Bill and Melinda Gates, Jeff Skoll, and several other superwealthy philanthropists are pooling at least a half-billion dollars to upend social systems that trap people in poverty and contribute to poor health. They said they plan to concentrate on a few causes they believe can make a difference and make pledges that will last at least five years. To take part in the newly formed Co-Impact, donors must contribute at least $25 million. Richard Chandler, Romesh and Kathy Wadhwani, and the Rockefeller Foundation joined with the Gateses and Mr. Skoll as founding donors of the global effort.
Rockefeller will also provide additional support to run the group’s London and New York offices and pay the salaries of at least 10 employees. In addition, the Indian entrepreneur Nandan Nilekani and his wife, Rohini, co-founders of the EkStep Foundation, will support the effort’s technology needs.
Co-Impact grew out of the Giving Pledge, a commitment started in 2010 by the Gateses and Warren Buffett. The high-end philanthropists who sign the pledge (now a total of 170) have promised to give away at least half their fortunes.
Co-Impact has secured pledges of about half of the $500 million it aims to raise from its core donors. Some members have pledged more than $25 million, but specific amounts each donor provided were not made available to The Chronicle.
An Unusual Collaboration
The collaboration among so many of the world’s richest people is unusual, as is their promise that they won’t scatter their money in short-term commitments to lots of charities. Also noteworthy: the donors’ acknowledgment that giving to date hasn’t accomplished as much as it could and that a new approach is essential.
Romesh Wadhwani, a Silicon Valley technology investor worth $3.1 billion, according to Forbes, says he and fellow Giving Pledge members who are joining Co-Impact believe in “learning while giving.”
He says to do that he wanted to tap into the expertise of other Giving Pledge members and says their knowledge may be just as important as their cash.
“Job creation is a domain I know particularly well,” he says, “but I don’t know as much about health care or education. I get to learn about things beyond the scope of what my philanthropy does, and I also get to share my ideas.”
New Approach
Olivia Leland, who was founding director of the Giving Pledge until she left to develop and lead Co-Impact, says the key idea behind the collaboration is to break the mold of traditional grant making. Historically, donors have tended to support a single organization, say a hospital, to treat a disease outbreak.
Under the approach favored by Co-Impact, donors would provide start-up capital and then enlist businesses, nonprofits, governments, and international organizations to get involved to improve health education, advocate for new health-care policies, monitor the results, and much more.
Co-Impact anticipates making three to six planning grants of up to $1 million each by the end of 2017. Early next year, some of those pilot projects will receive five-year grants of up to $50 million. The process will be repeated several times over the next two or three years.
Donors put their money into a single fund that Co-Impact will dispense, sparing other philanthropies that want to join the need to do their own due diligence. What’s more, nonprofits don’t have to submit applications to each of the philanthropists involved in Co-Impact.
Co-Impact is currently selecting who it wants to support, but eventually it plans to accept applications.
To get support, nonprofits will have to prove they can significantly improve health, education, or economic opportunity, gather partners to put a plan into effect, and demonstrate their ability to achieve success in aiding many people over the long haul.
Shared Lessons
Ms. Leland says that beyond making a difference in solving big problems, Co-Impact intends to share what it learns along the way.
She says she hopes that will encourage more donors to participate either directly in pooling their money with Co-Impact or taking on similar projects independently.
Each year, she says, Co-Impact will gather its network of donors, whether they contributed directly to the group or to programs the group supports, to discuss results.
She says she has had preliminary discussions with Wang Zhenyao, dean of the China Global Philanthropy Institute, a research and networking group of Chinese and Chinese-American donors co-founded by Bill Gates to encourage investment from Chinese philanthropists. She’s also held conversations with Neera Nundy, co-founder of Dasra, an Indian philanthropy collaborative.
“This is not going to be the answer to everything,” she says. “But if we can have more of these, and we connect and share what we’re learning, it would go a long way to having more impact.”
The approach Co-Impact is taking has already had success elsewhere in philanthropy, Ms. Leland says.
For instance, she says, the fight for marriage equality in the United States changed a fundamental definition in the legal system and was successful in large part because philanthropists and advocacy groups developed a common plan of action.
She also points to Liberia, where the nonprofit Last Mile Health worked with international health organizations and the national government to improve primary health care.
Critics of the Plan
Some philanthropy observers are not sure that the focus on tackling big problems will produce stronger results than focusing on support for single institutions.
Megadonors should beware of chasing “each new bright shining object that comes along,” says Howard Husock, vice president for research at the Manhattan Institute, a think tank that promotes free-market ideals.
Mr. Husock, who spoke without knowledge of the particulars of the Co-Impact plan, warns that it’s impossible to predict whether philanthropy can have a positive impact on messy global problems.
“The rhetoric is very attractive,” he says. “Donors want to believe they’re doing big things. One fears there is a grandiosity associated with that.”
William Schambra, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, is also skeptical of the approach, known as “systems change” philanthropy, saying it is nothing but a “trendy, hollow concept.”
Philanthropists should devote their attention to high-performing nonprofits, he wrote in an email, rather than believing they can “make the slightest dent in a megastructure that eats entire elected political administrations for breakfast.”
Rajiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, rebuts the critics, in part by noting the much-heralded work to fight famine undertaken by the philanthropy he took over this year.
The Green Revolution, in which Rockefeller worked with national governments, academic researchers, international organizations, and other donors to improve agricultural yields, got under way in the 1940s to spur collaboration among government, business, and philanthropy to tackle many sides of a problem.
What’s new about Co-Impact, he says, is that individual philanthropists are inviting other donors and foundations to jointly support projects with the most promise and share insights.
“We’re not the first ones who have done it,” he says. “But by making that approach available and accessible to more philanthropists, we can accelerate the process.”
Communication Is Key
The Skoll and Gates foundations each chipped in $250,000 to help develop Co-Impact’s strategy. Liz Diebold, a principal at Skoll, says Co-Impact offers a way for new philanthropists to find mentors as they seek ways to make a dent in big problems. She says donors who have heard about the effort are already asking to join in.
“Some of them have asked, Where do I write a check,” she says.
The money at the group’s disposal is impressive. But the key to any effort to change a system isn’t just how much cash they can spend, says Jeffrey Walker, co-author of The Generosity Network.
Mr. Walker, an investor and philanthropist who has promoted the development of a new kind of philanthropic leader, a “systems entrepreneur,” says the key to the success of any attempt to change deeply rooted problems is to be able to communicate with a range of other players in the field.
Grant makers, including the Gates Foundation, learned that lesson when it tried to push to expand charter schools in the United States. Gates and other donors introduced charters in many districts across the country. But that didn’t lead to broad national success, he notes.
“No one was really talking to each other,” he says of the stalled charter effort. “Everybody was just trying to sell their answer.”
In the past two years, some major education grant makers, including Gates and the Walton Family Foundation, have broadened their approach to emphasize changes at regular public schools and the more involved task of building neighborhood and public support.
The approach embraces a need to identify everything about a problem — the entire system — including teacher development, public advocacy, neighborhood outreach and communications, student health. and data and evaluation and share it with other partners in the effort.
Keeping Track
For Mr. Wadhwani, keeping close tabs on each of Co-Impact projects will be key. Each grantee will have to meet clearly defined milestones and keep careful track of predetermined achievement measures. The systems approach, Mr. Wadhwani says, forces donors to keep careful watch on sticking points.
When donors gather, he says, they will decide if it is necessary to step up funding in response to a new opportunity or an unexpected challenge or to pull the plug on a project altogether.
In the coming months, Mr. Wadhwani plans to visit some of the pilot programs to get a closer look.
“That’s the best way for me to continue to develop my philanthropic instincts,” he says. “The first rule of any business is to spend time with your customers.”
