Over the next year, philanthropist Reid Hoffman and his partners at Level for Change will sort through more than 100 proposals to reverse the decline of trust in American institutions. The ideas are the fruits of his $10 million open call announced in December, and the LinkedIn co-founder will eventually pick the one he thinks is best.
But Hoffman believes there is no silver bullet. He hopes this competition will spark new interest — and new funding — for reform of anything from government and public health to higher education and the media.
“All institutions have challenges; they all need renovation,” he told Chronicle of Philanthropy editor-in-chief Andrew Simon. But he worries that anti-institution attacks are eroding democracy itself.
“Attacking these things is frankly kind of deeply undemocratic, deeply anti-American,” he said. “I think what you want to be doing is rebuilding them.”
Hoffman joined The Commons in Conversation, the Chronicle’s interview series with philanthropy leaders and experts to explore the country’s divisions and ways to bring Americans together. Cecilia Conrad, CEO of Lever for Change, which is organizing Hoffman’s competition, talked about the power of contests — like the ones she’s run for MacKenzie Scott and the MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change program.
The open call approach, Conrad said, is an opportunity to discover a lot of promising new ideas — not just the winner. “They are not necessarily the ideas that I would have come up with or that Reid would have come up with. ... So this gives a chance for those ideas to be seen, vetted, heard, and then promoted.”
Hoffman and Conrad also spoke about the role of philanthropy at a time when the Trump administration is cutting funding and, in some cases, denigrating the work of nonprofits.
“I’d like us to do more to be a voice to defend the nonprofit sector,” Conrad said.
Watch the discussion on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s YouTube channel. Below is a lightly edited A.I.-generated interview transcript.
Meeting the Moment
Andrew Simon: Hello, and welcome to the Commons in Conversation. Thanks everyone so much for being here with us today. I’m Andrew Simon, editor in chief of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. And, no, I haven’t been added to any surprise text message threads about national security in recent days. Yet the day is still young here in Seattle.
The Commons is our project that looks at all the ways that nonprofits and foundations can close fissures in our society. This is by gender, generation, geography, race, everything that is keeping our country from getting important things done. We’re very much interested in the efforts of philanthropy and nonprofits to bring people together, strengthen our sense of community, and tackle polarization.
Today we are thrilled to have not one but two guests. With us today: Dr. Cecilia Conrad and Reid Hoffman.
I’ll introduce each of you. Cecilia Conrad is the founder and CEO of Lever for Change and a senior advisor at the MacArthur Foundation. Lever for Change connects donors with problem-solvers to find bold, effective solutions to accelerate social change. Previously, Cecilia led the MacArthur Fellows program.
And we have Reid Hoffman, an entrepreneur, executive, and investor. Reid is the co-founder of LinkedIn and a partner at Greylock. He’s also a co-founder of Inflection AI and Manus AI and host of two podcasts, Masters of Scale and Possible.
Cecilia, Reid: thank you for being here.
Cecilia Conrad: Thank you for having us.
Simon: Let’s get to it. We’d like to discuss the trend of declining trust in institutions and your collective efforts to rebuild that trust. The two of you are partnering on a $10 million open call for organizations working to build and restore public trust in government, the media, public health, universities, and more. And we’ll get to that.
But, Cecilia, I want to start with you. In the current moment, ne of the big conversations in the nonprofit world right now is the uncertainty from threats to federal funding and how foundations and philanthropy can best rise to the occasion. How do you think those on the giving side can best meet the moment?
Conrad: Yes, I’ve been having lots of conversations, both with donors we’ve worked with and also with organizations who are part of the network we’ve created and who’ve done well in our past challenges. And I’ll note a couple of things. The first is that many funders have been quietly developing what their strategy will be. That’s been interpreted a little bit as silence.
But from my conversations, there’s a lot going on to assess what the needs are, where philanthropy can help. In most cases, philanthropy can’t plug a hole that’s been left by government funding. But there are many other needs that nonprofits have.
First of all, there’s sometimes the need for legal and communications help to navigate what these changes and policies are. Some nonprofits could benefit from having support to diversify their revenue streams, to really reassess their business model. To think about ways they might collaborate with other nonprofits, to reduce the overhead burden, and so on. And that’s another space that philanthropists are starting to look where they can bring support to a field overall.
I’d like us to do more to be a voice to defend the nonprofit sector. It’s kind of being maligned a little bit, and this gets a little bit into the context of trust. And yet in an economy like the United States, in a mixed market economy, where we have a fairly thin social network and safety net compared to other countries, the nonprofit sector is really critical part of our overall prosperity of how well our society works.
It does things like provides out-of-school and after-school learning, starting from really local projects — there’s a project here in Chicago that I helped support that’s on pre-college science and engineering — to national projects like Big Bird, who we just saw recently for a focus on television. They provide support for adult workers who want to reskill. They provide support in emergencies.
And so it’s a critical sector that has historically done a lot to help us work well yet.
Simon: And you make a good point because you could arguably include philanthropy and nonprofits as one of the institutions where there’s a lack of trust. That’s creeping in based on the rhetoric right now. So it is a good time to move into this conversation on civic engagement and rebuilding trust. Reid, a lot of your philanthropic giving goes toward civic engagement, democratic institutions. Why have you chosen these issue areas?
Reid Hoffman: One of the things I think is really important for a healthier society is having discourse around what is the case, what should be the case, what could be the case. But also part of the thing that I think we’ve been in kind of this revolutionary moment is being very anti-institution.
Generally speaking, I think most smart people know that all institutions have challenges; they all need renovation. But actually, in fact, an onslaught of attack against the trust in institutions is actually damaging for all of us. It’s actually, you know, kind of reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. And, you know, the consequences of that was a decade of massive starvation and death, among other things.
The French Revolution, you know, which got the guillotine and all the rest, and a number of other places where you go, look, just attacking the institutions is actually, in fact, not good. You want to be renovating, rebuilding. And part of that attack and part of the issue is trust. Like, do you believe in, for example, the institution, the various institutions of science which are trying to navigate things You believe in the various institutions of kind of legal system or or, you know, coherence in our elections and democratic.
And I actually think literally just attacking these things is frankly kind of deeply undemocratic, deeply anti-American. You know, I think what you want to be doing is rebuilding them. So when Cecilia and I were talking about the many different superpowers that Lever for Change brings, we’re like, well, actually, in fact, having this kind of network approach to thinking about how one might be begin to kind of restore, rebuild, or amplify my trust in these institutions.
Right? It’s to look for the really interesting ideas that aren’t in Cecilia’s head, as absolutely smart and brilliant as she is, or in my head. Networks are smarter than people. That’s part of what makes the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Silicon Valley go, because you’re finding the right ideas. So we decided to do a call to the network and then use Lever for Change to organize around networks.
We have networks of smart people doing, you know, evaluation and participation. Part of the reason for nonprofits or other folks to participate in the challenge is not only do we say, “Hey, there’s a prize that I have funded,” but actually it the fact that there’s a network of other donors and people of interest.
And you go, “This is really good; it’s network validated. It didn’t actually win the big prize or didn’t win the prize, but we should introduce them to, you know, Sarah or Bob, because this fits with the kind of things they’re doing.”
Conrad: I want to amplify something that Reid said because one of the major advantages of this approach, the open call approach that we use, is the opportunity for discovery and the opportunity to actually give agency to the organizations out there of all types who have great ideas about how to address these kinds of issues.
But they are not necessarily the ideas that I would have come up with or Reid would have come up or some other foundation would have come up with. So this gives a chance for those ideas to be seen, vetted, heard, and then promoted.
Hoffman: Exactly. And by the way, thank you for using the word “agency.” And I’ve just been on the book tour for my book, Superagency.
Simon: Cecilia, it might be a good time to, for the uninitiated, take a step back and explain how the open call model works. I know you’ve worked with MacKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving on open calls and with Melinda French Gates. You’ve written for the Chronicle about how the open call model can help level the playing field in philanthropy.
So could you talk a bit about how the open call model works.
Conrad: Yes, definitely. We start by working closely with donors to understand an issue that concerns them and to understand what are the key criteria, key evaluation metrics, that they want to look at in deciding what they’d like to fund. And we use that to define an evaluation criteria and a scoring rubric, which we make public and available to anyone who’s thinking about applying.
We then do a lot of work to get the word out, because it’s not open if you don’t tell anyone that it’s open. So we spread the word about this opportunity. We launched in December. We had applications due last week, and we’ve had robust participation over 43 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are represented in the applicant pool.
So we’re really excited about that. So those applications come in and then we usually have a stage that is a form of participatory review where applicants review each other and give feedback to each other. And then we have an expert panel. This is part of the network; we have developed over time a group of people who love participating in our process, reading applications and writing comments, constructive feedback to every single applicant who gets that review.
They score them, and then we end up identifying what seem to be the really best ideas that emerge from this process. And we do some additional kind of analyzes to support the original donor. But we also noted earlier our interest is bringing other funders to the table because we expect to get more than one great idea.
Simon: So what have you learned so far about what makes the model successful and distinct? You’ve alluded to some of that, but I want to go a little deeper.
Conrad: First, there’s not a lot of space in the philanthropic sector for nonprofits to put forth ideas that haven’t been invited by a funder. And so what we find is that many nonprofits are excited about the opportunity. They recognize there’s work in applying, but they see that the benefits outweigh the cost.
Those benefits include the fact that they’ll get feedback on the proposal and an opportunity to be seen. And perhaps if they do really well, an opportunity to be promoted. We also find that the model has worked well because it can adapt to many different types of funders. We’ve worked with big institutions, we’ve worked with small family foundations, we’ve worked with funders whose goal is to kind of make some noise about the work that they’re doing. We’ve worked with funders who’ve wanted to remain kind of anonymous until the very end of the process.
So it’s a model that can supply the backbone support to funders who don’t have staff, because we’ll do that work for them. And we make use of the fact that we’ve already built a network of organizations and funders that continues to grow .
We’ve worked with a funders who have provided support to organizations who’ve applied, and we can use that every time. So it’s a network that continues to grow.
Simon: Question for each of you: What does it look like to fix trust in institutions? What does it look like to rebuild trust? You know, it all sounds ambitious. It certainly sounds like worthy work. But what does that look like in practice to restore trust in government, higher education, media, etc.?
Hoffman: I think part of the reason why we do a network approach is precisely to have a wide range of answers to that question. Questions like: What do you do with local public libraries and kind of feeding civic community? Or is it a media thing where, like we’re doing now, you’re information? Is it a question of curricula and the kind of the metrics that you might popularize and standardize across some industries or institutions?
All of these things are possibilities as tools. But, you know, part of the the point of doing this is that there’s a significant likelihood that even with all of the ideas, you know, that I come to this with this — maybe we do this, maybe we do that — in fact, some great nonprofit will have now gotten a chance to use their expertise, their inventiveness, their ideas to say “We think X, given the work we done, the expertise we have, and this is how it plays.” And that may very well be what the judges go: “Yes, that’s potentially stunning and new.”
And also one other thing to emphasize about this is it allows kind of a almost more of a risk-taking model. I mean, part of the reason why I got involved in Lever for Change from the very beginning was because the notion of take a risk to do something potentially huge is part of what I do as an investor and as a company creator.
And that’s one of the things that I want to see more of in philanthropy, and Lever for Change is doing that. And so that directs back to your question: Maybe, it’s “Let’s identify a thousand tick tock influencers and have a shared program across all of them about the following kinds of things.” And you might go: “That would really work.” But Cecilia, I now take my generic frame going into it and hand it over to you.
Conrad: I think there may be a proposal like that in there. I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I think the first thing I’ll note is that I’m pretty sure there’s no silver bullet here. We are seeing a diverse array of topics among the applicants that we’ve received; civic participation is one area that people have focused on, and trust in science is another one.
It’s a range of topics. In fact, my team, I think, have counted 143 distinct topics that have been raised in there. So when I say there’s no silver bullet, I’m imagining that what will work over the long term across institutions will be multiple types of interventions. And that’s why it’s really, really exciting to think about. We’re going to get these great ideas, and Reid is going to find the one that’s perfect for him. But we have space. We have great opportunities for other funders to take advantage of the work that we’ve already put in, the work the organizations have already put in, to build this out, to be perhaps more of a holistic strategy about how to build trust.
Simon: Reid, you have a background in technology, among other sectors. Are there any underutilized — or maybe not well understood — ways technology could play a role in restoring trust in public institutions? Particularly technologies that can best serve the social sector?
Hoffman: I’ve just been doing my book tour for Superagency. The subtitle is: “What could possibly go right with our AI future.” Given that a lot of the discourse is negative and fearful, I’m trying to move people from AI worries to AI curiosity. And the short answer to your question is that there’s a broad range of possibilities.
But one of the ones that I’ve been advocating most recently is: How do we get people to feel more that A.I. is for them and enabling of them. Part of what I’ve been advocating to governments and to other folks is to say: “If we had a set of agents — like, say, an AI medical agent that could be available 24/7 and run for under $5 an hour, there’s huge benefit for that. I also think that would increase trust, increase the idea, “Is government doing something for me?” The same thing in terms of legal assistance, the same thing in terms of educational systems, etc. etc. Although those I think will be cheaper to run than the medical one because there’s less depth of oracular medical information that needs to be included in it.
I fund Code for America, which, you know, tries to help people figure out how to use the services the government already provides them, you know, whether it’s food stamps or other kinds of things.
When you’re having a positive interaction — positive interaction can be the service, positive interaction can be communication, positive interaction could be attention to you — all of those increase trust, and all of that can be done with technology. And some of it’s done by companies, you know, whether it’s providing search or email or podcasting, video engines or networks of broadcast like on LinkedIn and so forth.
But also I think it can be provided in a number of other ways, too. Now, part of the question is, is to be showing that value. And I think part of the reason why we have a decrease of trust is uncertainty. Plus, our discourse right now tends to be a lot of, you know, “Those bad people, they X.”
That sometimes is important, but it’s also important to say, “Hey, this institution that’s somewhat broken, let’s fix it. Not let’s wrecking ball it.” Because fixing it is, generally speaking, is much, much better than the wrecking ball. Taking wrecking balls to common social institutions tend to be things like the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which is, you know, leads to decades of starvation.
Conrad: I would add on to that, one of the things that I’m intrigued by is the ways in which technology can help with accountability. With tracking what’s happened to that application that you submitted for your passport is the simplest version. But also providing a way that if there is a decision that’s been made, that’s been based on the contributions of lots of people through a comment period or through testimonies that you could actually extract from that, something that could go back to individuals to reflect the fact that indeed you were a voice, but there were other voices. I think sometimes we, you know, we submit a voice and we’re surprised when it doesn’t do exactly what we want it to. I think providing a space for people to hear what those other voices are and to understand how decisions may reflect the sum total of those could be another role that technology might usefully play. It’s difficult to do that at scale without technology.
Simon: Reid, you just talked about risk taking. One of the things I noted as I read about the open call is that you are seeking bold, transformative solutions. So Cecilia, I’m curious to hear from you: What does boldness look like? What does something transformative look like? I know you’re early in the application stages, but I wonder if you can kind of help illustrate what boldness and something transformative might look like.
Conrad: I’m going to borrow from some of our earlier challenges to illustrate boldness. One of our earlier challenges was on durable futures for refugees, and it was really a great pool of applicants. We ended up having funding for all of the five finalists. So I will just say that as an aside, but one of the finalist was an initiative to bring together refugee-led organizations from around the world and form a global coalition that could both act as a funding source, but most importantly, they could act as a refugee voice in a way that we didn’t currently have it in conversations about policies at the international level, at the state level and so on.
That was a something that I’m not sure any of us would have necessarily come up with; I’m pretty sure that the donor would say that that was an idea that was completely bold and different for them to fund. And so that’s one example that comes out of this. We’ve seen others in which organizations are reimagining how you mobilize people to vote. How do you mobilize young people and get young people engaged in the political process?
So those are the kinds of things that I hope we will see plenty of in this pool.
Simon: And for this current open call around rebuilding trust, how will you measure success, presuming that building trust might take some time.
Hoffman: I’ll just say a thing or two and then turn it over Cecilia. We’re asking for the network to ideate and generate that. So like, as part of the application, people can say: Here’s how we think is a good measurement; here is why we think this is a good measurement.
And again, our network of experts can say: “That’s actually a really good one.” Again, one of the things that by having all the different nonprofits, among others, theme of this is that you actually get a sprinkling of different ideas in there too, that then gets into the network for thinking about it. And, you know, not just the challenge itself, but others coming down.
And so I think that the answer is that is actually, in fact, one of the central questions, but it’s also answered going through the process.
Conrad: Yes, exactly right. It’s it’s part of our process. I talked earlier about the word agency, about giving agency to the organizations and part of that is that they define for us what metrics they expect to be evaluated on as part of this. And then the evaluators are looking that as well when they give the feedback on the proposals.
And those metrics are probably going to have some that are more like indicators that we’re on the right track. And as you’ve noted, I think some we would probably have to look back ten years from now to see if we succeeded.
Hoffman: Or even 20 or 50 or.
Conrad: 20 or 50.
Hoffman: Years.
Simon: That kind of tees up a question about timing. As we talked about at the top, we’re in this moment of uncertainty. For many nonprofit leaders, it certainly feels and is an existential crisis. Some people refer to the COVID era as, you know, as an analogy. The open call model in part can help accelerate some of the grantmaking process.
But I’m just kind of curious, how do you balance addressing what many nonprofits view as an existential crisis, but also a strategic approach to grantmaking?
Hoffman: Yeah.
Conrad: So it’s sort of two sided. There are two sets of needs and luckily there’s a diverse group of people on the funding landscape, some who are much more likely to focus on the emergency immediately and those who are already starting to think, as we’ve talked about, what do new institutions look like? How do we how do we restructure some institutions so they can be a more effective over the long term?
One of the things that’s been key in our open call models, going back to question earlier about success is the fact that the grids represent what I call what we call durable capital. They are large grants and they are flexible. The organization sort of defines what the workstream is, and there are over multiple years. And so it gives a space for a nonprofit who has an immediate need to both think about the immediate need, but also be able to plan in a way without having to worry about every year going out and looking where the next funding source is going to come from.
Simon: And as we start to round to the finish line here with our time, one question for each of you. Right now feels as polarized as ever. I wonder if you could point to an example that gives you some hope for America and bridging divides, any particular solutions that you’ve seen that seem promising.
Hoffman: Well, I’ll start one of the other things that I fund is from associate with MIT. It’s a brother named Deb Roy as a single carico, which its emphasis. The reason I do this is kind of the sense of where where you see a challenge like people legitimately go to on of the social networks, not LinkedIn. Social networks create a lot of polarization and fractionalization and it’s like, well, how do we use this kind of technology to build connectivity, have essentially scalable town hall community center conversations, and how do we use kind of AI to help facilitate and make that happen?
And that’s also, of course, trust building in terms of what it’s doing. But they’ve they’ve shown some very good results in in using technology to facilitate a conversation by which people feel that they can participate and that they’re heard and that their concerns and then reflected back to them. And how does the discourse around these themes go?
Not that they’re agreed with, but it’s like, we heard you and here is kind of where the conversation is has gone. And I think that that’s an example that I’ve been, you know, paying paying more attention to in the last month.
Conrad: My example is going to be less specific, but I think highlights the same kind of approach, and that is that I have found that when you can bring people, I say, you know, I spent much, much of my career as a chief academic officer at a small college. So there are faculty and how do you get faculty on the same page?
I also have done some community work in the same way. If you if I find that people can organize around problems, shared problems, common problems to talk through what the solution to that problem might look like, that that’s a great way of bringing people who have made different perspectives, different actually, either economic or social interest. But to sit down around a table or a series of virtual tables to look at what the problem is, what the constraints are, and how we might be able to achieve something that helps everyone in the context of that constraint seems to be a way you can get people to talk to each other.
And I think we need a lot more of that. I’ve seen experiments with citizens assemblies that are kind of like that. We just the problem is scaling those kinds of initiatives. They work sometimes at the local level. Maybe you can get the faculty together or the people in a small community. But I’m excited by the possibilities of doing that on a grander scale.
