewinners include Providence, R.I. (for increasing the number ofwords that young low-income children hear at home every day) andBarcelona (for using a new digital platform to reduce social isolationamong the city’s growing population of elders).
Competitions unleash creative energy, but can also producegreat waste—all the effort put in by the “losers.” This puts a realpremium on designing competitions so that even those that don’twin move their organizations or fields forward. Bloomberg designedthe Mayors Challenge to raise all applicants’ awareness and competencyaround a set of 21st century skills, such as using data to defineproblems and prototyping solutions. Bloomberg also provides postcompetitiontechnical assistance to any finalist (including thosethat do not win one of the five grants) that continues to work onits idea. They’ve seen numerous non-winning ideas move forwardor inform the way cities ultimately tackle issues. The challenges ofscaling up programs can also limit the ultimate impact of competitions.Even if the winner creates what seems to be a great answer, itmay go nowhere if the results aren’t replicable or if it lacks a viablebusiness model. Competitions work best where a new idea or policyreally can unlock durable change.
Accelerating Progress
When on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seatto a white passenger on a Montgomery, Ala. bus, she became anicon of and inspiration to the Civil Rights movement. At least halfa dozen less well known but equally brave activists took similaractions. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund built on their courage topursue justice in court. Less than one year after Rosa Park’s valiance,the US Supreme Court upheld Browder vs. Gayle, stating that theenforced separation of whites and blacks violates the Constitutionof the United States. The story is iconic. Less well known is that thefunds that fueled the NAACP’s disciplined legal strategy came frombold philanthropists. Among them was Edith Stern, daughter of thephilanthropic hero we cited before, Julius Rosenwald.
Throughout our history, a number of big bets have changed theworld. And, while giving generously has become an increasing normamong the wealthiest, making big bets on our toughest problemshas not yet become common. Not all donors have a family heritage,like Edith Stern’s, to guide their path. But the more well known thestories and pathways become, the more these rare acts can becomenormal. We hope that deepening understanding of these 10 ways tobet big on social change will accelerate that process.