Julia Stasch steps down this week as head of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, one of the nation’s wealthiest philanthropies.
But she is keeping closely involved in one of the biggest priorities of her tenure: 100&Change, a competition that allowed any organization, no matter how big or small, to devise a great idea for social change and have a chance to win $100 million.
Stasch will chair a new nonprofit that seeks broad philanthropic support for the ideas pitched in the contest. Her hope is that wealthy donors who currently aren’t inspired to give as generously as they could will throw their support behind high-potential ideas that didn’t win the grand prize.
Such bold ideas marked Stasch’s tenure as she reduced the number of grant-making areas where MacArthur works and put priority on “big bets” like curbing climate change and overhauling the criminal-justice system.
Stasch joined the foundation in 2001 and served as vice president for U.S. programs before being picked for the top job in 2014. Previously, she served as chief of staff to former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and as chief executive of a Chicago community-development bank.
As she hands the reins of MacArthur to John Palfrey, Stasch talked to the Chronicle about her time leading the grant maker, what she learned, the challenges of being a foundation president in the Trump era, and what she sees ahead for philanthropy.
What it was like becoming president of the foundation after serving there in other leadership roles? What did you learn that you didn’t fully appreciate in management previously?
When I stepped into the president’s role, I needed to have the full span view of the enterprise. It made me intolerant of the parochial view individuals might express. I thought, it’s not just me who has to have a more enterprise view, it’s the entire leadership of the foundation.
That’s why when we have a leadership meeting of senior staff, in my head, I’m asking each of them to think about the best interests of the foundation as a whole, what it needs to be impactful, how it needs to fit comfortably in the ecosystem of philanthropy in this country.
Sometimes that means a greater priority for one aspect of the foundation over the other, and that’s OK. The foundation is a better place than it might have been when each of us, myself included, was pretty singularly focused on our own particular areas of interest.
The number-one priority when I moved into the presidency was to narrow the number of things that we were working on for greater impact. We have been in the process of bringing to a close 13 areas of work, which is a substantial amount of investment in relationships and grantees and geographies.
Confronting the fact across the foundation that we had to narrow the focus of our money, our leadership, our time, and our reputation brought us together. A hortatory effort on my part — “Let’s all be one” — would not have been as successful.
What has been your biggest accomplishment at MacArthur?
There’s been real change in how we have thought about and implemented evaluation in the foundation. At the midpoint through an initiative, we ask, “How are we doing? Does it require any tweaks or midcourse corrections?” Then at the end, we have a summited evaluation and look back and say, “Did what we supported actually have the hoped-for outcome?”
We have a need for live intelligence and constant adaptation. We have brought on for each of our areas of work at the very beginning what we’re calling a learning partner — an independent third-party evaluator.
They are there from the very beginning, helping us sharpen our theory of change and monitor the evolving landscape.
But, most important, their role is to constantly prompt us to challenge our assumptions and to not let us fall in love with what we decided to do.
It’s costly, but I think it’s an administrative expense that we have discovered is essential to make.
Large foundations like MacArthur are coming under a lot of criticism these days that they’re not in sync with the grantees that they support. Has the response been adequate?
It’s all part of that much larger trend in the loss of trust in institutions. While we can rebut some of the specifics, I think it’s important that we, as philanthropic leaders, pay attention to the larger narrative that is emerging from the critique.
We should challenge the longstanding way that we operate. We should challenge the way that we interact with organizations and communities. We should say things like, “Are we listening enough?”
There is a lot of awareness and a fair amount of self-critique.
At MacArthur, we were saddened by the fact that some of our historical practices were perpetuating funding to larger organizations or funding, in the case of the arts, to more traditional performances and exhibitions. We’ve opened up the aperture to other voices, other forms of performance, other genres, other experiences.
What can a foundation do to find those blind spots? Is it a force of will kind of thing? Or does it have to result in different hiring practices and a different makeup of the board?
The staff as a whole needs to embrace the notion of challenging practices and assumptions. They have to be in conversations with people with other viewpoints, people with provocative points of view, people who push them out of their comfort zone.
It requires that we interrogate our decisions and actions to ensure that they enhance the conditions in which justice can thrive. And then that we also reject and challenge the structures, systems, and practices that reinforce an unjust status quo or produce unjust outcomes.
I chose the word “interrogate” very purposely because the notion of interrogation has a hard edge to it, that the words “like,” “consider,” or “explore” do not. I think interrogate requires an active question: Why are we doing it that way?
Looking back on the decision to focus on so-called big bets, what’s been the impact so far?
It was absolutely the right decision. Even though money is not the sole determinant of outcome, the ability to invest more deeply is an important ingredient in potentially greater impact.
If you’re really working on too many things, you can’t be a good, thoughtful, always-there partner. So it’s more than the money. It’s all the other things that a foundation can bring to the table, and fewer things let you be a more effective, more in-the-moment, partner.
The first strategy review of what we call the big bets is coming up in December. I don’t want to pre-empt that, but I do see some encouraging signs in virtually every area that we’re working in the big bets, and it’s only four areas: criminal justice in the U.S.; the rule of law and anti-corruption in Nigeria; global climate; and reducing nuclear risk.
Many of us lament every day the withdrawal of U.S. leadership on climate, but a tiny silver lining is that it has galvanized not only the environmental movement but also business interests.
And there seems to be a very, very high degree of local political will in counties and cities in this country to actually make their local criminal-justice system more fair.
What are the expectations of being a foundation leader in the Trump era? Are they different?
The current political era demands a heightened sense of urgency. When you are working in a political and policy environment that is supportive and sympathetic, you can pay attention to the long term. But in an environment of concern that gains made in the past are fragile and could easily be eroded, you’re less focused on positive change in the future than defensively focused on securing progress that has already been achieved.
As part of the narrowing down, the foundation wrapped up a lot of its campaign-finance and elections integrity work. I’m wondering if a lot of your investments in media in some respect take the place of that, as a bulwark for democracy?
Our democracy work is now singularly focused on journalism and media as an essential component of a responsible and responsive democracy. The work has continued to evolve, and now it’s not just an effort to sustain the vehicles of communication, civic engagement, and information but an effort to say, Whose voice is heard? How broadly heard are the views of people from communities that have not been heard in the past?
So what are you up to next?
I will be the chair of the board of Lever for Change, the new nonprofit that MacArthur has created, an affiliate of MacArthur. A lesson from 100&Change was that there were many terrific proposals that did not get selected for the 100&Change award. So we want to match philanthropists with solid proposals to increase the amount of dollars that flow into social change.
We’re going to market these proposals to other philanthropists and hopefully change the dynamics, sometimes disappointing dynamics, that surround competitions, which is a single winner and a lot of nonwinners. And to change that dynamic to say, Look at all the terrific proposals that are surfacing from competitions.
We’ll have top vetted proposals that will match up directly with the interests of other philanthropists.
There’s a lot of money on the sidelines right now. Lots of philanthropic money. It almost as a default goes to the individual’s university or the local hospital. Not that those aren’t truly worthy, but they don’t match up sometimes with the social-impact desires of philanthropists.
Note: This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Alex Daniels covers foundations, donor-advised funds, fundraising research, and tax issues for the Chronicle. Earlier this year, he wrote about MacArthur’s choice of John Palfrey to be president and about MacArthur’s decision to double its 100&Change reward to $200 million. Email Alex or follow him on Twitter .
