Listening to the CEO of the World’s Largest Foundation

Patty Stonesifer was the opening keynote speaker at our SVP International conference last weekend. There’s nothing better than someone that gets your conference off to an invigorating, inspiring start. It was a rather profound experience to sit and listen intently for an hour to a person that sits in that kind of role at the world’s most important philanthropic institution. Kind of like a really good movie, several afterthoughts have continued to roll through my mind –

• Someone in her position has to practice her speeches and comments a great deal. And yet, Patty came across as very authentic and passionate about their work. I don’t think you can practice (or fake) any of that.
• When Mr. Buffet settles his estate someday, the Gates Foundation has ten years to spend out his remaining wealth. So at some point in the next 1-30 years, they will wake up one day and have several billion dollars extra they must spend out annually. They will go from maybe a $3 billion annual payout to $7, 8, 9, 10 billion annually. In addition to the awesome potential to make the world better, can you imagine the management, leadership, organizational, people challenge that presents??
• And concurrently, where does all that capital go? There are not enough “distribution channels” today to handle that kind of investment, at least in third world countries. I’d imagine that developing the channels is going to be an important part of their work over the coming years.

Lastly, some people in the philanthropic world are concerned about so much money flowing through one foundation. Something like one of every seven foundation dollars in America will go through the Gates Foundation in the next few years. Certainly that poses risks and challenges, but frankly, I think it’s great and it’s time to see what happens when we put a lot of financial (and human) capital in one place and see what kind of positive change can happen in the world. It hasn’t been done before so let’s see how much more poverty can be alleviated, lives saved, etc.

Very exciting stuff and it’s all just up the street from us. Good luck, Patty and everyone at GF. What do others think about the Gates Foundation, what they’ve done so far, their potential for the future, risks and opportunities it presents, etc.??

Paul S