 So, the first thing I wanted to say, you know there's a new voice at the Ford Foundation. If you just click on their annual report, now annual report is not something I generally think, oh gosh, can't wait to read that, read that latest annual report. But I promise you, if you click on the Ford Foundation's annual report, you will see a series of conversations and essays that suddenly open the door to the world that Ford is funding and thinking about. And one of the things you've been thinking about is really what's wrong with philanthropy, which is an interesting place for the head of the second largest foundation in the country to start. And recently you have an essay that's coming out in Civicus where you say that philanthropy has abandoned nonprofits through incremental project focused giving. Now as the president of, we see lots of people nodding around here, right, as the president of a think tank and civic enterprise, absolutely, right. There's all this tightly, tightly, tightly focused project giving. But I thought that was the best way to get results. Well first, thank you, Emery, for being here. Thanks to all of you for coming. And I certainly am not as interesting or charismatic as Corey Booker, but I'm happy to talk about philanthropy and to congratulate you and your colleagues at New America. Of course, Ford has enjoyed a long and very productive partnership with you and having you at the helm only, I think, emboldens us to do more. I think observation about my annual letter in some ways is a good starting point because it was a starting point for me. I have never been president of a foundation and when I became president I was presented with a communication that was to come from the president and it was incredibly generic and it sounded like a lot of CEO's communications. It sounded like it was really about managing risk rather than actually telling what's going on at the foundation. So my communications team and I came to an understanding that they need that my voice has to be what actually leads and the way I talk and the way I am in my lived experience. I need to bring that to my communication and therefore it probably does sound a little different and that's by design because I think being authentic is what we need to be and sometimes that's a little uncomfortable for people but it's not for me. Your point about my essay in Civicus is it is true. I do say that we are project funding nonprofits to death because we are and what I mean and what I talk about in that essay is what we have to do in philanthropy to get back to the thing I call the three eyes that we have done over 50 years at Ford and that really is investing in institutions, investing in ideas and investing in individual leaders and that we start there and then we figure out strategy but the how we do it, the thing we know about social change and social progress in certainly in the United States and anywhere in the world is that you have to have those three things. You have to have institutions that are durable and that over the long haul are going to be fortified for the fight because certainly what we do, social justice work is a contested idea. The very idea of social justice is contested and so therefore to do it effectively over many, many years requires institutions, requires leaders and requires ideas and we don't do that by doing project funding. It is very important that we do project funding because there is a role. I just simply believe that we need to recalibrate things and that's going for Ford to mean I think in some ways some radical change in our own behavior. It also will mean that we will be in some ways more rigorous about making grants and it may lead to fewer grants, to fewer grantees. The news isn't good for everyone and it isn't about making everyone happy. It is about saying if we are really going to be investing in institutions that means we are going to give more general support. We are going to give more adherence to what our grantee partners believe should be strategy rather than sitting in our wonderful glass house and coming up with it and then sort of telling people as contractors to please go and do this for us. One of the things interesting about the way you talk about it is that's the pendulum swinging back to a model that you might now call the old philanthropy. The philanthropy that I came up with when I was a student and running a program at Harvard, it was much more about investing in individual leaders or in institutions and as I said I think it makes wonderful sense but it's very much at variance with what we might now call the new philanthropy so all the new money that is huge amounts of new money that is being spent often in a way that invests in sometimes for profit and sometimes not for profit but very tightly constrained because these are investments so when one of the new foundations or the various individuals who have this kind of money they're in many ways tightening the strings and asking like we're investing and this is what we expect to see for our investment and this is round one and this is round two so talk a little bit about the differences between the old and the new philanthropy and are there bridges and where you see Ford in between them. Well I think it's unfortunate in some ways that we have allowed this dichotomization of philanthropy to occur where some of us who are what are called legacy foundations and newer foundations seem to be pitted against each other some of that critique is because there are people in both communities who look disfavorably unfavorably at the other as arrogant and that is on both sides people the new philanthropy say that the old philanthropy is arrogant and the old philanthropy says the new philanthropy is arrogant and and so we we get into this false dichotomy because I actually think that much of the new philanthropists are doing amazing important work and are innovating in some really phenomenally important ways we just shouldn't allow the discourse to become so dominated by a singular theology of what philanthropy ought to be and that's always what we get into we either the media or the philanthropy bloggers or there's always someone because it's a much sexier thing to have good and bad I mean the complexity of our current ecosystem is often frustrating to journalists and pundits you know it's just like when there was the Cold War era and there was Russia was bad and America was good the world was far more easy to explain and and it was far more easier to know what was right wrong good bad and so putting us into that dichotomy where we become bad because we're old and is I just think a disservice so but I also would say that many of the new philanthropists have learned what we legacy institutions and our donors knew which is just because Henry Ford could innovate and build a Model T he didn't actually think he could fix the school systems and and so and so John do you know I mean John D. Rockefeller his the efficiency he brought to the production of oil transformed our economy but John D. Rockefeller understood and had the humility to know that actually he needed help and needed to listen to people who knew better and who understood the problems that he wanted to help solve and he listened to them and he invested in them and he was guided by their wisdom he did not impose or or appropriate from his business experience a sense that what you need to do is what I did to be successful in running my business enterprise so I'm inviting you right now to have the same conversation in six months in Silicon Valley so we will do this so with that so you anticipate my next question because one of the biggest differences in in that I agree it's a false dichotomy and it may be an unproductive dichotomy but one of that is look the new money believes the private sector can do it all right or the private sector in the civic sector but we can just leave government out of it we can set up our own schools we can figure out how to solve public problems because that's what really that's what new America tries to do that's what Ford tries to do that that's what what lots and lots of individuals are trying to do talk a little more about how you see government and the way the relationship between philanthropy and government and the civic sector because that's a very big set of questions in a world that's so complex many of us think well you know you need all three but then what are the relations between them well it's interesting I this morning spoke at a panel that was an international group and one of the questions from the editor of the FT was do you believe that the emergence of non-state actors really portends the future of development that that the state in international affairs will become less important because there are all these non-state actors and cities are important and so society etc and the private sector and I I think that it is really naive to believe that we can have progress with weak and ineffective government and that non-state actors can fill the void particularly in a democracy of governance and addressing the issues of how to build the public commons how to address issues like inequality how to have policies that incent investment and instant philanthropy all of these questions are deeply affected by the quality of governance and so to simply believe and in the sort of adherence that the private markets can solve these problems there are many things the private markets can solve and we should incent their solution building but if we do that without also taking account and attention to governance we do it at our own peril and it won't be sustained because at the end of the day you've got to have government helping to sustain so you were hugely important in helping to resolve Detroit's pension crisis and I'm interested how there so you and Knight and a couple of other foundations you know you are private foundations who are coming in to work with the city in exactly a city that's been very badly governed how does how does it work in practice where you're putting in funds but obviously you want to see that city better governed how do you actually put that into practice well first of all in in the Grand Bargain which is what the solution ultimate transaction was called wasn't my idea but whatever the you played a huge role let me put it that way the the role that I played was was when when the court the chief mediator presented the court's plan to a group of foundations which was that we would fund the entire effort I mean I think I did play a role in being really clear that that was simply a non-starter and that there was a role for government and that and that ultimately government had to be engaged in this solving this problem and long-term monitoring the pensions and monitoring the the conditions that ensure that that the contracts we would be entering into would would would be honored so in that instance I think what what philanthropy did was to really ensure that government was accountable and and I think in the case of Detroit the governor who is a Republican governor and who put much of his own political capital at risk because no one in his in his caucus in his party wanted in the legislature in Lansing to save Detroit I mean there was no support from senior people in his party at the state level for the plan and he he literally ensured that the state matched the four hundred million dollars that that we raised and and that is a huge tribute to him and his a kind of leadership that is not ideological and that is about I'm here to problem-solve for the people that is as you're talking I'm thinking I'm wearing my foreign policy hat and I'm thinking it you just described domestic development right you just describe what normally happens in international development which is it money comes in from outside from foundations or from government agencies and says we will give you this money but we're going to monitor how well you govern and we think of that all the time if we're talking about various countries in Africa and Asia you just described it in Michigan because it because we know that in our own country we have our own global South and and there are many unfortunately global Souths in America and and many of the lessons we have learned through our work actually we we can interpolate from them a lot to deal with some of the conditions locally I love that many global Souths in America so let me now let me look at the other side of the street so this question you got asked this morning where you know does government have a role to play in development one of the things the other there's a commitment to the private sector but there's also a commitment to social enterprise right to using private the market forces for social purposes and this is again you know lots of new foundations individuals investing a lot in social enterprise I wanted to ask you what you thought and particularly to talk about Ford's own role in program related investments and helping the whole social enterprise sector to develop well I think when I talk about the three eyes the you know I the ideas is about ideas and innovation and and I am very proud of the fact that I think Ford has has very much been about social innovation for many years and so along the way I mean I was a product of one of the Ford social innovations I was in the first class of Head Start well Head Start was an early 1960s grant from the Ford Foundation to a group of social scientists at Yale because there was so little understanding of how to help poor children in terms of early childhood development and and and to help their help there help us get off to a good educational start well that was a real innovation Head Start was an innovation and when I look back over the history the ARCA Ford and I think about all the things that we helped to seed from public broadcasting to the NEA and the NEH all the way through all kinds of things like community development in the international arena so many international programs and and all the way through giving Mohammed unit is for unisys first grants and and creating Grameen Bank and then moving into future work all the way more recently to to work around domestic policy and and domestic workers and as you know well here internet rights which is a important program that you have here and my colleague Laurie McGlinty is here who manages that portfolio at Ford with with you the Open Technology Institute is an example of an innovation the idea that we in philanthropy if we care about social change we have to care about the internet now there are so few people who even understand the internet no one who runs a foundation is a digital native or anywhere close there are very few people in foundations who are comfortable with technology and yet the internet is going to be and already is the primary battleground in our society for opportunity and yet those of us who are entrusted with with fighting for more opportunity fighting for access ensuring fairness and a more just society are completely AWOL on this issue and and that's the sort of thing as a matter of of of continuing to innovate and adapt and change that we in philanthropy have to get better at and certainly we at Ford because I will tell you we need to innovate more and there are many of our practices that are classified and that need to change and that were appropriate and great in the past no critique but as a matter of going forward we need to make some changes so one of the things thinking about internet policy right we've just had the net neutrality struggle and victory and obviously with your help and a new America played a very important role but one of the things that struck me we've written lots of reports and you know lots of blog posts etc the thing that probably had the biggest impact certainly in my household on net neutrality was John Oliver right it was extraordinary you watch John Oliver and then suddenly you understood why net neutrality was important so I one of the things you did at Ford before becoming president was exactly to work in these less traditional policy spaces are less traditional spaces for bringing about change generally using the arts using different kinds of media and I wonder I wanted to ask you about how you see that going forward are we are we are there more options for us to make social change to solve public problems in ways that we haven't tapped enough absolutely so the John Oliver been yet that you just it was all about culture understanding that to change hearts and minds to educate people you have to understand their cultural context and in development I remember at Rockefeller my first meeting with a group of the act science which is what they were called the act science guys who did the food security work there was it was a really brilliant conversation as a set of presentations about food security and in some African countries but it was completely devoid of any cultural specificity it was a set of ideas that seemingly were were constructed at at Iowa A&M and Cornell and those grantees and then well let's transport those to to Uganda and and I think we've learned that I mean the you know this the dirt roads in rural villages and the streets of urban slums are filled with the carcasses of development programs that died because no one understood culture and so one of the reasons I'm excited and you may have read because I I posted something this week I spoke last week I did the keynote at the Jeff's Gold Forum at Oxford and I talked about this question of art culture development activism and and so we are going to be looking at that intersection of how we use culture for storytelling because we know that people's perceptions and their ability to absorb knowledge information and to determine their their viewpoint is often not well in fact we know the neuroscience tells us actually the facts are not more than 50% the fact is less than 50% of a person's the part of the brain that processes the fact has less influence on the outcome of a person's perception than a host of other inputs culture is the primary and and so whether we're working on ending child marriage which if you're working on ending child marriage or FGM you don't start by talking about a UN report or or appropriating some culturally specific thing that a group of feminists in the United States believe ought to be the storyline you start by in the village asking the carriers of the culture how do we change your tribe your communities views on whether women should be subjected to this kind of torture how do we change that that's how we start but we that hasn't been the way we've operated for most of our history yeah it's so interesting as I was listening to you I was thinking I love story core on NPR I just love it you know you listen to it and it you know the small towns across America people talking to each other in ways they don't parents and children and I found myself thinking imagine if you made it possible for villages across the around the world to tell their own stories you know to be to do something that we as Americans just take for granted we have multiple ways we can do this and and that's that's the repository of culture it's mapping your own world it's creating the archives of your own culture and history and it's so far from how we how we think about well but it's also if you talk to Dave I see the founder of story core who was in my office a couple of weeks ago and he was saying how frustrating it is for him because what funders want to know is give us your metrics that was tell me so it's great I heard I was crying I heard the story I was in the bathroom getting ready and I was crying and I and all those things that story core does but show me your metrics I want outcomes and I want them in three-year and and I think that's one of the real challenges today is that as our society has become so as we moved as I think the Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel gets it so right when he says we have moved from being a market economy to a market society where the only things that matter are things that can be measured and things that have a relationship with capital so if it can't be measured then maybe it doesn't matter and if it can't be monetized then maybe we shouldn't care about it and I think that's the most insidious thing that is happening in our culture and that is also producing this other challenge we have in our culture which is sort of short-termism which is our enemy which is which is so in infested our every sort of fiber of who we are as a people now and it it so distorts our decision-making our priorities what matters and so in every aspect of our lives and as as parents I know this whole you know raising children in an era where it's all about immediacy and I want to pay off now I want the benefit now well they're only mimicking the patterns that they see adults and so whether it's an investor on Wall Street whether it's a school district that wants to turn around tomorrow whatever it may be there is there is this sense that we need to measure it or it doesn't matter and we want to see results now so that's my last question because I was exactly going to go there which was to say so you reject the the just terribly confining and narrowing emphasis on those kinds of metrics but at the same time you're all about impact right the Ford Foundation is about impact so give us your vision of how a foundation we connects to its grantees in a way that creates impact but does not confine to the point that you undercut the very wonderful work you want to support so I like to think that at the Ford Foundation we are in the business of hope and when you're in the business of hope and justice you don't start with a demand for metrics you start with an understanding that in a democracy like the United States for example the narrative arc of our history should inform how we think about progress which is that it is slow long slog really hard and particularly on issues that are about real core root cause challenges in our culture race gender class geography all of these things yes we make progress and we should measure that progress but at the end of the day we have to be committed to the struggle and the journey and if I were to look back over our work whether it be our early grants to educate the world about South Africa apartheid going back to the 50s or our early work on racial justice in the US it absolutely by the perspective of an evaluation that work could have been killed at many points over those years there were times in in the the funding of our work in South Africa where we were at odds with our own government because the United States government said that Mandela and Oliver Tambo and that they were all enemies of the state and yet we made grants to support their disciples traveling the world to proselytize about the evils of apartheid when I look at our work supporting the civil rights movement we the Ford Motor Company was livid about the work Henry Ford wrote the most unkind letter to Mac George Bundy admonishing him for the harm we were doing to the very thing that made us the Ford Foundation which is the Ford Motor Company because the dealers in the American South were so displeased by our activism and what we were supporting which was harming their business in the South and yet we had to continue to do it so of course by many objective standards it would have been possible to say stop it this is a failed idea you're pushing the envelope too much go find something else that is less high risk and less controversial to fund and I'm really proud that we didn't do that and so today yes we whenever we can run a randomized controlled trial like we're doing on our conditional cash transfer program in Latin America let's do an RCT it's the appropriate metric but we're not going to run an RCT on our racial justice program because guess what we haven't solved it yet and in order to solve it we've got to be on the journey for the long haul that's what we're about I told you Darren Walker is a visionary thank you thank you thank you very much