What's the Best Way to Do Good?

Win Churchill

Managing general partner
SCP Private Equity Management LP
Wayne, Pennsylvania

If you do things right, your philanthropic projects begin to build on one another, just as your business projects do. In fact, after a while, a seamlessness develops between your nonprofit ventures and your business ventures.

We have in our business's portfolio about 30 investments at any given time. Adding nonprofits to those is just a question of how we organize and delegate. We support two schools in impoverished neighborhoods of northern Philadelphia. The Gesu School, a Jesuit grade school, first approached me for help to fund a cage for a rooftop playground. When I visited the school, I saw that it needed much more than a cage. It was near bankruptcy.

We endowed a development office to raise money for the school. Once the Gesu became a stable, vital part of the community again, we started a charter middle school so that the Gesu kids would have somewhere to go when they got older.

Working with these schools is the most natural thing. We treat them exactly the way that we treat fledgling or middle-stage companies. The students are members of our constituency. We feel the same responsibility to them as we do to our portfolio companies, and we make sure that they have a chance to make the most of their lives.

If you're an entrepreneur, you already know how to do venture philanthropy. It's a seamless fit with your business. The next step is just to start doing it. Hemingway said that a writer is somebody who writes. That's just as true with giving back. Pick something that jibes with your values, and begin.

Win Churchill (wchurchill@scppartners.com) serves as director of various charities and educational institutions, including the Gesu School and the Young Scholars Charter School, both located in northern Philadelphia. SCP manages private equity funds sponsored by Safeguard Scientifics Inc.

Paul Myers

Executive director
Ten Thousand Villages
Akron, Pennsylvania

The impact of giving can be far greater than you'll ever know. A few years ago, I was buying a newspaper at the airport in Bangladesh when a man tapped me on the shoulder. I recognized his face but couldn't recall his name. He looked at the two men behind the newsstand and told them, "This man saved my life." He explained: "Several years ago, I had lost two children because I couldn't feed them. This man gave me a job. Today, all six of my children are in school, and we don't go hungry." He hugged me and began to cry.

During my six years in Bangladesh working with locals to develop sustainable micro-enterprises, I was reminded daily of the value of providing people with an income. Jobs that pay fair wages enable people to live with dignity -- and to arrive at a point where they too can contribute to their community and to society.

You can help people earn money in a number of ways: You can purchase their products or services. You can give them training that they can't afford. But here's one very simple way: Be more intentional about where you buy. Think beyond the initial purchase. Demand more of the businesses that you patronize. Ask questions about where and how a product is manufactured, and consider the implications.

Paul Myers (pem@villages-mcc.org) joined Ten Thousand Villages, a nonprofit chain of more than 120 stores in North America, in 1989. Through its sales of Third World crafts, the organization generated $17.3 million in revenues in 1999 to provide artisans with enough income to meet basic needs, such as food and education. Visit Ten Thousand Villages on the Web, www.tenthousandvillages.org

Stacy Palmer

Editor
The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Washington, DC

Giving your time is an incredibly valuable thing. But cash is what keeps nonprofits up and running. Think of charitable giving as part of your financial portfolio. For example, don't just put money toward your favorite causes -- ones that you know are reliable and that you'll give to year after year. Take a slice of your giving pie, and look for something that might be a little risky -- just as you'd do in your regular portfolio. Take a chance on an untried group, or on a person with a fabulous idea for running a nonprofit, and then see what happens. As with any venture, the chance that it might work in a big way is worth the risk that it might not work at all.

There's been a lot of emphasis these days on "results" in giving. That's important: You want to be informed and to know that your money isn't going into something fraudulent. But that focus on results might imply that everybody's going to win. It's just not going to work that way. The only way that things change is when people are willing to take risks. That's what philanthropy is about: investing in new ideas that have a shot at changing society.