This morning, the only thing standing between participants and a lively session with the CEO of the largest foundation in the world is a big, wonderful breakfast buffet. So it’s no wonder folks are shuffling in during opening remarks by Kelvin Taketa of the Hawaii Community Foundation. I admit to being one of the latecomers, sneaking into the back row with my plate of bacon and scrambled eggs. Today’s first morning session is a conversation with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Jeff Raikes. Jeff is a former Microsoft employee, and was chosen to lead the Gates Foundation about a year ago. He and his wife even met at Microsoft. Jeff jokingly says that he and his wife were the first Microsoft couple. Jeff was raised on a farm in Nebraska and ended up going to Stanford for engineering school, which set him up for his big role in developing Microsoft Office. It was interesting to hear that Jeff’s philanthropic commitment extends beyond his work with Gates. Especially in light of the recent media firestorm over Jeff’s salary of almost a million dollars that has troubled many in the nonprofit world. His net worth is estimated at about $500 million and he also has his own foundation, the Raikes Foundation that he founded with his wife Tricia. Another random factoid: He also owns part of the Seattle Mariners. Yes, the baseball team.
Values
Jeff seems quite intentional in his leadership and tells us that he knows full well he won the “ovarian lottery” by being born a white male to a good family. He tells stories about his experience growing up on a farm to set the tone for the kind of values he wants to shape the culture of the organization. Jeff feels that values are a strong element of leadership. When asked about the next generation of leadership, he says we needs high horsepower, high energy, and people who can get things done. Yes, yes, and oh yes.
At Gates, Jeff senses that employees that may feel overwhelmed in trying to do everything. But he encourages them to use their good judgement to set the right priorities and make the right trade-offs for themselves. He encourages employees and gives them license to focus on the right things, otherwise they don’t end up doing anything particularly well.
Impact
As for Gates’ limited grantmaking areas? Jeff is comfortable that they’ve picked certain areas to focus on and do them well and contribute to the opportunity for educational reform in this country. Gates can enable all people to have healthy and productive lives. What are the big inequities in the world and where can our dollars have a high impact? Well, we can use medicine from the developed world to help people in the developing world. Jeff sounds quite proud when talking about Gate’s role in helping to create the GAVI alliance, a global health partnership whose members work together to save lives by increasing access to vaccines in 70 of the poorest countries around the world.
Accountability
But what about accountability? Who does the biggest foundation in the world really have to answer to?
The unspoken answer is: no one. But Jeff assures the audience that Gates is very serious about the work of evaluating its grant programs and making sure they make a difference. He said they pay good attention to measuring the learning from their philanthropy. To achieve Gates’ high expectations, they get input from people they work with and for. They have advisory panels with strong voices that tell them what they’re doing well and not so well. As for grants, they enlist feedback from external participants to see if they’re on the right track. Using grantee surveys to get feedback for how they are performing as a partner.
Jeff concludes by talking about what motivates him in doing the work at Gates: constantly learning new things from new people. “I love my second career,” he said.
Photo credit: Seattle Times
