Sam Gill, Doris Duke Foundation: ‘Change the Idea Landscape’

Sam Gill

Before Sam Gill took the top job at the Doris Duke Foundation, he spent more than a decade overseeing grant making at the Knight Foundation, where he was witness to plenty of philanthropy trends. These include the recent embrace of trust-based philanthropy, which seeks to give more decision-making power to grantees, which are presumably closer to the issues and people they support than wealthy foundations.

While many foundations are heeding calls to give money and then get out of the way, Gill thinks they should take a more active role. He says that because foundations aren’t accountable to voters or the broader public, they have a responsibility to become subject-matter experts with a definite point of view.

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“The ultimate thing we want to do is to change the idea landscape,” Gill says.

At the Doris Duke Foundation, which Gill has led since 2021, that means supporting innovations in medical research, the performing arts, and children’s health, as well as building bridges with the U.S. Muslim community.

Gill sees some good coming out of trust-based philanthropy, but he believes foundation leaders must seek out a broad range of views rather than taking grantees’ word as gospel.

“The dialogue between funders and grantees is not the sum total of the dialogue that’s happening in any field,” he says.

Like any investor, he says, foundations must have a clear view of risks and desired returns. In some cases, the goals of a nonprofit might overlap with a foundation’s. But nonprofit leaders will always want the least-restrictive, highest-dollar grant it can receive.

Foundations can’t afford to think that way, Gill says. No matter how much cash a foundation has, it still has to be a responsible steward of that wealth.

“That doesn’t mean that we want social change on the cheap,” he says. “But every dollar we put in one place is a dollar we can’t put in another place. “