Like many wealthy people, Amr Al-Dabbagh has donated millions of dollars to charity. But the Saudi businessman doesn’t issue news releases with eye-popping numbers in the headlines, and he is prickly when asked for details about his giving. He dodges the question and issues the same response each time: “We are about strategic philanthropy, not checkbook philanthropy.”
What he prefers to discuss, and what really gets him excited, he impatiently tells his interviewer, is talking about his efforts to share his experiences as a philanthropist. He considers himself an expert on the subject, thanks largely to his experiences in business and in government. He served two four-year terms as governor and chairman of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority, which works to improve the business environment in the country.
Now he is working to help nonprofit executives make their organizations as successful as possible.
Mr. Al-Dabbagh recently helped start Philanthropy University, an online education program for nonprofit executives, organized in partnership with the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. He says he hopes to help charity leaders improve the lives of 100 million people in developing countries by 2020.
The program’s courses are being taught by some of the top people in the nonprofit world, including Paul Brest, former president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Jessica Jackley, one of the founders of the microloan organization Kiva and the crowdfunding platform ProFounder.
Mr. Al-Dabbagh teaches one of the courses. He believes the concept of entrepreneurship has been “hijacked” for use exclusively in the business world, and he aims to broaden its use through his leadership course.
“We should be open-minded in terms of applying entrepreneurial practices to areas other than starting a business, creating value, and taking it public,” he says. “We need to look at it from a holistic, 360-degree perspective. It should be applied to all aspects of life, from philanthropy to family, and business and the public sector.”
He hopes to teach nonprofit leaders how to set clear and specific goals and design organizations to achieve them. He also stresses the importance of staff development, something Mr. Al-Dabbagh says is easy for cash-strapped nonprofits to overlook.
“I always look at people as an investment, not as a cost,” he says.
He incorporates case studies and his own experiences into the class, as well as material from a book he is writing, Omnipreneurship: an Organized Approach to Living a Life of Meaning, which is due out early next year.
Diverse Audience
Philanthropy University has proved popular with nonprofit leaders: About 195,000 people in 138 countries have signed up for courses, with most of the students from India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and the United States.
He supports Philanthropy University through his family’s Al-Dabbagh Group, a private Saudi-based conglomerate that owns food, housing, packaging, and petroleum companies. Mr. Al-Dabbagh is chairman and chief executive. So far, he says, he has directed more than $2 million to Philanthropy University and plans to spend “tens of millions” over the next five years.
Mr. Al-Dabbagh’s philanthropic impulses were instilled early in his life. His late father, Abdullah Mohammed Ali Al-Dabbagh, was from a middle-class background and traveled to the United States on an Eisenhower Fellowship, where he met other up-and-coming young leaders from around the world. He started the Al-Dabbagh Group in 1962 and later served as minister of agriculture for Saudi Arabia.
The senior Mr. Al-Dabbagh instilled in his seven children a set of principles linking business profits and philanthropy: “giving, earning, and sustaining.” He required his family members — the company’s shareholders — to direct substantial amounts of the profits they enjoyed to charity.
A Giving ‘Ecosystem’
This “ecosystem,” as the younger Mr. Al-Dabbagh calls it, is connected to the family’s Islamic beliefs.
“We believe that the money is God’s money and we are trusted with his money,” says Mr. Al-Dabbagh, who is 49 and the father of five children. “We believe that the more we give, the more we earn, and that giving unites us as a family, more even than earning.”
For decades, the Al-Dabbaghs supported big global aid groups, like Unicef. Today, most of their giving is through the Stars Foundation, which Mr. Al-Dabbagh founded in 2001 to manage the family’s giving.
The London-based philanthropy distributed about $2.8 million last year, according to the Charity Commission, the regulator for charities in England and Wales. Its assets last year were about $6 million. The grant maker supports nonprofits that help children and vulnerable people, often through business partnerships, in dozens of countries in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America.
The Next Generation
The family’s philanthropic and financial focus is enshrined in a legal document intended to ensure that future generations don’t lose sight of the family’s values. The “Family Protocol” consists of 24 chapters intended to preserve the family’s business, fortune, and reputation for giving. Or, as Mr. Al-Dabbagh likes to say, it’s intended to help the family avoid going from “building and making to milking and auctioning off” the family business.
The protocols were drawn up by Mr. Al-Dabbagh’s late father, and the third generation of his heirs must sign the document to secure their share of the business.
Furthermore, Mr. Al-Dabbagh and his siblings recently took another step to ensure that the next generation stays the course. They established the Club of 32, so named because there are 32 Al-Dabbagh nephews and nieces, ranging in age from 4 to 40. The goal of the club, says Mr. Al-Dabbagh, is to groom the third generation to become leaders in whatever fields they pursue — as well as committed philanthropists.
“By doing so, we will ensure that they remain responsible stakeholders of our giving and earning practices,” he says. “The whole idea is to throw their attention to the culture and ensure that culture is cemented in their DNA.”
