Our Approach

We believe that our grantmaking delivers the biggest impact when it adheres as closely as possible to the following principles:

We seek out visionary leaders focused on outsized results. They tend to possess the rare combination of passion, integrity, deep substantive knowledge, effective communication skills, and an overall knack for driving change.
We believe foundations such as ours benefit from a venture capital mindset, providing early stage, patient, risk-tolerant funding to visionary people, institutions and ideas.
We are a trust-based philanthropy and strive to make accessing and reporting on our funding as efficient and administratively unburdensome as possible.
It’s often during transitory moments of alignment – i.e., when the right people wanting to do the right thing are in the right place at the right time – that big change is possible. We watch for such moments and try to capitalize when they appear.
We aim for outcomes not outputs. That means staying flexible, being willing to fund non-sexy project components, and focusing on investments that pave the way for other funders to participate.
Once we give a grant, we become fully vested in that project’s success. Beyond our direct funding, we seek opportunities to connect grantees to other donors and decisionmakers, amplify their work and otherwise contribute to their achieving the greatest possible impact.