Fast Foundation

Zoë Baird, president of the Markle Foundation, has stitched together a Web of thinkers and innovators who are wrestling with some of the most vexing problems of the digital economy. Under Baird's leadership, Markle is giving away half of its endowment over the next few years. It also is crossing some once-sacred lines in the foundation world: for example, steering resources to for-profit companies if those companies' products fit Markle's objectives. "Our goal is to pursue the potential of interactive media to improve people's lives," Baird says. "We can use money to be a catalyst."

That's the story of Paul Meyer's Child Connect project to reunite missing children in West African refugee camps with their families. Markle gave Meyer $50,000 at the beginning and added more when the effort began to morph into projects in Kosovo. "Everything Paul has done fits perfectly with the Markle approach to projects as the paradigm changes," says Julia Moffett, 32, the foundation's chief strategic officer and a managing director. Although Markle was Meyer's original funder, it wasn't the only one -- and that's the way that Markle likes it, says Moffett. "Do we feel proprietary about Paul? No way. We feel like an incubator."

Unlike many foundations, Markle prefers to be part of a team. The power of ideas, Baird and her colleagues believe, is a function of how many people with different approaches you can bring together. "It's a really interesting foundation," says Allen Hammond, chief information officer at the World Resources Institute. "At the core of its coalitions are people who care about making things happen."

Certainly, Baird's strategy is a risky -- and controversial -- one. Not only is she spending more of the foundation's money than ever, but she's taking chances early, with the full knowledge that some of those projects will fail. Some of Markle's investments, such as $3.5 million in a partnership with Oxygen Media to create a polling organization on issues of interest to women, could be affected by the dramatic downturn in the financial markets. "Market volatility is part of what we anticipate," says Baird. "Whether we're doing something with a nonprofit or a for-profit, we're in uncharted territory."