2002 Seattle Foundation Meeting
June 11, 2002
Prepared remarks by Patty Stonesifer, chief executive officer
Good afternoon. And thanks, Anne, for that lovely introduction.
It is a real honor to be here with you today. I'm really delighted to have the opportunity to speak to Seattle Foundation fellow members and many of the grantees, as well as community leaders and members of our community. Let me be sure to acknowledge the fact that one of the great things about this community is that there are so many intersections and partnerships in this room. Not just the individual efforts of each of you, but the collective efforts of those who are prepared to use their resources and those who know how to deploy them. David's remarks offered phenomenal examples of how our resources actively deployed could have a positive impact far beyond our dreams. And we thank you for those comments.
We are really lucky at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Gates family to have received so much advice and cooperation and partnership from so many of you. Our Pacific Northwest team is a small one. There are just three people on the team and about a year ago we were able to attract Jaime Garcia, who many of you have met, to help us lead that team.
But I'm here today not because I serve on The Seattle Foundation Board, as wonderful as it is, but I'm here because I am also a member of The Seattle Foundation. In spite of running the largest foundation in the world as my day job, I have chosen to use The Seattle Foundation for my own family's philanthropy and have an advised fund there that has been a very effective and exciting and family-oriented tool for our own interests. That is very important to me. But really I am here today, and so are you, I'm sure, because I believe so strongly in what this organization represents – the idea that our community, Seattle, will, can and should take care of its own.
Like many of you, I do a lot of traveling. In fact, I have traveled around the world several times these past few years and I hear many misperceptions of Seattle. You know what we're known for – the home of Frasier… the Space Needle… unfortunately, the WTO… and the September through August Rain Festival. And many of you may have heard, when Jerry Seinfeld was visiting here just a couple of months ago, he also noted that we're a city that stops for coffee on its way to Starbucks.
But because of the generosity of The Seattle Foundation and other long-time and new leaders in philanthropy, we have also become known worldwide as a community that truly gives back. And I believe that reputation is a glimpse into the heart of the real Seattle, but a Seattle that can do even more.
Today I'm going to share with you some thoughts about the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, our approach to grant making, and also some of the lessons we've learned in these past few years and some lessons that I've learned personally in this short history. I hope that by sharing some of these stories I can convey to you what so many in this room understand – how utterly transformational good philanthropy is. Not just for the recipients, but for those of us who have the privilege of being part of the giving. It certainly has been transformational in my own life.
In 1999 I had one incredibly transformational experience. President Nelson Mandela visited Seattle and in the process came and visited the foundation – an incredible thrill for each and every one of us. But during his visit in a room just across town with many of you present, President Mandela stopped at one point and looked out at the audience and simply asked, "Will all of those of you who actually took personal action, any action, big or small, to end the terrible injustice of apartheid, please stand."
And then he said, "And will those of you who actually did something, anything, to help me walk free from Robin's Island, please stand."
And the next 60 seconds were among the most uncomfortable moments in my life. Literally to a person in that room, even those who had done something against the terrible injustice of apartheid felt we could have done more. We felt, in looking at our own personal history of action or inaction, that there was something more that we could have and should have done.
And I made a commitment to myself at that time, as I know many others did in the room that the next time a leader like that stood in front of a room like this one and said, "Tell me, what have you done," given the opportunities that I've been given and the resources present in my family and in our community, that I would feel that I could stand. That when it came to efforts to increase equity and access to education in the United States, and to basic health for children around the globe, that I wanted to be prepared to say that I had done all that I could. Now that's a daily challenge for each and every one of us, because doing all that you can is a considerable challenge.
Well, Bill and Melinda Gates have really been working on that same issue. At the core of what we do, and of what the Gates family stands for, are those two values – equity and access. These two issues have guided the establishment of our programs, the decisions we've made about giving, and the choices that we've made in our early years of the foundation.
The Gates began their giving, as so many of you have done with your own family's giving, by looking at what they knew how to do best. By concentrating at the beginning on access to information technology, they set their sights on tackling what is still a huge challenge. And I know many of you have made grants in this area, addressing the disparity in access to digital technologies and the critical information that is now available on the Internet.
Bill and Melinda wanted to ensure that regardless of where someone lived in the U.S. or how much they earned, they would have access to the unbelievable benefits of the information age. And they saw that if we could provide the early capital, the software, the hardware, and the training for the librarians that we could reach one very simple goal – that if you could reach a public library in the United States you can and will reach the Internet.
Well, that was five years ago. In fact, I was just headed out the door of Microsoft when Bill and Melinda began to seriously consider launching this private philanthropic project and they managed to pull me in almost immediately. Today we have completed our goal in 28 states, and by fall of 2003, you will be assured that in the United States of America if you reach a public library you can reach the Internet. We are very proud of this effort.
Bill and Melinda then turned their attention to the pervasive inequalities in access to higher education in this country. We wanted to dramatically help improve high school graduation and ultimately college completion rates for all kids, but especially those who have been historically underserved by our U.S. education system.
This is an uphill battle. Only half of African American and Latino students attending urban high schools in this country will receive their high school diploma. Only half. How can we say that we believe in the right to a free basic education when less than half of our urban youth are being adequately served by the system we have today? Participation in higher education continues to lag for minority students across the board, but begins with this pipeline of high schools.
And why is it? There are many reasons… but we do know one thing – that today's large, anonymous high schools do not serve these students well. And there is a ray of hope – data and direct evidence show that small, personalized high schools of 500, 400, 300 students can cost-effectively create a great experience for high school students. We have seen achievement rates and graduation rates skyrocket with the transformation of big high school systems to smaller school systems. And so the foundation is continuing to build programs that provide scholarships for students historically underserved and continuing to work very hard on high school reform.
In education and in libraries the principles of equity and access have been guiding us. But they are also part of our efforts in the Pacific Northwest where much of our giving has focused on access to basic social services for families and children in transitional housing and other forms of education. We are grateful to each of you for your hard work in support of these simple principles of equity and access in our community.
Beyond our borders, equity and access are the same principles that are driving our commitment to improve the health of the poorest children in the world. Bill and Melinda were shocked, stunned, is what I remember Bill saying, by the horrendous gap in health among children around the world. Today one in 12 children dies before the age of 5 almost totally from preventable diseases such as measles, malaria, diarrhea, and other common childhood illnesses. One in 12 children dies. And besides the mortality, disease, as you can well imagine, leads a family further and further into poverty. Poverty, in turn, deepens disease.
But the good news is that wherever health improves, women choose to have fewer children, and equity, education, literacy, all basic conditions improve. When health improves life improves by all discernable measures.
Yet we see that where the demand for health spending is greatest, the supply is the very lowest. Ninety-five percent of HIV, TB and malaria cases occur in developing countries where instead of counting the annual expenditure on health in the thousands, we can count it on our hands. Rich governments are not fighting these diseases because the rich world doesn't have them. The private sector generally is not developing vaccines or drugs or diagnostics for these diseases, because poor countries can't buy them. Of the $70 billion spent globally on medical research and development each year only 10% is devoted to research for 90% of the disease burden. Of course that disease burden is occurring in the 90% of the world that is the poorest.
If we were surprised and appalled to learn how many children die each year from easy preventable diseases, we were shocked to learn how much could be done for so little. For $30 we can fully immunize a child, yet 3 million children will die this year for failure to receive that $30 worth of vaccinations – $30 worth of vaccinations and still 3 million children will still die this year. For .33¢ we can prevent a child's death from diarrhea with oral rehydration therapy, or ORT. ORT is a simple solution of sugar, salt and water – those of you who are mothers and fathers might know it as Pedialite in this country. It costs a little bit more when we buy it in our market because it has nice packaging, yet diarrhea remains one of the leading killers in children under the age of 5. These are just a couple of examples of the many basic technologies that are available today that don't require complex health systems to deliver them.
What we have chosen to do is focus on access to these basic technologies. And we know that even an organization like the Gates Foundation can't possibly afford to deliver all vaccines. We can't possibly afford to deliver .33¢ of ORT to every child that needs it, but we can act as a catalyst. This is a critical role of philanthropy, to act as a catalyst to challenge governments – both donor governments, as well as the host governments – to spend their resources wisely on the health interventions that work, on the things that can save the children and that can cause a positive cycle to begin in those communities.
These inexpensive health technologies can work, can be afforded, and can be justified by their results. So besides access to today's technology, the foundation is also very, very focused on research and development of new drugs and vaccines and diagnostics against diseases like malaria and AIDS. Because as I said before, the current market understandably does not invest in product development for new interventions for those who cannot afford to purchase them. So instead we work with universities and with pharmaceuticals to find a way for philanthropy to enter the mix, to spur product development in these neglected areas and then to work on access to these technologies. We can improve measles vaccines, we can come up with drugs that stop TB in a third the length of time that it takes today, and we can improve diagnostics that can be deployed in the real world settings that are present in these villages around the world.
As all of you know, making a difference does not always result in lightening bolt action. Sometimes progress is rapid, like when we can look back and say 3,000 students are in college who would not have been without our scholarship programs. But there are other kinds of changes that each one of us can and should stay focused on that are not just about being good neighbors or leaders today, but are about being good ancestors.
Let me give you an example. We are working very intently towards an AIDS vaccine. We are giving dollars; we are putting a spotlight on the issue. We are drawing political leaders, scientific attention to this issue, and we believe it's worth it, but it will definitely be years, and it could be decades, before we find an effective vaccine. And how to be that patient when there are so many things that need the dollars today? Well, let me tell you why it's worth it. For every single month we cut off the time it takes to deliver an effective AIDS vaccine, we prevent 500,000 new infections. That translates to 6 million lives a year that can be saved with an effective AIDS vaccine – essentially the same number of people that died in the Holocaust. Those kinds of numbers tell you why it's important to take the long view on the big issues and to decide that there is no reason to think it is impossible. The odds are long, but it's important to be patient.
My last remarks relate to one of the great leaders of all times, who besides being patient, gave his life for the cause he was so committed to. He is a daily inspiration for me in my own work. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to go to India to see first hand some of the projects we fund to improve children's health. I also was able to visit the spot where Gandhi was cremated, and the director of that memorial gave me a banner, which hangs next to my desk. It is a list that Gandhi wrote in 1925. A list of what he called the Seven Social Sins. It's a litany of seven ethical problems facing modern society: Politics without Principle, Wealth without Work, Pleasure without Conscious, Commerce without Morality, Science without Humanity, Worship without Sacrifice, and Knowledge without Character. Seventy-seven years later and that is still a compelling litany of the issues that hold us back around the world.
Rather than thinking of it as a litany of our ills, I have chosen to invert that list and think of it as a prescription of sorts, a way to impact my own life. And I challenge you to use that same list to impact your own life and daily activities – our giving, our activism, the way we act with our families, and the way we run our lives.
Let me propose how to invert the list.
We can build politics with principle when we work closely with our governments and our government leaders to increase the right funding to the right programs.
We can build commerce with morality if more of the businesses that we represent and lead consider social consequences in the development of their products, selection, pricing, and in the treatment of their employees and the community that they live and work in locally and globally.
We can build science with humanity if we make sure that the breakthroughs of the 21st century are made available to the people who need them most, that vaccines reach every child everywhere and that our research and development, whether it's in our universities or in our corporations, address the needs of the poorest of the poor.
And we can build knowledge with character if we continue to build scholarship programs and partnerships with schools, if we stand up and say, "It is not acceptable that in most of our big cities 50% of our kids are not graduating from high school." If we stand together and insist on providing opportunities for all of these students.
We can build wealth with work – and if there is a community that represents this principle it is this one – if we reflect upon the extraordinary resources that have been created in this city over the last decade and put them to work again investing in people here, and also around the world. We can make a difference if our actions today ensure that those we are seeking to serve are well-served and that the changes we want to see in this world do happen.
By your very attendance here today, by your participation as donors in The Seattle Foundation, or as grantees who are making a difference in the work you do every day, it is so clear that you understand this prescription. But can we each do a little bit more to ensure we do not find ourselves lacking when asked? If we do leave here today and vow to push ourselves just a little bit further to follow the prescription just a little bit more closely, than together we ensure that the next time a Nelson Mandela stands in front of a room like this in this community and says, "Tell me, what did you do to make the future better? What did you do to stop injustice?" down the street or around the globe, then we will all be able to assess our own personal history and stand together.
Thank you.