This week’s big news of Jeff Raikes appointment to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has the philanthropy sector buzzing. We turned our ‘microphone’ out to a few pundits for their thoughts.
Joel Orosz, Distinguished Professor of Philanthropic Studies (see photo)
“It's not often that someone says of an organization with $37.3 billion in the bank, "hey, give 'em a little credit"! But credit is due the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for they have done something unusual among the ranks of big foundations: they've hired as their leader someone who actually has first-hand experience in philanthropy.
True, Jeffrey S. Raikes is a former Microsoft executive, which makes him in some ways the "safe" choice: founders of businesses have been hiring their old employees since the earth's crust was still hot. But unlike most such transfers, who wouldn't know a payout requirement from the public support test, Raikes, 49, actually has participated in a homeless census, chaired a United Way campaign, and run his own family foundation.
Let's hope that this move by Gates, the biggest and perhaps the most influential of the world's foundations, ushers in an era when prior experience in the hard work of giving is considered at least as important an attribute when choosing foundation CEOs as being a university president or a corporate titan. Too much is at stake in those positions to hand them over to people who will need lots of on-the-job-training before they can become effective.
Sean Stannard-Stockton, principal at Ensemble Capital and author of the blog TacticalPhilanthropy
“The Gates Foundation’s selection of Jeff Raikes as CEO is intriguing because Raikes’ primary career experience is in marketing. The Gates Foundation themselves have stated that they do not have enough money to fix global health. However, the foundation has a global platform to communicate their views to the world and they may find that this “marketing platform” can have a larger impact on the world than their actual grantmaking.”
Only time will tell if this decision was a move in the right direction for the Gates Foundation. We'll have to keep an eye on it.
In other news, philanthropy advocate Claude Rosenberg passed away last week at the age of 80. The New York Times obituary highlights Mr. Rosenberg’s ground-breaking research showing that wealthy people often give less to ‘charity’ than they can afford and poor and middle class people – actually donate more, relative to what they can afford, than do wealthy people.
Rosenberg helped people understand how to maximize giving and tax benefits and also delved into the psychological reasons why people don’t give as much as they can, according to the article.
It's refreshing to see and hear from those who care about the nonprofit world as much as we do.