The $2 billion Skoll Foundation signaled its desire to speed up its efforts to address the pandemic’s economic fallout, shore up democracy, and advance racial equity by announcing on Tuesday that it has created a new top leadership job. Marla Blow, who led the North America division of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, the credit-card company’s philanthropic arm, has been named president and chief operating officer of the foundation.
The combined president and COO role was created to accelerate the foundation’s efforts in its main grant-making areas: to support inclusive economic growth, address the fallout from the pandemic, shore up democracy and government, further racial justice, and fight climate change, all of which are interconnected, said Don Gips, Skoll Foundation’s CEO.
“In 2019, we decided to put equity at the center of everything we’re doing, and that has been an important part of Marla’s work over the years,” said Gips. “The knowledge and skills she brings will help us multiply our impact.”
Promoting Gains for Workers
Blow’s work at Mastercard focused on promoting economic inclusion and development, especially for those left behind by changes in the economy.
The center is considered a model for corporate philanthropy’s efforts to improve society by creating programs aimed at ensuring working Americans reap the benefits of their labor rather than simply allowing shareholders and corporate executives to gain. It has collaborated over the years with a number of other grant makers, including the Rockefeller Foundation and the Aspen Institute, to help people who are struggling gain financial security and to use data to make economic development more inclusive.
As I’ve gotten to know the philanthropic sector, I’ve been surprised to find the things philanthropy is afraid to engage in.
Blow is also well-known for founding FS Card, a company that provides credit to poor people, especially those with damaged or no credit. She started the company in 2014 after a three-year stint at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a way to offer low-income consumers a sounder alternative to payday lending companies that often charge high interest rates and have been accused of predatory behavior toward some populations.
Blow received attention for raising $40 million in venture capital for FS Card, a rarity at a time when investors were reluctant to fund startups led by women of color. She sold the company in 2018 to Continental Finance Company.
Advancing Economic Mobility
Blow says she was attracted to the role at the Skoll Foundation because she is interested in using philanthropy to change the systems that have not worked to help people become more upwardly mobile — and have, in many cases, made their lives harder.
She sees Skoll as a place where it is possible to use more creative approaches to change those systems. Blow says when she was interviewing for the job, the people she talked to at Skoll, both board members and foundation staff, all shared the same sense of urgency in wanting to build lasting changes in society.
“I’ve migrated over the years of my career toward wanting to have more impact, and I’m ready now to really think about systems change and apply my experience in this space and see how we can make change from a completely philanthropic lens,” said Blow. “The overall experience of building the kind of business I built made me think a lot about our capital systems — what’s the price of capital, and what are the motivations of capital providers — and I think Skoll has an interesting role to play in bringing capital to the table.”
New Approaches
The Skoll Foundation awarded more than $170 million in 2020. The new role and Blow’s appointment to it, says Gips, will allow the foundation to think in different ways about how it carries out and supports it five main grant-making priorities.
Gips says Blow’s experience working for big financial companies and the government and starting her own business aimed at helping low-income people, combined with her experiences as a woman of color, will help the foundation take a more inclusive, real-world approach to what works.
“We have networks of people in both our worlds who are complementary and different, and that will be a help in our work,” says Gips.
If she had any concerns about joining a foundation, Blow says it was primarily over the philanthropic world’s tendency to shy away from investing in or supporting untested programs; small, scrappy, grassroots types of grantees; and grantees led by people who don’t mirror the foundation’s staff and leaders. Skoll seemed different on that front, she says.
“As I’ve gotten to know the philanthropic sector, I’ve been surprised to find the things philanthropy is afraid to engage in,” says Blow. “There is a paradoxical conservatism in the philanthropy space, but with Skoll I think there’s room to take bigger bets.”
