JOSH BARON
As the son of a social worker who has spent her professional life caring for the elderly, the social sector was always a part of my life. My mother brought me to the community center to volunteer at events for senior citizens and to local soup kitchens to help those in need over holidays. Giving back, making a difference, and caring for others have always seemed almost part of my DNA. I can trace my approach to the world equally to the influence of my father, an attorney who instilled in me the importance of approaching problems analytically, and seeing both sides of any issue.

I started my professional career in the corporate consulting world at Bain & Company because it seemed like an excellent place to get the skills I would need to work on complex social problems. While there, I was fortunate enough to get connected to a small group exploring the formation of a new entity that would provide the highest-caliber of strategic consulting services to foundations and nonprofit organizations. I agreed to join this group – Bridgespan – when it was little more than an exciting idea. At that time, it was unclear if social sector organizations would see the value of working intensively with a team of people who came from leading strategy firms and top business schools.

The growth of Bridgespan over the last decade, and the rise of other firms who are now providing similar services, can in part be attributed to the greater focus on results within the social sector, which also can be seen in the rise of innovative groups such as New Profit Inc. and the Robin Hood Foundation. Bridgespan’s expansion also reflects a recognition by nonprofits and funders that there were tangible benefits to an approach that uses clear frameworks and robust analytical tools, and that takes seriously the importance of building effective organizations to tackle complex social issues.

One of my projects while at Bridgespan was an assessment of the services available to people of means in deciding how to create impact through their philanthropy. Out of this study emerged the concept for what has become SeaChange Capital Partners, a new model that is attempting to channel resources towards effective nonprofits that are ready to scale. This research revealed to me that while there is an established group of firms providing the highest-quality support services to institutions in the social sector, there was a much less developed capability aimed at supporting philanthropists in accomplishing their social missions. Yet, philanthropists represent one of the most powerful sources for change in the world, and there are a growing number who want to approach their social objectives with the same sophistication that they have used to succeed in business.

Just as Bridgespan represented an application of the Bain model to the nonprofit sector, I thought that there was a need to take the lessons from the Bridgespan approach and apply them to the world of individual and family philanthropists. I therefore began a journey to learn about the philanthropic advisory world, which led me to Patrick Grace, who was approaching this topic from the other side of the equation. Together with him, our Chairman Bruce Schearer, and the rest of our team, we have begun supporting philanthropists and their partners in addressing some of the critical issues facing our communities and our planet. I am excited to build on this work, and to continue to serve those looking for help in translating their visions into reality.

PATRICK GRACE

I am very fortunate to have come from a family dedicated to philanthropy for four generations. My great-grandfather, William Russell Grace, set this fulfilling family journey into motion. In 1846, at the age of 14, he took a trade ship from Ireland to New York. Two years later, he sailed to Peru and joined a modest ship chandlery and purveyor. This business became the nucleus of W. R. Grace & Company, which he founded in 1854, and built into one of the world’s largest shipping, trading and manufacturing companies. He served as Mayor of New York for two terms, and accepted the Statue of Liberty on behalf of the City in 1885. Among his charitable contributions was funding approximately one-third of the foreign aid for the Irish Potato Famine, a crisis that he had fled from as a child. He also founded Grace Institute, a tuition-free school in New York that has provided job training to more than 110,000 underserved, immigrant women since 1897.

For the last 15 years, I have taken the lead role in overseeing my family’s philanthropic activities, including the Grace Institute. After a career in the corporate world, I decided to change a ‘nights and weekends’ involvement in philanthropy into a full-time profession. To get oriented to the broader field, I met with leaders from across the sector, joined a a number of non-profit boards, and worked closely with the Wealth & Giving Forum, an organization that brought together hundreds of families of means to explore their individual philanthropy. My eyes were opened to a host of societal needs beyond the scope of my family’s philanthropy. I also was inspired by many new relationships with social entrepreneurs, foundation leaders, and individual philanthropists.

In the midst of this exploration, I took a life-altering trip to Africa as part of a donor tour of Jeffrey Sachs’s Millennium Promise initiative. In addition to meeting my present colleague Bruce Schearer there (a special advisor to Millennium Promise at the time), this trip revealed to me the tangible actions that can be taken against poverty, and the difference that truly effective organizations can make on the ground. It spurred me to join the Board (which I now chair) of KickStart International, an organization that has helped nearly 500,000 African people lift themselves out of poverty -- on a systematic, replicable, and sustainable basis.

My experiences led me to the conviction that the philanthropic field needs a much greater level of capacity in supporting donors who want to see their resources deployed thoughtfully and produce effective and verifiable change. Many philanthropists I met are allocating larger proportions of their “giving portfolios” to areas where breakthrough change is possible – and measureable. Clearly, even philanthropy that is not measurable is very often worthy. In sectors where measurement is possible, however – where goals can be defined, performance quantified, execution verified, scale achieved, results leveraged, and successful models replicated – doing so can dramatically increase both the impact and satisfaction of philanthropy.

Through my own journey in the philanthropic sector, I have discovered that the feelings of individual philanthropists towards the process diverge widely, ranging from elation to intimidation. For many individuals, philanthropy can be a profoundly lonely, frustrating, and even painful activity. The giving process does not have to be the source of such stress. On the contrary, I know from personal experience that philanthropy not only has the potential to transform the lives of those in need, but also can provide an enormous sense of purpose, meaning, and joy to those who help make it happen.

BRUCE SCHEARER

Growing up in a small rural Pennsylvania Dutch town, my dream was to see and learn about the wider world and find a way to become productive part of global society. After college and completing my graduate studies at Columbia University, my first job, in the field of international development, took me to majestic India, where my love of foreign cultures first took root.

Over the course of the next 30 years I had the opportunity to work with private agencies, national governments, the UN and World Bank family of organizations and the business sector in many countries throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. During these years of striving with local partners to overcome poverty and create greater opportunity for people living in poor communities, I have seen firsthand the powerful role private philanthropy can play. Wonderful results have been produced. For many of these years, I also worked in my suburban home community outside New York to address social problems, taking satisfaction from many heartwarming advances.

Yet while I have been buoyed by the progress these efforts helped to make possible, it disheartens me to see so much ongoing suffering and lack of progress in a great many places, both at home and abroad. Despite the trillion dollars in foreign aid and philanthropy spent on overcoming poverty in the past 50 years, globally nearly two billion poor still face a daily struggle to survive. And the lines remain long at my community’s food pantry.
The world we want -- and the world our human society needs if we are to survive and flourish on this planet -- still lies before us. I believe philanthropy in the 21st Century can lead the way. Philanthropy has grown enormously in volume and sophistication. When it is illuminated by deep personal caring, informed by wise choices, and integrated in strategic partnerships with the other major agents of change in society, philanthropy can be the engine of transformation.

In my view, no philanthropic goal is too small to contribute. Every philanthropist makes a difference, and the sum of these differences can create this future world.
My experience tells me there are no “right” answers, but it also tells me that very many philanthropic efforts, large and small, can be planned and carried out more effectively with much greater impact, resulting in much deeper benefits – and fulfillment to the philanthropists responsible for catalyzing these efforts. It is my passion to join Patrick and Josh in working with caring philanthropists to make this happen.