President Trump’s name was barely spoken at the Skoll World Forum. Nor was there much discussion of his “America First” foreign policy, his plans to curb federal domestic spending, or his rollback of the Obama administration’s climate policy.
But Mr. Trump’s long shadow was everywhere in this ancient English city this week, from splashy plenary sessions that showcased immigrants and refugees to the hallway chatter among philanthropists, nonprofit leaders, and social entrepreneurs worried about how to respond to the new administration.
Of those who spoke at the forum, held Tuesday through Friday, few said they plan dramatic changes in the wake of Mr. Trump’s election and the United Kingdom’s “Brexit” vote to leave the European Union. But many expect to adjust their programs by, for example, expanding their portfolio of causes, spending more inside the United States, or defending vulnerable groups, including immigrants and Muslims.
For example, the Skoll Foundation, which organizes the annual forum, is considering new programs in rural America and in support of immigrants while stepping up its existing efforts in global health and climate finance — all in response to Mr. Trump.
“We’ve had some blind spots. One of those is the rural U.S.,” said Sally Osberg, Skoll’s president. “Many of the social entrepreneurs in the developing world work in rural settings. We’re trying to understand how that might work in the U.S.”
Climate-Change Strategy
The Mulago Foundation, which like Skoll has focused on global causes, is also considering making grants in the United States to promote conservation and curb global warming, according to managing director Kevin Starr.
The election “led us to double down on conservation,” he said. “If we come across someone doing something great [on] climate change in the U.S., we’ll look at that.”
Immigration was a running theme of the Skoll event. The opening plenary showcased a lineup of immigrants, children of immigrants, and globalists: Jeff Skoll, the eBay billionaire and the event’s host, who moved from Canada to the United States; Chobani yogurt mogul Hamdi Ulukaya (Turkey to the United States), who has hired hundreds of refugees at his company; Winnie Byanyima (Uganda to Britain), the executive director of Oxfam International; Jim Yong Kim (South Korea to the United States), the president of the World Bank; and surgeon and author Atul Gawande, the founder of health-care nonprofit Ariadne Labs and the son of Indian-American parents.
To underscore the message, the session ended with a rousing performance by Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, a band that emerged out of a West African refugee camps.
Ms. Osberg said the lineup was no accident. “These remarkable human beings have brought incredible gifts to their new countries and to the world,” she said.
People on the Margins
Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, told a philanthropy panel at the forum that Ford intends to reinforce its support for longtime grantees, including civil-rights, civil-liberties, and women’s organizations, with unrestricted, multiyear grants from its $200-million-a-year BUILD fund. BUILD now accounts for more than one-third of Ford’s annual grant making.
“We’re not chasing the shiny new thing,” Mr. Walker said.
While the BUILD fund and the development of Ford’s new $1 billion commitment to mission-based investing predated the election, Mr. Walker said they reflect “the sense of urgency that we should all really feel now. There’s real stuff happening. Bad stuff happening to poor people and people who live on the margins.”
Hungarian-American financier George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the Whitman Institute, a family foundation headquartered in San Francisco, were among grant makers that created rapid-response funds after the election. Laleh Ispahani, acting deputy for U.S. programs at Open Society, said it has committed all of the $10 million set aside for its Communities Against Hate rapid-response program.
For its part, Whitman has made grants to advocacy groups such as Cosecha, which works on behalf of undocumented immigrants, and the Social Transformation Project, which aims to strengthen progressive activists and promote collaboration among them.
Whitman’s board also decided to accelerate the foundation’s plan to spend down its assets, nearly all of which will be disbursed before Mr. Trump leaves office. “All of us were terribly concerned for the future of American democracy,” said Pia Infante, Whitman’s co-executive director.
‘Political Philanthropy’
Concerns about the state of American democracy arose repeatedly during the Skoll event, most forcefully in an hour-long presentation by Michael Porter, the celebrated Harvard Business School professor.
Promising not to mention “the T name,” Mr. Porter argued that two decades of political gridlock have slowed or halted economic and social progress in the United States. Government, he argued, has been captured by special interests and extreme partisans on both the Republican and Democratic sides.
Mr. Porter called for a new “political philanthropy” aimed at reforming and restoring democracy by, for example, ending single-party primaries and taking redistricting out of the political process. “We’re going to have to take some critical steps to take back our democracy,” he declared.
The need to strengthen media institutions was another running theme at Skoll. The Omidyar Network announced at the forum that it will spend $100 million over three years on efforts to close what it called “the global trust deficit” by supporting independent media and investigative reporting, and by combating misinformation and hate speech.
Stephen King, who leads governance and civic-engagement work at Omidyar, called on other funders to follow suit. “We hope to see more people coming to the table,” he said. “This is something that, if we don’t act, we will see the situation getting worse.”
Bono and Don Henley
For all the worries over Mr. Trump’s election and Brexit, as well as the concerns over perennial Skoll Forum issues like global poverty and climate change, there was a decidedly celebratory tone to the event.
Musical performances enlivened each day, and the 1,200 attendees heard from celebrity activists like rock stars Bono and Don Henley.
The upbeat tone of the event is by design, Ms. Osberg said: “We want to shine a light on people doing good and important work, when so much of what gets attention is horrible or trivial.”
Correction: Laleh Ispahani’s title was corrected after it was updated on the Open Society Foundations website.
