Skoll Foundation

1
Skoll Foundation

• Stanford Graduate School of BusinessStrategic
  Issues in Philanthropy
• Laura Arrillaga, June 2006
• Skoll Foundation OverviewSally Osberg

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Framing the Questions

• Who is Jeff Skoll?The first and fundamental
  fact about foundations is that they do not start
  with a concept or an organization chart or a
  strategic plan. A foundation starts with a
  person, the donor.
• How have Jeff Skolls values and vision shaped
  the Skoll Foundation?good donors and good
  philanthropy go together.
• Waldemar A. Nielsen. Inside American
  Philanthropy

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Who Is Jeff Skoll?

• Biographical details
• Canadian-born
• 1987 BASc, University of Toronto
• 1987 Skoll Engineering, founder
• 1990 Micros on the Move, Ltd., founder
• 1995 MBA, Stanford University
• 1996 eBay, first president widely acknowledged
  as cofounder with Pierre Omidyar
• 1999 Creates Skoll Community Fund
• 2002 Creates Skoll Foundation
• 2003 LLD University of Toronto

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Who Is Jeff Skoll really?

• Mind of an engineer disciplined, analytical,
  looks for leverage
• Heart of an artist imaginative, intuitive, seeks
  meaning
• Soul of an entrepreneur driven, innovative,
  generates value

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Skoll Foundation Organizing Principles

• We support organizations rather than individuals.
• We look for organizations with a proven track
  record whose work is based in empowerment.
• We believe unlocking potential in those with the
  greatest potential will yield greater gains for
  more people.
• We seek leverage in our grant making, looking for
  multiplicative and long-term impact.
• We see greater benefit in projects or programs
  with wide-scale or universal application.
• We consider community benefit essential, and we
  look for evidence of significant, tangible
  results.
• We are inspired by innovation, creative ideas and
  new solutions to problems.

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Skoll Foundation Mission and Vision

• Our vision is to live in a world of peace and
  prosperity where all people, regardless of
  geography, background or economic status, enjoy
  and employ the full range of their talents and
  abilities.Many of the problems of our modern
  world, ranging from disease to drugs to crime to
  terrorism, derive from the inequities between
  rich and poor...be they rich nation vs. poor
  nation or rich community vs. poor community. It
  is in the best interests of the well-off to help
  empower those who are not as well-off to improve
  their lives. Jeff
  Skoll
• Our mission is to advance systemic change to
  benefit communities around the world by investing
  in, connecting and celebrating social
  entrepreneurs.

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Skoll Foundation Issue Areas
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Skoll Foundation Growth 2000-2006
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Thinking About Entrepreneurs

• Peter Drucker, in the late 20th century, writes
• the entrepreneur always searches for change,
  responds to it and exploits it as an opportunity.

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What Is a Social Entrepreneur?

• Social entrepreneurs see and seize opportunities
  to produce large-scale, positive social change.
• Social entrepreneurs demonstrate all the
  characteristics of the business entrepreneur
  Possessed by an innovative idea, they are driven,
  focused and unrelenting in their determination to
  produce results.
• That said, they must also be exceptionally
  skilled at identifying and mobilizing resources.

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Profile Comparison

• Business entrepreneur
• Economic context
• Acutely aware of change
• Sees implications and opportunities
• Seizes opportunity
• May cause, exploit or affect change

• Social entrepreneur
• Social context
• Acutely aware of change
• Sees implications and opportunities
• Seizes opportunity
• May cause, exploit or affect change

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Profile Contrast

• Business entrepreneur
• Capitalization opportunity within a market
  framework
• Defined time frame
• Quantifiable venture- value proposition
• Profit indicator
• Growth or failure

• Social entrepreneur
• Limited capitalization opportunity within a
  social framework
• Elastic time frame
• Tough to quantify venture-value proposition
• Social impact
• Sustainability

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Social Entrepreneurship Is Not

• A way of characterizing the altruistic impulse
• Another way of describing people who work for
  nonprofits or NGOs
• Good corporate citizenship
• A new public benefit sector model
• Social enterprise

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Social Entrepreneurship Is Not New
Jane Addams (1860-1935)

• Founded Hull House, a social settlement in
  Chicago, with Ellen Gates Starr
• Hull House efforts expanded to the national level
  (fed. Children's Bureau and fed. child labor laws
  created.) Helped found the National Association
  for the Advancement of Colored People
• Helped organize Woman's Peace Party, elected
  first chairman
• First American woman recipient of Nobel Peace
  Prize
• Country's most prominent woman through her
  writing, her settlement work and her
  international efforts for world peace

Source http//www.rootsweb.com/nwa/
http//www.uic.edu/jaddams/hull/hull_house.html
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Social Entrepreneurship Is Not New
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)

• First to state publicly that the rich have a
  moral obligation to give away their fortunes. In
  1889 he wrote The Gospel of Wealth, in which he
  asserted that all personal wealth beyond that
  required to supply the needs of one's family
  should be regarded as a trust fund to be
  administered for the benefit of the community.
• In his 30s, Carnegie had already begun to give
  away some of his fast-accumulating funds.
• Lifelong interests included the establishment of
  free public libraries to make available to
  everyone a means of self-education 56 million
  to build 2,509 libraries.
• During his lifetime, he gave away more than 350
  million.

Source http//www.lfpl.org/western/htms/carnegie.
htm
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What Social Entrepreneurship Is
ApproTEC

• Founded in Kenya in 1991 by Martin Fisher and
  Nick Moon, Appropriate Technologies for
  Enterprise Creation (ApproTEC) has enabled local
  entrepreneurs in Kenya and Tanzania to start more
  than 33,000 profitable small businesses using
  existing technologies such as its manually
  operated MoneyMaker pump.

Source http//www.approtec.org/
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Opportunities

• What we have here are some breathtaking
  opportunities disguised as insoluble problems.
• - John Gardner

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Skoll Foundation Initiatives
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Make a Difference

• The idea is that a little bit of good can turn
  into a whole lot of good when fueled by the
  commitment of a social entrepreneur.
• -Jeff Skoll

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Make a Difference

• Perhaps most important, a clear-eyed survey of
  foundation launching helps us appreciate the
  extraordinary achievements of those donors who
  managed to create great foundationsthose rare
  individuals who gave their foundations not only
  funding but ideas, courage, and entrepreneurial
  skills.
• - Waldemar A. Nielsen, The Dramas of Donorship