The Financial Times quotes CGD co-founder and board member Ed Scott and board member Adam Waldman in an article about how applying business principles to philanthropies.
From the article:
"Adam Waldman, founder and president of the Endeavor Group, a Washington-based philanthropic consultancy, says the hallmarks of the so-called new philanthropy are: an entrepreneurial, results-oriented framework; leverage; personal engagement; and impatience.
'New philanthropists may be mavericks in their business lives but rarely are solo in their philanthropic lives -- they have an intense desire to partner with each other,' he says. “New philanthropy is also marked by the principal’s personal engagement in the work. It isn't about hiring people and saying, ‘Let me know how it works out’, it is about getting on planes, going to meetings and reading documents. For many new philanthropists, this becomes their job."
One such donor, and a client of the Endeavor Group, is technology entrepreneur Ed Scott, a former senior US government official and co-founder of BEA Systems, the software company. His philanthropy is informed not by the private sector’s thirst for instant gratification but by the laser-like focus honed building a business.
'When I was in the business world I had tunnel vision,' he says. 'I only cared about the company being successful and nothing else. A nuclear weapon could have landed in Kansas City and I wouldn’t have noticed it. Once I left the business I had to re-educate myself about the state of the world. I became interested in debt as systemic issue and I began to read more about it.'
Over the course of many discussions, Mr Scott learnt that policymakers had nowhere to turn for reliable information and what was needed was a centre staffed by people who really knew what they were talking about.
In 2001, he co-founded the Center for Global Development, an independent, non-profit think-tank that works to reduce global poverty and inequality. He chairs its board. Mr Scott also helped found, with George Soros and Bill Gates, Debt Aids Trade Africa, and Friends of the Global Fight, which works to educate, engage, and mobilise Americans in the fight against Aids, tuberculosis and malaria. He is also an active board member in Malaria No More, which is co-chaired by Peter Chernin and Ray Chambers."