In his six years working on education for the Clinton administration, Jon Schnur learned this: Great principals make great schools. So his New Leaders for New Schools recruits would-be principals to undergo intensive leadership training, a yearlong residency, and on-site coaching. By the end of next school year, NLNS will have placed more than 200 principals in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC, affecting the education of almost 100,000 kids in urban areas. By 2012, NLNS hopes to have 2,000 principals and 1 million children nationwide. Says Schnur: "One day, adults will look at schools that aren't performing and instead of saying what's wrong with these kids, they'll ask what's wrong with us."
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Venture Fund
San Francisco, California
Kim Smith, Cofounder and CEO
www.newschools.org
Kim Smith, a Stanford MBA and CEO of the NewSchools Venture Fund, is determined to make private-public partnerships work for America's sagging education system. Her model? Venture capital. NewSchools has started two investment funds, totaling about $65 million, which focus on charter schools and performance. It has committed $22 million to 11 for-profit and nonprofit ventures--from GreatSchools.net, an online service offering performance data to parents, to Teach for America, the well-known nonprofit that places talented college graduates as teachers in needy schools. To win investments, groups must show that their projects will have not just immediate impact, but also longer-term systemic effects. They also have to prove a viable bottom line.
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San Francisco, California
John Wood, Founder and CEO
www.roomtoread.org
In 1998, Microsoft executive John Wood, trekking through Nepal, was dismayed to find a 45 % literacy rate, few schools, and barren libraries. Two years later, he returned, this time as founder of Room to Read. Since then, his group has helped build 700 libraries, 63 schools, and 20 computer and language labs. The organization has donated more than 300,000 books to villages in Nepal, India, Cambodia, and Vietnam. And it has given 412 scholarships to girls who otherwise couldn't afford to go to school. Participating villages become co-owners of projects, often providing up to half the resources. "My personal goal," Wood says, "is to help 10 million children to gain an education. I don't see any reason why we need to think small about this."
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Washington, DC
Bill Shore, Founder
www.strength.org
If you don't recognize the name Share Our Strength, you'll certainly remember its most successful campaign: Charge Against Hunger, wherein a portion of your restaurant tab went to hunger-fighting causes. With such campaigns, Share Our Strength has distributed more than $70 million to more than 1,000 programs in 20 years. Bill Shore, a former staffer for Senators Gary Hart and Robert Kerrey, founded and still runs SOS. Shore says his organization creates its own wealth. In other words, he has mastered the art of partnering for serious profit. Now, with partners ranging from Evian to Yahoo! (and American Express, which backed Charge Against Hunger), Shore says he doesn't have to compete with other nonprofits for a share of the philanthropy pie. Rather, his organization works to expand it.
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