At the 2024 Skoll World Forum, many conversations turned to the importance of collaboration in the face of widespread disruption and social unrest. Don Gips and Rohini Nilekani came together to explore philanthropy’s role in activating and accelerating change through networks, partnerships, and knowledge sharing.
Addressing the power imbalances in philanthropy, Rohini emphasized the need for trust and risk-taking, and the role of wealth in enabling positive societal impact. She encouraged philanthropists to invest in ventures that may be imperfect, using philanthropic capital as risk capital. Both Don and Rohini stressed the necessity of collaboration across sectors (society, government, and markets) to achieve meaningful societal change.
They also announced and discussed the newly created Center for Exponential Change, a network supporting systems orchestrators and helping changemakers overcome gaps and scale their efforts.
Featuring Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies
Former journalist and current Chairperson of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and Co-founder and Director of EkStep, a non-profit education platform. She also founded Arghyam, a foundation for sustainable water and sanitation that funds initiatives across India.
Featuring Don Gips, CEO of the Skoll Foundation
Leads the Skoll Foundation’s work investing in, connecting, and championing social entrepreneurs to create transformational social change around the world. His experiences span public service, politics, business, finance, and technology.
Don Gips: I could not be more excited than to be here today with Rohini and with all of you. She truly is one of the great voices in philanthropy. And I’ve gotten to work with Rohini in a number of projects, but in preparation for this conversation, I listened to her speeches and I read her many writings, and I realized I speak in prose and she speaks in poetry. And she did it again to me this morning in another meeting we were in.
Across her career, she’s been a journalist, an author, a children’s book creator, a champion of education, a bridge builder, and currently Chairperson of the Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies Foundation. We, at Skoll, have been incredibly fortunate to get to partner with Rohini and with the Nilekanis. We’ve co-funded at least a dozen organizations. We, both, are part of Co-Impact. And today, or this week, we announced the Center for Exponential Change that we’re working on with Tulaine, New Profit. There they are.
Rohini Nilekani: Chris.
Don Gips: Yeah. Chris, and we think it will help drive change for systems orchestrators, and we’ll come back to that. The work that we both try to do is about trying to transform the factors that destabilize society. Polarization, misinformation and disinformation, inequities across gender and class, and the sweeping burnout of change makers. I see Aaron somewhere there, Wellbeing Project, which is helping us with this. We can’t wait to hear from Rohini about her views about creating change at scale and tackling these global crises. And I’m sure we’ll solve all of this in the next 45 minutes.
Rohini, I’d like to start with a personal question. As a role model for many of us in philanthropy, and a leading female philanthropist, can you share more about what led you to this field in your journey with philanthropy?
Rohini Nilekani: First of all, thank you, Don. Thank you to all of you for coming. It’s a real honor for me to be on this stage. Skoll is the place to come to if you’re in the social sector, anywhere in the world. So thank you for that, for 20 years. That’s awesome. Thank you. Like everybody else, I came to philanthropy, well, I came to philanthropy because nowadays you can’t do philanthropy unless you’re wealthy, okay? In the good old days, you could be a philanthropist just by loving other people. Now, you have to be a philanthropist when you get wealthy.
So before I became a philanthropist, I was what you call a social entrepreneur. I was a journalist before that and set up two or three organizations in education. And then I co-founded something called Pratham Books, which I urge you to look at because we started out with the mission, a book in every child’s hand. And today we have books which are contributed to — from all around the world, for little children in 350 languages, because it is out in the creative commons and it is a societal mission around the world. Those books are free to read. If you have a child in your neighborhood, a nephew, a grandson, please pick up a story from storyweaver.org.in. After that–
Don Gips: That’s incredible.
Rohini Nilekani: Yes, it has been quite a journey. And after that, since the money I sensibly invested in my husband’s company yielded a little bit of something, I put it all into my foundation, which worked on water. But what I learned along the way is that wealth comes, Don, with extreme responsibility. And that I do believe the role of wealth in society is to enable society. Yes, you can buy a few Ferraris or whatever you want to, Lamborghinis or a couple of diamond necklaces, but after that, what are you going to do? And I don’t see why societies and nations will allow runaway accumulation of private wealth if the responsibility of that wealth to make societies better is not visibly seen.
And so, I think, as I learned the ropes of philanthropy, I got very excited in the topic today that, how does philanthropy enable change at scale? And that’s why we started the center this morning together.
Don Gips: It’s such an incredible story and such an incredible impact that you’ve had. And just even the language you just used, when I first got to Skoll, one of my team members, who’s Hawaiian, taught me the word kuleana. Kuleana, with great privilege comes great responsibility.
You know, we so admire your approach to giving and we have learned so much with you, listening and learning and taking risks, trusting your grantees and the openness with which you’ve approached your philanthropy. When you signed the Giving Pledge, you quoted John Adams. I love this quote.
Rohini Nilekani: Yes.
Don Gips: “Power always thinks it has a great soul. There’s great danger that I will fall in love with my own virtue.”
Rohini Nilekani: Yes.
Don Gips: What have you learned about how philanthropy needs to grapple with its own power to listen better to its partners and take more risks?
Rohini Nilekani: To be very honest, and this group knows this very, very well, especially if you’re on this side and looking for money, I’ve been on both sides, I think wealth comes with extraordinary power and you know this as well. And we have to be very careful. I don’t think that power imbalance ever actually goes away, but even so, you can hold that power a little better. So I believe that the first thing in that redressal of the imbalance is if you know how to listen and if you know how to trust.
At least in these 30 years, I have learned that if I start with trust, I end up with even more trust on both sides of the equation. And so, I think that’s what I’ve learned, that philanthropists need to learn how to trust. At the get-go, it’s very hard to let go, but you learn it as you go along. And that is a goal that actually philanthropy must strive to reach, to create a system of giving or granting where the philanthropist and the foundation can learn to let go. Learn, let go, learn, let go. And we’ve tried to do it, you don’t always succeed.
The other thing I think is, and this many people have said that philanthropic capital is risk capital. And if you don’t invest in ventures that may fail, that may not succeed, then you’re just simply not doing your job as a philanthropist. And yes, always keep a mirror in your bag, in your house, next to your bed. So before you go to sleep, you can just take a quick look. Has my head swollen a little more today? I would suggest that. What about you? Tell me the truth about how you feel about the power you hold.
Don Gips: Since I took this job, I’ve become more handsome, taller, more intelligent. It’s amazing how much people compliment me.
Rohini Nilekani: By the way, you’re looking really good today.
Don Gips: Thank you. You know, I’m going to tell a little story because it hit me. So last year when we were having the closing event, a woman on crutches came up to me and said, “You know, you guys did this amazing forum, it’s so great, but you’re not doing enough around disability.” And it like hit me like a rock. I was like on my high and all of a sudden, I realized we really haven’t even had the conversation. And by the way, anybody who misses tonight when Eddie gets on stage to talk about it, we’ll see we learn this lesson.
I was talking to, I was describing this deep listening and that we need to do it. And I was using this as an example when I was talking to some of the Skoll Fellows on Monday. And all the people in the room had this look on their face and I’m like, “What’s going on?” And Lizzie, who was the woman who’d come up to me a year ago raised her hand and said, “I’m the one who approached you.” If we don’t listen, we walk into this world with our preconceived notions of who we are. And we, to your quote, we all think we have so much virtue. And it’s only by that humility and listening that we grow and learn and get better at this incredible gift that we have for philanthropy.
Rohini Nilekani: Yeah. One of the, when I set up my foundation, the very first grant we made, which was a big grant considering that we were just on our, that person, Mihir Shah came to me and said, “Please never think of anybody as your grantee and don’t behave like a donor. We are going to be partners in this and always remember that.” So I think I value that first lesson I got when I gave out my first big check.
Don Gips: Yeah. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about collaboration. And we both have gotten to work together because we are collaborating. The Center for Exponential Change, which we announced today is a global action hub for systems orchestrators supporting their efforts to build a better society with speed, at scale and sustainably. Can you say more about how collaboration can help us meet today’s unique challenges and how will something like The Center for Exponential Change help us collaborate more effectively?
Rohini Nilekani: Yeah, I think we all know this, but it’s, something, some truths can bear constant repetition and one of them is that you simply cannot achieve meaningful societal change without collaborating. First of all, collaborating with the people in whose name you are working. Sometimes even social change, entrepreneurs like how I was and am, we forget that we are representing and when representing, you have to be even more careful to be accurately representing. So your first collaboration has to be with that.
And then of course, all down the way, you have to be able to collaborate. In any societal change, you need Samaaj, Sarkaar and Bazaar, society, state and markets to contribute to their role in effecting change. You need to be able to collaborate across these three sectors. You need to be able to collaborate with other donors. And the good news is, Don, I’ve been watching this space for a while, I think finally, we philanthropists have, in India, we call it a tube light, a little slow, but it comes on eventually, have learned that we must learn how to collaborate better. And that’s why so many global new institutions like Co-Impact and so many others that are a lot.
And collaborating, of course, again, means you have to let, keep your ego a little at the back, towards the back burner. You have to really appreciate that other people bring something to the table and it’s not just you, however smart you are. And that, because you have learned to do that, you are going to be much more effective than you could possibly have been. And I think we’ve had enough of, and that’s why we collaborate so much.
The Center for Exponential Change has come out of a long journey. We are co-founders together with Institute Bejo and New Profit, who are in the room here. And you will hear more about it in the days to come. And we all hope you will join us. There’s going to be a website where you can give us feedback. We want to hear from you. The goal is that all of you change makers, sometimes there are gaps that need to be filled. You’re full of your passion, your mission. You know where you want to go. And some gaps are there which are not filled.
It could be that as leaders, you feel very lonely. It could be that you want to be tech-enabled, but don’t know how. It could be that you need a little help re-imagining the scale of what you want to do. You may need to find others who think like you, who have the same ambition. We hope that this center will help you.
There are four donors who brought in us a decent amount of money to begin with, which is $40 million. All of it is directly going to go into paradigm grants to social change organizations that are looking to go to the next level. Sanjay Purohit is in the room. Priya is in the room. Those who want to talk to him, please do so. Sorry, Sanjay, but that’s what we hope to do. I don’t know if we will succeed. We will try very, very hard with all your support. And Don, if you could tell us why you joined this effort, because you’ve been in many collaboratives. Why one more?
Don Gips: Well, let me take a step back in answering that. So I’ve been in philanthropy now five years. I’ve been in government, the private sector, civil society, and now I actually get to give money away. And first of all, it’s so clear that the problems we’re facing, as you just said, Rohini, all need, if one sector’s working alone, we’re not going to get there. You need government, you need the market, you need civil society working together on any of these intersecting problems. I think, and when I got to philanthropy, it literally is the most fragmented sector I’ve ever been in, and it’s very personal.
Philanthropists are giving in their own image or vision, but because of that, for our grantees or our partners, as you are so correctly, we’ve got to get rid of that word of grantee. Your original grantee or partner taught you that. Our partners have to go door to door to door. Instead of finding that single place, they can go to get funding, and then they have to file, okay, this one wants this impact report, this one wants that one, this one needs this in their grant agreement. As philanthropy, we need to get better at working together so that those in the field can make a difference.
When we came into Skoll, Shivani, who’s our head of strategy, and I, Jeff asked us to sort of rethink what we could do to make a bigger impact at a faster pace. And one of the things we found as we went on a deep listening tour to one of your earlier points was, as we talked to the people we’ve been funding for years, our partners, many of them were shifting out of running their own organization to saying, how do I change a system at scale?
Rohini Nilekani: Correct.
Don Gips: How can I be what we’ve called a systems orchestrator, somebody who, unlike in the musical orchestrator where the conductor’s out front, be behind, but helping, as you beautifully said, weave that web of connectivity that drives change? And we’ve been on this journey, and we’ve been working with Bridgespan on doing research on this, and then all of a sudden we get on the phone with Sanjay, and he says, “We think systems orchestrators are these really important thing,” and it was like a light bulb went off that we could get to work with you guys. And through your generosity, helping set up the center to provide, because what she didn’t say is they provided the funding so that the infrastructure can get built. So that whenever we find one of our partners who’s a systems orchestrator and can use this, all the money goes directly to them. So a round of applause for that.
Rohini Nilekani: That’s Nandan Nilekani, my husband, and I, and a whole team behind it.
Don Gips: Well, yes, and it takes a village to do all of this. I’d say the other thing, because I think it’s really important was not having this be a globally north, global north-led initiative, but truly having it be a partnership that crossed continents was sort of Sanjay’s vision and your vision, and I think it’s very powerful. I know we’re learning in every one of these conversations by being a part of that.
Rohini Nilekani: Thank you.
Don Gips: Which actually leads me to one more question before we open it up to the audience, so you guys start thinking of your questions. SaveLIFE, who will be accepting the Skoll Award later today, and many of our awardees have come from your early investments. As we see an increase of local, national, and regional funders, can you share a bit about the important role you see more proximate and place-based funders playing and driving impact, and what is the ideal role for global philanthropy in collaborating with these more proximate funders?
Rohini Nilekani: Yeah. No, that’s a very good question. I think it’s very, very important for local social organizations to find local support. It’s harder, because sometimes the more established global foundations are literally more generous and quick to give grants, small grants, in the global south. But I’ve come to believe that it’s very, very important to get local funding, and which means it’s a challenge to social leaders of non-profit organizations that we have to learn to tell our story better to the donor community around us.
There’s a lot of wealth being created in many countries in the global south, but there is still not a practice of this kind of modern philanthropy yet, and I think it behooves us all in this wonderful new world of communication to tell our story in such a way that we bring small and local donors along with us. The minute they come into this sector, there is so much reward that comes from that initial giving that they will want to give more and more, and I think global philanthropy can unlock local philanthropy. I know we’ve tried to do it in different ways and had different levels of success.
Certainly the Giving Pledge is one of many such organizations, but you know, there is so much more capital to be unlocked. Even in the Giving Pledge, there’s half a trillion dollars sitting all dressed up with nowhere to go, and I think it also is up to us because sometimes small social sector organization bemoan the lack of funding. But I think we also need to go out there and bravely tell our story in a way that we can be heard.
When I say we, I seem to be talking all over the place, but you know what I mean, that funders like me also need to hear your stories more. Sometimes they don’t reach funders, so that’s something. So how can global philanthropy, which is already so good at pushing out the money, how can it help local philanthropy to hear those stories better and carry them along? If Skoll could come to many countries and say, “We are here, now you join us,” which you’ve already been doing in some places, I think we need to unlock local capital for local work, especially in this very, very critical human decade where we all have understood exactly how interconnected we are, even as we are trying to tear ourselves apart with polarized ideologies.
Don Gips: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And just from our perspective, we’ve learned so much doing this with you and with philanthropists around the world. Every time I go, travel, and it’s not enough, so Shivani’s going to make me go travel a lot more next year, the insights and the local understanding is so critical, and that support, and just an encouragement to all global funders to find those local partners.
Rohini Nilekani: Absolutely, because we can all be unified in our missions. We all have similar ideas of equity, justice, freedoms, and so many other things, right? But we cannot be uniform in our solutions. The solution has to be in context, and therefore it will be in a myriad different diverse ways. And funders also have to be very sensitive to that. Please don’t try to push one solution down the pipeline. Please let the funder community learn that our job is to distribute the ability to solve, to restore agency, to uphold dignity, and to create more choice. So I think, I think you need to create a conference. It’s easier to tell you than to do it myself.
Don Gips: Can’t we do it with each other?
Rohini Nilekani: Where social sector leaders get to train donors.
Don Gips: I think you just created a, we’ll have to do that next year at the forum. I’m going to open it up for Q&A. They’re going to run around with mics. We got a couple, let’s turn on some lights so I can see. We got a hand there. Right there we had a hand. Where else were there? There’s one up there. Let’s start wherever you guys can get to first. Of course, everybody’s in the middle.
Nidhi: Hi, thank you. I’m privileged to be here.
Don Gips: Say your name and organization too, please.
Nidhi: My name is Nidhi. I represent, my dream is to make sure on the Indian streets women and children can walk safely without the fear of sexual harassment as safe as we all walked at 10 o’clock, 12 o’clock in Oxford. So I work with various organizations. One of them is Arpan, who I support. So yeah, my question is a difficult one and it’s a question of the six people we were on the table yesterday at Exeter College. Lovely Harry Potter type dining hall. So happy we were there. And I had someone from Nigeria, Germany, Spain, United States, London, India. And what we were discussing is this.
We are on this platform. There’s so many of us here. There’s so much power, money, doers, everybody in this room and there’s so much conflict in the world, which is creating more problems and it is taking us away from achieving the SDGs all of us are working together. So where can we take the plea to make that collective power work for everybody so we can persuade the governments and those leaders to cease fire? So that’s my difficult question. Sorry, but I just hope we do something together.
Don Gips: Do you want to take a stab at it?
Rohini Nilekani: I think you go first.
Don Gips: Oh, great.
Rohini Nilekani: I’m empowering you to answer first.
Don Gips: Oh, why thank you. I mean, this is a, look, I’ve said it from a stage yesterday. I don’t think I’m an old guy, so I’ve been around a while. This is one of the more challenging contexts any of us have ever worked in. We have global crisis. We’ve had conversations here about Gaza, where Ukraine is like the big sucking sound for resources and causing huge pain. And those are the ones we’re all talking about. From a numbers perspective, Sudan, Haiti, DRC are even worse.
We need to empower the voices in this room. That’s what we try to do with our philanthropy, to help shape that. You heard Mary Robinson yesterday from the stage talking about this need to build this collective power. I wish we had the answers, because we’re obviously not doing enough and not doing it fast enough, given the scale of what’s happening geopolitically.
I also, this is my own personal belief, and not necessarily, I’m not speaking on behalf of Skoll, although that’s going to be hard to do when I’m here at the Skoll World Forum and CEO of the Skoll Foundation, but I think we’re also operating in an information ecosystem that is driving these divisions at an incredibly fast pace. And misinformation and disinformation were already bad, and AI is making it an accelerant to that fire. And so, at least at Skoll, we are trying to think through what can you do to rebuild a healthier information ecosystem?
I spoke to our grantees earlier in the week, and I was talking about this article I read in Axios about the US media ecosystem, but I think it’s true globally, where in the US, we used to look at the world through several windows, television, radio, print, and the article said each of those windows has been broken, and it’s now we look at the world through shards of glass. It was a very powerful analogy. And then they went through sort of who the influencers were in each, as they saw it in like the 12 segments of the US population. I have to say, I didn’t know who 90% of them were. I found my little shard of glass. All the people I read, and they were in one of the shards of glass that was described in this article.
And the other thing I don’t think we’ve understood, and I see a few of you with your phones, that’s how we get our news and information. It’s through these little windows and snippets. And how do we address that? Because I don’t think until we address that and figure out how to tell narrative in a more powerful way that gets through in those screens, we’re going to start to break down some of those divisions. And I’ll say one more thing, because it’s something I struggle with.
In a democratic society, there is no arbiter of truth. So it’s hard to say what’s misinformation, what’s disinformation. In an authoritarian society, somebody gets to decide the truth that people are going to be told. So in this information ecosystem, those social media tools can be very powerful in an authoritarian society, and they can be used to divide a democratic society. And I think this is a fundamental challenge. So if anybody has solutions, come find me afterwards, because I’m all ears.
Rohini Nilekani: Yeah. No, I don’t want to evade the question. I would say I don’t know. I am, this is way above what I’m able to do. But I’ll tell you what I believe in. And you talked of shards of glass. The Japanese, I may be mispronouncing, is it kintsugi? They would take the shards of glass, repair them, and create something whole, new, and beautiful with gold.
Don Gips: I told you she was a poet.
Rohini Nilekani: Well, you know, I can do as much poetry as I want, but governance has to be done in prose.
Don Gips: Yeah.
Rohini Nilekani: But maybe together we can take these shards of glass and do kintsugi. And you know, who can do it? We can’t expect our leaders to do it. We have to do it. And that’s why at the core of my philanthropy is the firm belief that states and markets have been around to serve society and not the other way around. Right? We are not born to serve the markets. We are not born to be subjects of states. The states were created, markets were created to serve all of us as human beings and citizens. So it’s we who have to take back certain things that we have yielded in terms of our collective power to act.
And I think I don’t know how to avert wars, but I do know that every day’s, every person’s work every day is to restore community, be it just in your family, but be it in your neighborhood, be it at any level, but to restore the human-to-human connection that we should not be ashamed to talk about. Yesterday we heard such beautiful words from so many people on the stage and not to let, well, sometimes men–
Don Gips: Almost always men.
Rohini Nilekani: tell us otherwise. So I think that’s the work and you all do it every day. So I don’t want to lecture you on that, but however long it takes, that is the work ahead.
Don Gips: Beautifully said.
Rohini Nilekani: Thank you.
Don Gips: Question over here and then there are other hands up behind.
Angela Nguku: Thank you. My name is Angela Nguku. I come from Nairobi, Kenya. I lead a movement for women and girls working to advance their rights at agency from an asking and deep listening approach. I really acknowledge and appreciate what you’ve said, Rohini, and thanks for what you’re doing across the world. That deep listening is really, with intentionality to hear, understand and act is really important. And that systems change from what I’ve heard since the time I came here. This is my first time at Skoll and I’m really like wowed by what is happening. If we really want to impact, we have to start with a few things that we must change. And one of them is deep listening.
Embracing those who are doing the work and trusting that they know the solutions. That volunteerism is exhaustive and that passion cannot pay bills for those doing the work. And that sometimes we need to acknowledge that even after three years, four years, when the funding is over, the people are still living the solution, the context and the realities and we must acknowledge that they are the people who understand the solutions.
Yet a lot of times you hear that we need to embrace new actors in this space, but a lot of times what I’ve observed over my last 16 years of working in this space is that philanthropists most of the times are the ones who perpetuate the usual suspects. That you block out the new actors in this space, but by continuing with the same, same people doing the same results over and over and not getting new results.
The question that comes to my mind and I’m speaking on behalf of almost over 120 networks of women and girls that I work with in Kenya and across Africa, how then do we stop that? How do we remove ourselves from where we are and move closer to the new actors in the space and be able to be ready to do things differently? Acknowledging that it will take something I had today morning, a multi-solve approach, intersectional approach in how we do things and those usual suspects might not really be having the answers to that intersectional lens of looking at things? And are philanthropists really ready to listen, understand and act with those new actors in this space? Thank you.
Rohini Nilekani: I’m not quite sure I got the question. Is how do philanthropists?
Don Gips: I think how to, was the question how to get philanthropy to reach out to new actors in the space?
Angela Nguku: Yeah, a lot of times there’s a lot of the usual suspects that you know that I am Rohini, philanthropist and I only give money to A, B, C, D. Anyone coming to the space is blocked and these people also become the new, the big brothers syndrome comes in where you become the block.
Rohini Nilekani: So how does philanthropy stay more open–
Angela Nguku: Yes.
Rohini Nilekani: to new actors?
Angela Nguku: Exactly.
Rohini Nilekani: Yeah, no, I think that’s a very good point. Any good philanthropy, any good philanthropic institution should be able to constantly re-strategize based on what it is seeing and hearing in the field. And definitely they should. And I think it is time for more conferences in the world where philanthropists can be held publicly accountable, not by, please, no stone throwing or anything, just a very friendly–
Don Gips: Yeah, don’t like, we’re still up on the stage.
Rohini Nilekani: friendly, civilized learning sessions. I think sometimes we don’t know what other people are thinking of us as philanthropists, right? It’s not possible to do that 360-degree listening all the time. But I would say for sure, Skoll has pivoted, I have pivoted often, our teams have pivoted often, because you come somewhere and you say, you suddenly find how much you were missing all this while. And I think, again, I’m telling you, stories need to reach the donor community. They don’t reach enough. So maybe we need to do a little more brainstorming on how to do that in this time of our global situation. I’m sorry if that’s not a great answer.
Don Gips: First of all, one of the hardest parts about this job is, there are so many more organizations that we end up not being able to fund than those that we fund. I mean, civil society is so vibrant around the world and it’s very hard for all of us to find who we should be funding and where we go. And I think Rohini’s 100% right. It’s through deep listening that we figure out how to keep getting better at this. And we have a long way to go to get really good.
I do think one of the things we’ve done at Skoll that I would encourage others to do, and it’s part of the reason I’m here on the stage with Rohini, is we’re 60 people, is the total number of staff at the Skoll Foundation. We’re all based in the US. Yeah, we’re a global philanthropy. We try to learn through, we call them proximate funders, that’s why I’m on the stage because I can’t, I don’t know enough to know who the right organizations are, who are making a real difference around equity and change in Nigeria. But we’ll fund the Tutu Fellows or African Visionary Fund who are closer and can build out that network. We give up our control to them and then it also, selfishly, it builds a great pipeline of organizations for us to look at for the types of organizations who’ll be on the stage tomorrow or tonight, wow, we’re already into day two, receiving the Skoll Award.
So I think as philanthropy, we have to think about this as an ecosystem. We all have a role to play, but I think those of us in the Global North in particular should share some of our power with the more proximate leaders in philanthropy who are closer to the ground.
Rohini Nilekani: Yeah. Maybe we also, a little bit, might have to reset our expectations of the donor communities because I think donors also struggle to be relevant. Power of intent is very often there in the donor community, but it’s not necessarily, many donors I know are usually very wealthy individuals who’ve done extremely well in the financial sector or the corporate sector, and don’t necessarily know how to effect social change here. They try, but they bring some of those ideas here, which don’t necessarily make sense here. And it’s a journey to reach a point where you finally understand that what works in markets may not work in civil society. So I think a little bit of allowing the journey to happen.
And in any case, we all know that it’s not like the rich are going to come and save the world. Okay? Eventually it has to come up from below. And in the old days, or still in many parts of the world, the power of voluntary movements, where it’s not necessarily about writing a proposal and getting a check, but voluntary local public movements are incredibly powerful to effect societal change. And later on they can become institutionalized and look for grant money. But again, I repeat, starting from society, from our human connections with each other and repowering that engine of human beings and citizenry to address some of our problems seems to be incredibly important to reaffirm today.
Don Gips: 100% agree. Oh, 10 minutes, wow. And just one second, then I’ll get to you. When I look around the room, I see all these dandelion pins on people, it’s a sign of that type of movement. No funding. They’re just getting out there, building a movement that’ll wake up philanthropy and it’ll wake up government and it’ll wake up the private sector.
Roopa Dhatt: I should say, it must be serendipitous since– My name is Roopa Dhatt. I was on the table with Nidhi so we were meant to be. The woman who spoke before me is talking about women’s movements. And I myself founded a movement almost a decade ago and it was by chance. I describe myself as a physician by hobby and now leading one of the fastest growing women’s movement in health around the world. We have 57 chapters. It’s my first Skoll Forum. So again, thank you for the invitation. I’m coming here as a first-time grantee.
I’m feeling very inspired because this room feels like a room which is converted. I don’t feel like the odd person saying that I’m leading a movement. And I also want to just really acknowledge, Rohini, your remarks on the role of women’s leadership so resonate, but it’s resonating throughout the forum. And that’s the problem we created Women in Global Health to solve. Women deliver health, men lead it. And until women are actually leading at health at all levels, we’re going to keep missing out on those health solutions. So that’s a big problem that I’m here to solve. And I hope that many of you will reach out to me.
But turning to the topic at hand, one mind shift that I’ve gone through is, when I started Women in Global Health 10 years ago, I was thinking it was going to be a two-year campaign. That’s all it’s going to take. But now here I am crossing a 10-year milestone next year. And as we talk about the role of philanthropy and I think all types of partners, how do we get you on the journey with us for the long-term change?
We know social change does not happen overnight. We also are seeing all the tensions, the surface tensions that are taking place. And with that, we need systems change. And I really appreciate the, again, being in a place where people believe in system change. How do we get philanthropy to also be with us on the journey long-term, get multi-year funding and be committed? Thank you.
Don Gips: You want to tackle that one?
Rohini Nilekani: Well, I think a little bit you’re talking to the converted. They do, systems change over multiple years and we try to. We’ve been exactly trying to do that. But more and more philanthropists who are coming to this idea. And let’s watch over the next four or five years. I think you’re going to see much more philanthropic capital coming into systems change kind of work, more patient capital. I truly believe it in my country, there’s a lot of new wealth. And that new wealth is not attached to traditional family ideas of how to spend it.
There’s a lot of freedom and a lot of openness. And they are clearly seeing that we need our problem solving to be at least as fast, our solutions to be at least as fast as the pace at which the problems are growing. So they are very, very interested in this sort of thing. I see a new era of philanthropy coming in. Yeah.
Don Gips: And if I can just add to that–
Rohini Nilekani: And I hope the Center for Exponential Change will have a tiny role to play in that.
Don Gips: I was in Brazil this year. I can’t remember, I’m losing all track of dates. And some of my people who taught me while I was there are here in this room. And I couldn’t agree with you more. Next gen philanthropy, they’re not as patient. They want to, I mean, they’re not as happy with the status quo. They want to change the status quo.
Rohini Nilekani: Yes, yes.
Don Gips: And they’re taking a much more systems change lens to their philanthropy. And some of them who’ve inherited wealth are pushing their parents or their organizations, let’s switch the lens. Let’s figure out how we partner with those who are driving this change and accelerate it.
Harsha: Hi, sorry. Hi, my name is Harsha. Sorry, I was very anxious. So all of these kind people have come to support me to ask the question.
Don Gips: Uh-oh, this sounds like a troubling one.
Rohini Nilekani: Yeah.
Harsha: No, it’s very easy. And I think, so I’m a 21-year-old social entrepreneur, hence the nerves. And thank you. And I run an, oh. And I run a social enterprise that works with over 50,000 students, Gen Z’s to incubate at risk students into social entrepreneurs. So we develop profit generating social entrepreneurs from students who would otherwise have dropped out of school, gone into social crime and so on. And we currently operate in 26 countries. And we’ve been around for the last nine years. So when I founded it nine years ago, I was 13. People didn’t take us seriously.
They told, oh, thank you. No, but when I founded it at 13, people didn’t take us seriously. They told us we were way too young and to go out there and get some traction. Nine years later, 50,000 kids later that we’ve impacted, we have government contracts, we have Fortune 500s that have come on board, we have had Ivy League institutions, research published about us, they still say we’re too young. And a credit to Skoll, Skoll has been one of two foundations that have taken us seriously in the last nine years. So thank you.
But the problem that I see with a lot of youth is, it’s either completely ignored. They tell us come back when you’re older or it’s tokenized and it’s put up, but everyone says very cute, very good job, but no one takes them seriously as partners, as implementers, as people who have voices and real experiences to share. Many times we’re all lumped into one big group, which is people who have been running organizations for six months and for five, six years and therefore we don’t get the support we need when we’re actually at the, I would say, later stage than some organizations.
So what can we do to be changing perceptions about this simply because I think my face kind of betrays me a little bit when they see us and as much as I know a lot of good people want to support Gen Z, I would like to figure out strategies to make it easier for philanthropists to be able to do that in an effective way.
Rohini Nilekani: Okay, we have only two minutes so you should quickly talk.
Don Gips: Oh wow.
Rohini Nilekani: Yeah.
Don Gips: You have to answer though.
Rohini Nilekani: No. Most of the, in one of my portfolios called Active Citizenship, I think the average age of the partners is about 23, 24, 25. So I think the world is, in my country, 55% of the people are below 25 years. We have to encourage youth leaders and they are the future, they have to be part of this slightly sad future we have left for them, my generation, so all support to youth leaders, 100%.
Don Gips: You know, when I talked about those shards of glass, it was, reading that article was like a realization for me that the world I grew up in is no longer the world that exists and if we want to change it, we’ve got to start listening to youth. And I hope you’ll teach us how to do that better because we’re too old, or I am, she’s young, but I’m too old.
Rohini Nilekani: I’m young. Rohini Nilekani: Don, we have one minute left and I was a journalist and once a journalist, always a journalist. Can I ask you a question?
Don Gips: Yes.
Rohini Nilekani: CEO of the Skoll World Forum, maybe people haven’t heard you answering that. You’ve been in Samaaj, Sarkaar, and Bazaar, civil society, government and markets. Out of those, which was the most impactful role that you have had in your life?
Don Gips: You caught me off guard with that one. I thought I was going to tell you all to go to the next event. They’re all different. I had the incredible blessing to work for President Obama and President Clinton. It’s pretty hard to beat in terms of impact and feeling like directly responsible. But I actually think this job is the most rewarding, not because of what I get to do, but because I get to see all of you at work out in the field.
It is so moving and it gives me hope that we can actually fix some of the problems that the first questioner brought up and that the youth are reminding of us that if we’re going to get through this, it’s by the people on the front lines building these movements. And being in a position to help them get there is probably the most rewarding thing I can do.
And let me tell you, walking around this forum, I’ve been driving my staff crazy because I like disappear. And I’m just walking around trying to listen to the conversations because they inspire me, they give me hope, and they let me know that there’s a brighter future ahead. And so, thank you to all of you.
Rohini Nilekani: So, you can do poetry, too.
