The Antidote to Polarization
My wife Kathleen and I recently hosted a salon dinner for a small but diverse group of Summit community members at our home in San Francisco for a conversation with Robb Willer, Stanford PACS Faculty Co-Director and Director of the Polarization and Social Change Lab. Robb’s recent groundbreaking work on...
Food – and a New Generation of Leaders – Could Change the World
In my line of work, feeding people around the world, you cannot ignore the fact that our global food systems are broken. Rampant hunger and poverty, deteriorating public health and nutrition, a rising epidemic of diet-related diseases, and systemic inequities that put these problems on the shoulders of those who’ve...
How Philanthropy is Driving Innovation in Psychedelics and Mental Health, and Why Policy Must Now Follow
As a child of the 80s who grew up in the “just say no to drugs” era – and actually listened to Nancy Reagan! – never could I have imagined that I would be interviewing two of my health heroes about psychedelics. And yet as I sat on stage with Michael Pollan...
The Faults in Our Macro Models, and How to Fix Them
During a breakout session at the latest Stanford PACS Philanthropy Innovation Summit, Mike Kubzansky shared a fact that elicited gasps in the room: The Penn Wharton Budget Model, one of the leading tools designed to provide policymakers with accurate analyses of the fiscal impact of various public policies, is based...
The Biggest Driver of Mass Incarceration? Maybe Mass Incarceration
Three months ago during a PACS summit panel on “Women, Girls, and Mass Incarceration” that I co-led with Lateefah Simon, I was asked to enumerate the drivers of our country’s explosive 700% rise in female incarceration between 1979 and 2019 – a rate of growth twice as high as that...
Why We Need White People Talking about Race
At this year’s Stanford PACS Philanthropy Innovation Summit, I had the opportunity to share the stage with Darren Walker, head of the Ford Foundation, to talk about what philanthropy can do to advance racial equity. I respect and admire Darren deeply. He’s one of the preeminent leaders in philanthropy and...
Homelessness in San Francisco is Visible, Tragic, and Solvable
Lessons from Tipping Point’s Historic Five-Year Investment in Addressing Chronic Homelessness San Francisco is known for many things. Beautiful scenery, diversity of its people, world-class food, groundbreaking ideas, and increasingly, homelessness. Whether you are a long-time resident or a tourist here for a few days, the suffering we see on...
Two years after the first social bond in philanthropy, we must build on our progress
Two years ago this month, the non-profit and civil society sectors were in crisis. Covid-19 ravaged communities across the globe—threatening already shaky infrastructures in every sector and pushing us all to the point of collapse. Nonprofits struggled to keep their doors open, even as demand for their services skyrocketed. Inequality—metastasized...
First Principles 2022: An evolution and a new beginning.
This month, we hosted the fourth annual First Principles Forum, back in person after two years of virtual gatherings. What began as an experiment – a group of tech leaders with a shared goal of getting better at giving, convening – has now become an established community, poised to make...
We spend a lot of energy on monitoring financial returns. It’s time we do the same for impact.
Despite the economic uncertainty that’s resulted from COVID-19, the past two years have seen an explosion of impact investment in social profit organizations and sectors. In fact, interest in these investments soared to new peaks during the pandemic, with assets in sustainable funds coming in at a record $357 billion...