When Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin wanted
support for a new urban initiative, she cold-called Alex Karp,
chief executive of Silicon Valley's Palantir Technologies Inc.
Ms. Rodin praised Mr. Karp for using data analytics to help
communities recover after Hurricane Sandy, but she quibbled: "You
guys just intervened after the fact."
Instead, she proposed, why doesn't Palantir add technology to
help cities identify their weaknesses "before the disaster
happens?"
Mr. Karp agreed: "We think this can be transformational," he
later told her, according to Ms. Rodin, since it also could be a
new business for the company.
Ms. Rodin's approach to Palantir exemplifies the unusual path
she has taken at the helm of the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the
nation's most prominent philanthropic institutions.
On Wednesday evening, the 71-year-old Ms. Rodin told the
foundation's board that she plans to step down, following an
11-year tenure characterized more by forging strategic partnerships
with well-known companies than doling out checks to grant
seekers.
In an interview at her Manhattan office earlier this week, Ms.
Rodin said she felt her work altering the foundation's strategy was
largely complete. "Now there needs to be another round of decisions
that are going to impact the next five to 10 years," she said. She
plans to stay on until her successor is chosen.
Ms. Rodin, who was the Rockefeller Foundation's first female
president, has been a trail blazer since taking the job in 2005.
Like a corporate CEO, she has emphasized brand-building and hitting
shorter-term performance goals, making her a rarity in the
nonprofit world.
She unabashedly admits to spending more time with the
foundation's corporate partners than with its grantees.
That, plus the rigorous screening process she has put in place
for grant funding, have led the Center for Effective Philanthropy
to give the foundation low ratings for its relationship with grant
recipients. Other critics say she focuses too much on seeking
publicity.
Ms. Rodin brushes aside the criticism. "Philanthropy is littered
with short-term success and long-term lack of sustainability," she
said. "If the markets find ways to benefit from supporting
philanthropic goals because it's good business, you really have a
much higher probability of sustainability."
As for her prominence, she says the foundation's "bully pulpit"
is stronger than ever. "There isn't a president or prime minister I
can't talk to," she says.
Hobnobbing with the corporate elite has been a hallmark of Ms.
Rodin's tenure. This year, she held a summit at the World Economic
Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with 15 world and business leaders,
hailing from companies including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Coca-Cola
Co. and Nigeria-based Dangote Group to discuss tackling food waste.
At the forum, the foundation handed out snacks from discarded food
scraps. Among them were "upcycled" mango tarts and pickled
vegetable salad, which Ms. Rodin made sure former White House
assistant chef Sam Kass came by to sample.
On Ms. Rodin's watch, the Rockefeller Foundation has pursued a
strategy of making small initial investments in projects, and then
forming partnerships with governments and corporations to ramp them
up.
Among her major initiatives: awarding grants to 100 cities to
hire "chief resilience officers"; developing training and hiring
programs designed to make disadvantaged African youth without
conventional credentials attractive to employers like Microsoft
Corp.; and helping to create "impact investing" benchmarks, so
banks like J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. can help clients measure the
social good of an investment.
Since Ms. Rodin approached Palantir in 2013, the tech firm has
worked with Norfolk, Va., one of the foundation's "resilient"
cities, to put together and analyze data sets about flooding,
building-code violations and calls to the city's 311 information
service to help city officials understand how to best serve
neighborhoods.
Microsoft President Brad Smith said one of Ms. Rodin's main
missions was to show that "what is good for the world is good for
business."
Ms. Rodin, who was the first female president of the University
of Pennsylvania, sits on the boards of Comcast Corp. and Citigroup
Inc. and serves on their compensation committees—"where the power
is," she says. In her office, an old Peanuts comic depicting Lucy,
encased in a decades-old plastic frame, reads, "A Woman's Place is
in Control."
Government officials have found an ally in Ms. Rodin and her
enterprising tactics.
Shaun Donovan, a longtime housing official who is now director
of the White House Office of Management and Budget, says Ms. Rodin
helped create a sizable fund to develop affordable housing in New
York City by bringing together foundations and the private sector.
"If it hadn't been for Judy's personal engagement, we would have
taken years," he says.
Ms. Rodin's critics include Martin Morse Wooster, a senior
fellow at the Capital Research Center, a conservative think tank
focused on philanthropy. "Foundations that do what we want for the
nonprofit sector are the ones that don't seek publicity," he
says.
Ms. Rodin's prominence, however, likely helped her pull off her
most recent success. Last year, she proposed that the foundation
and the producers of the hit Broadway musical "Hamilton" share the
costs of tickets for 20,000 students in low-income schools. "At
that time, we just had good buzz but hadn't exploded into this
international phenomenon," said Luis Miranda, father of Lin-Manuel
Miranda, the show's creator and star.
As a result, even as theater fans pay brokers as much as several
thousand dollars each for tickets to sold-out performances, the
students pay just $10—symbolically, because Alexander Hamilton is
on the $10 bill.
Write to Shalini Ramachandran at
shalini.ramachandran@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 15, 2016 21:05 ET (01:05 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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