What is your earliest memory of giving back to your community or engaging in a social cause?
Loosely speaking it was this very wholesome, earthy camp we went to as children. We slept outside and woke up with daddy long legs on our faces. We had our own garden that we tended, they raised and slaughtered their own pigs and cows for our meat, and we were hosed off for our showers. It was more about community than philanthropy but it gave me a feeling that I was part of something that was giving back. It was the most amazing time in my life—it was in the foothills of the Sierra’s and called the Jameson Ranch Camp. It was very much about community and friendships. In terms of actively doing something to give back, it was at our Temple. I would make latkes for hundreds of people with my Mom. It was about tradition and culture for me and I have a distinct memory about it.
Switching gears a little bit….Who are your philanthropic role models?
There are so many people who I admire. To start off, It isn’t really a person but an entity—it is my junior high and high school, Crossroads. Community service was part of the regular curriculum and part of the graduation requirement and instilled in me, besides from my family, the responsibility to give back. It was a very unique opportunity to have community service as part of the curriculum.
I can definitely relate to you as I had the same situation. I went to Sidwell Friends, a Quaker school, in Washington, DC and I can also trace my philanthropic roots back to not only my family but also the values and philosophy that made up the community and culture at Sidwell.
Very recently I went to a speaker series that USC does on Philanthropy through the USC Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy and I was really inspired by Warren Buffet’s son and his wife. You should read the transcript. She didn’t grow up in a wealthy family and his family was middle class at first when growing up. And even when Warren Buffet started making a lot of money, he established foundations for his children and encouraged them to carefully construct the issues or problems that they wanted to tackle in a meaningful way.
I remember reading an article about their family and the children’s foundations and writing a newsletter article about it over a year ago. I was very interested in their philanthropic stories.
It is so interesting when Jennifer and Peter Buffet talked about how they arrived at the things they wanted to fund. They understand that there is flexibility for them, that times change, the world changes, but they take their roles very seriously. They talked about how it started off with $100,000 to give away and then it went to $1,000,000. Even though that was a large jump, it was manageable considering the difference. And then it went to $100-200 million dollars and it really was a different animal and they only had four months to figure it out and get a strategy together before they had to start to give away that money. I was just so impressed by how involved they got in the research, the visits, in reaching out to other people, creating partnerships with companies such as Nike to do the Girl Effect video that I didn’t know they were behind. For people who could really do whatever they want, they didn’t have others doing all of the work for them. I was very inspired.
I get it. I was very inspired when I read about them.
You would find the transcript very fascinating as they went into a lot of detail on how they arrived on their focus areas. I have to say that I think about them a lot after going to that speaker series.
I am sure that you could reach out to them as Foundation peers to build a relationship around common ground that you may have. Or for a question or advice on something.
If I had questions about something in Africa, as that is one of our areas, I am sure that I could reach out. So, that set of role models came into my life very recently but really resonated with me deeply.
Now you are the role model. What advice would you give a recent college graduate on how to make a profound impact on his/her community over a lifetime?
I would say, and I just had this conversation with a recent college graduate who is interested in the Foundation world, first, hone in on what you are really passionate about and what is meaningful to you as there are obviously so many issues and problems in our world. But I think to really make an impact, you need to decide what is most important to you as that is where you will be most effective, no matter what capacity you are involved, whether it be giving money away or volunteering. I think a person will be most effective if they know what their passion is. And that is not to say that passions won’t change over time as people change and our world changes. But it is really easy to get caught up with the many problems in our world and I had to learn my own lesson in my personal giving…what was funny is that here I was running this foundation with a focused plan but I wasn’t doing that in my own life. I was writing $100 checks here and there, and I still support friends activities, but not at the same level as I do with the areas that I care the most about.
I went through a very similar process a few years myself. I just said enough and as much as I don’t want to come across as unsupportive, if I am writing a number of small checks to a lot of friends’ causes, I could consolidate that funding and make more of an impact. I would rather write a few bigger checks. It is very tricky as you want to support friends but also make a real impact with your funding.
For me the answer was to support people’s run/walks since the important thing is the support whereas for an organization that I am more involved with and care more about, I am very purposeful now in how I give. It can be a slippery slope either way. So, that would be my first words of advice—hone in on those passions as that is where you will be most excited and effective on what you want to impact or accomplish. And be involved in those areas in the community. The student I spoke to is moving to Boston, so I said to him, when you get there you will be learning the lay of the land through the research you are doing in housing (for his job) but to still find a place to get involved in your passion area of housing. Even if you volunteer once a month, you will be good at advising in an area and also will learn. Any small thing you can do to get involved in the community. And I think once you get into those kinds of habits, you tend to carry them on for a lifetime. And it is people’s nature to evolve and change over their lifetime so sticking with the same issue isn’t a requirement but if you develop the service habit early on, you can take that same notion of focused passion to the next thing that you get involved with.
I would agree. He can take his skills to his next passion area if it changes and at the same time, he is developing his philanthropic habits at a young age. So, if you could positively change one negative issue facing the Los Angeles community, what would it be and how would you start to approach solving the problem?
If there were one thing that I could focus my attention on entirely, it would be education. I really believe that it is not just the civil rights issue of our time but literally our future depends on a better education system in LA.
Right. It effects all of us. We want all children to get a great education because they deserve the knowledge and the opportunities that will flow from it ,and it is just, but it is also an economic and social issue for the entire community.
It is your and my economic future. And the thing is that there is an equity issue to this—the majority of our schools in LAUSD are minority populations and people from communities of poverty. The fact that there is a 50% dropout rate, and higher in certain areas, I feel that we are ignoring our future generations. We have to make education a priority because these generations are going to be our leaders, the politicians, the future of our city and country. How would I do it? I go back and forth. Would it be better to have a smaller district? I don’t know—that could create more bureaucracy and inefficiencies. Just from my volunteer experience teaching sex education in classrooms through Planned Parenthood LA, the experience that I often have is that kids don’t connect their life now to their future. They still think of their careers in really stereotypical ways. Or on the extreme end is rap star, rock star, movie star. I don’t want to dash anyone’s dream but the reality that a lot of people are going to become the next Jay-Z or Kobe Bryant is going to be few and far between. It is statistically not possible. So I talk a lot about…if you are interested in music be as creative as you can but learn the other side of it, the business side of it. Learn being a manager, in R&D, or the technical side of producing. There’s no connection to those other possibilities. There are a few organizations that tackle this issue. One, that The Foundation funded last year, is called SPARK, works in middle schools—which is a critical time in a child’s age—and they work with the middle range students (not failing but not the best) who are disconnected and give them an apprenticeship in a career that they right now have interest in. That’s one area of connecting students with their future. Another point that is very important to me is that kids learn differently from one another, and we don’t all learn the same way. Our country’s system needs to shift as we are educating in a very antiquated system. Like the basics of most classrooms being traditional—kids are sitting at desks, facing the front of the room, with a teacher at the front. There obviously are a lot of incredible reforms happening and they are showing a lot of progress but we really need to work on this area and shift. The old kind of classroom was established in the 1800’s and our society, technology, etc. has changed since then. Teacher training has to change too.
I agree. I went to a progressive elementary and middle school and at Sidwell, we were often at group tables, learning experientially, the teacher was moving around, we had a lot of field trips, and it was very interactive learning. I know it helped me and my peers, and we all had different learning styles I am sure, but there was something that worked for everyone in the educational models that I experienced.
Right—some schools include more technology so kids can see where they are every day and what they need to work on and another example is a classroom that I recently visited where three different things were going on at the same time: there was a group working on independent study, a group working as a team, and a group with a teacher in front of them. They rotate no matter what but students who need the teacher guidance spend more time in that group. This school has shown a lot of progress when measuring the students’ learning including through the typical testing measurements. If I had to nail one issue that would be the thing on the grand scale that I think of the most—education.
I would agree for myself as well. I think you know through other partners that LASVP, where I am a partner, has a real passion for this area. Next question….What is your greatest achievement to date as a philanthropist?
My vision for the foundation when I was first interviewed for the job was to refine our focus areas. It was also during a time of generational shift in the organization. Give fewer, larger grants for a different kind of impact was my vision. While it was great to support so many different organizations, I felt that our grantmaking could be more purposeful. And shifting to the ability to fund for a couple of years and then move on versus giving small grants in perpetuity. So for the first few years, I made sure at every meeting that we had a conversation about it. And we make decisions by voting but really by consensus as we want to feel connected to what we are doing. We finally got to a point where we felt ready to narrow down our funding areas and we agreed to give a maximum of 50 core grants. I just felt a shift in my work, in my experience with grantees. I felt really good about where we landed. At our last meeting last weekend, there was talk about narrowing even more and giving even fewer grants and I am very open to that.
So to follow-on to that last question, what do you still hope to accomplish as a philanthropist in your community? I know you already partially answered this but if you want to elaborate a bit about any future operational goals perhaps that would be helpful for readers.
Absolutely and it would be a major team effort with everyone (on the board) involved and we also have a consultant helping us. When everyone has ownership, and that has happened, it is awesome and works really well for our Foundation’s dynamic, especially being a family foundation which can be more personal.
It sounds like this board-led model of grantmaking is really working well for The Foundation—congratulations! Back to the more personal, what motivates you to stay involved?
It is interesting. I was born and raised here but I had a limited experience of Los Angeles. But when I found myself in this role and started going all over a Los Angeles that I didn’t really know and had never experienced before, it was such an eye opener for me. I am not someone who loves LA. And I never thought that I would live here again after living in Portland, Oregon for 10 years, but I came back because my family is here and they won out in the tug-of-war. Seeing that despite not loving LA, there is such diversity in the community and incredible opportunities here motivates me. For example, you can visit some amazing museums and though underserved communities don’t have that same opportunity in terms of paying for it or getting there, a lot of those institutions have created opportunities for the underserved communities to go. I do think it is an interesting city—it is so huge geographically and it is so diverse. When I moved to Koreatown last year, it was a really different experience—it is very dense, very urban. I am so obsessed now with my neighborhood, especially the Korean markets. I am loving living here. I find myself discovering new things and really enjoying it.
What organizations and individuals do you believe are making the greatest social impact and why?
It is so hard to answer that as some of the smaller organizations make a great impact even if it is only 10 kids. In education, City Year LA is having a huge, and continues to have a huge, impact in LA. I think an organization like the LA Alliance for a New Economy that has different divisions—doing research and also on the ground helping people fight for living wages—in a city as expensive as LA is key. They also work on the LA Port and environmental issues, and mostly economic issues with truck drivers, etc. that affect the quality of life in LA is important. The policies that they are helping to pass are going to affect generations to come. Planned Parenthood LA is another organization—their approach to provide comprehensive reproductive health care, community education and advocacy is remarkable.
I am curious if there is an individual that jumps out to you.
Wendy Chang at Dwight Stuart Youth Fund is someone who I really admire in the philanthropic community. She has an incredible wealth of experience and knowledge. She has so much purpose in what she does. And she has one of the best, and unique, laughs and everyone remarks about it because you can’t help but notice. If you are ever in a dark room with the philanthropic community and she laughed out loud, everyone would say, oh Wendy is in the room. On the professional side, and even personally, I very much admire her philanthropic work. You would like her a lot. She is the first person that jumps out at me.
To learn more about Rachel Roth and her work at the Roth Family Foundation:
