[NEWS] How the Valley can get philanthropy right with former Hewlett Foundation president Paul Brest – Loganspace

Paul Brest didn’thouse out to remodel philanthropy. A constitutional guidelines scholar who clerked for Supreme Court docket Justice John Harlan and is credited with coining the term “originalism,” Brest spent twelve years as dean of Stanford Legislation School.

However when he changed into named president of the William & Vegetation Hewlett Foundation, one of the country’s supreme gigantic non-income funders, Brest applied the rigor of a apt scholar now not proper to his bear institution’s practices however to these of the philanthropy field at gigantic. He employed experts to evaluate the practice of philanthropy and helped to beginning Stanford’s Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, the build he indifferent teaches.

Now, Brest has became his attention to advising Silicon Valley’s next generation of donors.

From Stanford to the Hewlett Foundation

Scott Bade:Your background is in constitutional guidelines. How did you make the shift from being dean at Stanford to working the Hewlett Foundation as president?

Paul Brest:I came into the Hewlett Foundation largely accidentally. I of route didn’t know the leisure about philanthropy, however I had been educating programs on ache-fixing and resolution making. I mediate I purchased the job because a chain of oldsters on the board knew me, both from Stanford Legislation School, however also from taking part in chamber music with Walter and Esther Hewlett.

Bade:When changed into this?

Brest:I started there in 2000. Invoice Hewlett died the three hundred and sixty five days after I came. Walter Hewlett, Invoice’s son, changed into chair of the board at some point soon of the total time I changed into president. However it’s now not a family foundation.

Bade:What had been your initial impressions of the muse and the broader philanthropic house?

Brest:No longer having reach from the non-income sector, it took me a three hundred and sixty five days or as a diagram to of route realize what it [meant] to exercise our resources in each and every order in a strategic system.  The [Hewlett] Foundation had very proper values by system of the areas it changed into supporting — the ambiance, training, population, females’s reproductive rights. It had proper philanthropic practices, however it undoubtedly changed into now not very strategically focused. It became out that now not very many foundations had been strategic.

Paul’s framework for fascinated by philanthropy

Bade:What abolish you imply by ‘strategic’?

Brest:What I imply [by] strategic is having clear objectives and having an proof-based utterly utterly, proof-told map for reaching them. Expansive foundations are inclined to be conglomerates with assorted programs attempting to construct assorted objectives.

[Being strategic means] monitoring development as you’re employed in direction of these objectives. Then evaluating upfront whether the map is going to be plausible after which whether you’re of route reaching the outcomes you’re attempting to construct so that it is doubtless you’ll presumably perchance well also make route corrections will dangle to you’re now not reaching.

[For example,] the chance that the roughly billionaire dollars or more that had been spent or committed to climate advocacy are going to dangle any abolish is terribly low. The order the build metrics comes in is correct having develop of an anticipated return mindset the build certain, the possibilities of success are low, however we all know that the importance of success — or striking it in some other case, the outcomes of failure — are going to be catastrophic.

What a strategic mindset does right here is suppose: it’s rate taking broad bets even the build the margins of error of the chance of success are very arduous to measure when the outcomes are broad.

I don’t deserve to suppose the [Hewlett] Foundation changed into anti-strategic, or utterly unstrategic, however it undoubtedly of route had now not developed a [this kind of] systematic framework for doing these items.

Bade:You’re identified in the philanthropic crew for striking an emphasis on defining, reaching, measuring affect. Gain these form of technocratic practices made philanthropy better?

Brest:I mediate it is doubtless you’ll presumably perchance dangle gotten to commence by asking, what would it now not imply for philanthropy to be proper? From my point of discover, philanthropy is correct after I adore the objectives it chooses. Then, given an true aim, when it is efficient in reaching that aim. Process of route has nothing to suppose about what the objectives are, however easiest how efficient it is.

My wager is that 90 plus p.c of philanthropy is meant to construct objectives that most of us mediate are proper objectives. There are times will dangle to it is doubtless you’ll presumably perchance dangle gotten deliver conflicts of objectives as you abolish with suppose the anti-abortion and the dedication actions, or gun control and the NRA. Those are vital arguments.

However most philanthropy is attempting to toughen training or toughen the lives of the downhearted. My discover is that philanthropy is correct when it is efficient in reaching these objectives, and attempting to abolish no exertion in the course of.

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