Page 33 - Volume 41-Number 04 11-07-18.pdf

How Apple and the Ford

Foundation go beyond metrics in

quantifying their impact

Ford Foundation president Darren Walker and Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice
president of environment, policy, and social initiatives, discuss how they do

and don’t measure the good they do.

BY BEN PAYNTER from the Fast Company Innovation Festival

Ford Foundation president Darren Walker believes the philanthropy sector is suffering “tremendous harm” by
relying too much on concrete metrics as a way to measure success. It’s an unorthodox view, but it’s shared by
what might seem like a surprising corporate ally: tech titan Apple.

“Some of the most important things in life cannot be measured,” Walker said during a moderated talk
alongside Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy, and social initiatives at the Fast Company
Innovation Festival. “I saw a major philanthropist’s website, a new multibillion-dollar foundation. And the
headline said, ‘If it can’t be measured, we don’t fund it.’ And I thought, What a shame,” he told the crowd.

Nonprofits in many cause areas typically provide donors with bang-for-your-buck statistics about how their
money gets spent to build trust or loyalty. People
with money to give away have many options, the
theory goes, so it’s important to show them how it
will be well spent. But both Walker and Jackson said
that some types of socially good impacts are less
quantifiable than, say, the number of seeds planted
to grow food, or vaccines delivered to help people.
These often deal with fundamental values crucial
to democracy and demand continued attention–
because while victories can build on each other,
they can also unexpectedly regress.

In fact, some investments might look like long
shots, but that doesn’t mean those interested in
change should stop taking risks. “We would never
have invested, starting in 1952, in the movement
for democracy in South Africa, if we had to have a
randomized controlled trial to determine whether or not that wasn’t an investible proposition,” Walker said.
The same goes for the funding for a Sally Hemings history project 25 years ago at Monticello, which included
recognizing that Thomas Jefferson had fathered her children. “How do we measure Sally getting her dignity
back?” he added, inspiring a huge round of big applause.

Neither Walker nor Jackson disputes the need for smart accounting to maximize science-driven breakthroughs
or humanitarian aid. “But we have to be unapologetic that there are things that matter in our society, in a
civilization that cannot be articulated on an Excel spreadsheet, and so I feel firmly about that,” he added,
(Continued on next page.)
Resource Guide & Directory November 2018 INLEAGUE | PAGE 31