The Philanthropy Handbook by Tej Kohli (Chapter Six - Giving Money vs Grassroots Activism)
A Serialisation Of 'Rebuilding You: The Philanthropy Handbook' by Tej Kohli
A handbook like this would not be complete without considering the merits of making charitable donations (“just giving money”) versus directly instigating projects and collaborations - and therefore taking on at least part of the direct responsibility for delivering a project outcome.
Charitable Giving vs Direct Activism?
A common trope in my own journey as a philanthropist has been my deep desire to, as a rule, try to avoid making donations to large organisations or charities and to instead target funding directly into grassroots actions and activities in a way that is entirely unmediated.
Inevitably I have occasionally broken this rule, but first let me explain why I favour instigating grassroots projects and collaborations over giving money to charities.
My problem with donating money to charities, is that this ‘black box’ approach relegates my foundation to one degree of separation away from the levers of control than enable us to add the kind of intellectual capital that can ‘sweat’ lots of value from every single dollar of spend.
But this is not to say that we always instigate our projects alone. Whilst many of our child-focused projects such as our Funda Kohli canteens in Costa Rica or our #FutureBionics program for disabled children in the UK are indeed instigated and managed alone, most of our other projects are sophisticated collaborations.
The Tej Kohli Cornea Institute in Hyderbad for example, is a direct collaboration between the Tej Kohli Foundation and the LV Prasad Eye Institute, which is a World Health Organization collaborating centre.
Through that collaboration, we were able to achieve substantially more than we would be able to achieve alone when it came to making direct treatment interventions to cure corneal blindness, especially within the poor and underserved communities that are very difficult to reach. My foundation was not a ‘passenger’ or merely a silent financier - we were an active part of the collaboration.
Funding + Intellectual Capital
Often these grassroots partnerships are about increasing the resources of an initiative that is already doing quite well, but which lacks the resources by itself to achieve its full potential impact. Through partnerships like this I like to add not just funding, but also the intellectual capital that is needed to elevate these grassroots initiatives to achieve this full potential.
It is also highly preferable in my opinion to be able to see how every dollar invested into a philanthropic project leads to a visible and tangible outcome, without that ‘investment’ being mediated or diminished by intermediaries such as charities who have their own overheads to support.
In short, my preferences are unreservedly in favour of allocating my wealth directly into grassroots philanthropic projects in which my foundation can be an active participant and not just the equivalent of a ‘financier’ - and from which we can measure results.
However, I confess that over the years my thinking on this subject has also evolved, and today the core precepts upon which my foundation now bases its decisions now evolve around three rules.
Firstly, that direct interventions into people’s lives should always be achieved through the creation and support of grassroots movements that my foundation can either lead or have a direct input into to make a difference beyond money.
Secondly, that it is ok to break this first rule in emergency situations, such as relief efforts, where the greater impetus is for speed rather than for overall control.
Thirdly, that the first rule can also be broken when supporting specialist projects that require unique skills and expertise.
The Tej Kohli Cornea Program
This third reason was the thinking behind a donation of $2,000,000 that I made in 2019 to establish the Tej Kohli Cornea Program at Massachusetts Eye and Ear in Boston, which is a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.
Thanks to my foundation continually sharing stories about the people that we were helping at the Tej Kohli Cornea Institute in India, and because of our increasing presence in the fields of ophthalmology and the scientific advancements that were being made by the ‘Applied Research’ division of my foundation, I was asked to lend my support to some programmes led by Professors on Ophthalmology from Harvard Medical School. And this became the ‘Tej Kohli Cornea Program’, which was launched with an initial donation of $2 million.
The program is designed to accelerate innovation and collaborative research to achieve unprecedented breakthroughs in corneal disease that could ultimately alleviate and cure the millions of people who are living with the third most common cause of blindness.
The first pillar of the Tej Kohli Cornea Program is a Nano-string Project to develop a rapid diagnostic technology that would allow for the early detection of corneal infection before scarring or blindness occurs. The technology is a DNA-based molecular diagnostics tool that doesn’t require the bacteria to first grow into a ‘larger’ sample, because the technology can detect as little as one DNA molecule.
In some underserved communities, studies have shown that 95% of corneal blindness could have been prevented, and so developing this rapid and low-cost diagnostics tool will ultimately help to prevent corneal blindness, which is a far more cost-effective way to ‘beat’ blindness than to ‘cure’ it after it occurs.
The second pillar of the Tej Kohli Cornea Program is the GelCORE Project, which is developing an adhesive biomaterial that could one day reduce the need for surgery to repair injuries to the cornea, including those that would currently require corneal transplantation. This GelCORE project directly manifests the ‘affordable, accessible and scalable’ universal solution to blindness that my Applied Research division is also pursuing.
The third and final pillar of the program is the support and seed funding of pilot projects in corneal research, including a project focused on preventing corneal endothelial cell loss, which is the leading reason for blindness that can only be cured by a corneal transplant.
The professors leading each of the pillars within the Tej Kohli Cornea Program are amongst the most innovative leaders in their field anywhere in the world. And put simply, the gravity of the innovations from Harvard Medical School professors was too strong for me to ignore and a good reason to break my own giving rules.
You may have noticed that in GelCORE, the Tej Kohli Cornea Program is engaged in the development of a rival product to what is being developed in the Applied Science division of my foundation. This represents a dichotomy between my thinking as a philanthropist and my natural commercial aptitude and instincts in my life as an investor.
Never in my commercial life would I contemplate supporting competing innovations. But my thinking when engaged in philanthropy has had to be different. What if my Applied Research division is not successful in getting its own solution past regulators? What if something happened that causes delays? What if our solution proves to be scientifically sound but can never be scaled in a way that would become affordable in the poor countries where it is needed?
For these reasons, creating the Tej Kohli Cornea Program in Boston despite is in part being a duplication of efforts that I was already finding elsewhere still made sense. It was the philanthropic equivalent of backing the two favourite horses in the race knowing that only one of them can win. This would be questionable tactics in the commercial world, but it is a valid strategy for philanthropy, where the sole objective is simply getting a viable solution into the world to urgently help people.
The 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic
I applied the same logic applied when the world was struck by the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic and the issue of how to defeat the highly infectious new virus loomed very large. With effective testing and tracing regimes absent in most counties at that time, scientists and governments pinned their future hopes on the development of a new vaccine. The result of this realisation was what the media called a “mad scramble” to develop a vaccine. At one time more than ninety vaccines were being developed worldwide.
In the UK, Oxford University and AstraZeneca developed a vaccine which has been provided to patients at cost around the world. Elsewhere in Europe GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi teamed up to develop a vaccine. And in the USA, the Government committed to a $1bn Covid-19 vaccine with drugs group Johnson & Johnson, while Pfizer has designated three sites in the US and one in Belgium for the roll-out of its COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. Moderna Therapeutics has also formed a strategic collaboration with Swiss group Lonza to manufacture its mRNA-1273 vaccine, using genetic material with a goal of manufacturing one billion doses.
Whilst the Oxford, Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson vaccines all emerged as the world’s vaccines ‘of choice, it is easy to forget that back in early 2020 as many as nine new vaccines were being formulated in India and in China; and The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which was set up after Ebola ravaged West Africa from 2014–2016, was engaged in developing at least eight potential vaccines for Covid-19. But finding an effective vaccine was a mountainous task. Before COVID-19, the record for the fastest delivery of a vaccine from a laboratory to a clinic had been four years.
It was precisely because of the uncertainties and inherent complexities of developing a new vaccine for COVID-19 that in 2020 I made an emergency contribution of $100,000 to support a vaccine investigation by Harvard Medical School researchers based at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Hospital in Boston.
The researchers had already developed a novel and experimental gene-based vaccine utilising technology that is unique in its ability to scale and adapt rapidly. Their vaccine is an adaptation of Adeno-Associated-Virus (AAV) technology, a form of gene therapy already in use to treat an inherited form of vision loss and spinal muscular atrophy. Its methodology utilises a harmless ‘Trojan horse’ virus as a carrier to bring a tiny piece of the DNA of SARS-CoVid-2 into a patient’s cells, building a protein that stimulates their immune system to fight future infections. Two versions of the vaccine were being manufactured for studies in humans within weeks of my donation.
Clearly the project that I backed did not emerge as the world’s vaccine. But did I expect it to? And did it matter?
My view was that since all of humanity would gain if many different vaccines crossed the finishing line, then backing one solution regardless of the number of ‘duplicate’ efforts going on elsewhere in the world was entirely logical. It was a scenario where giving money as quickly as possible and then leaving it to the experts was the best course of action.
Do What You Can Do, Fund What You Can’t
The reason I am labouring these two examples is to illustrate that as to the question of giving money vs grassroots activism, my recommendation is very simple and entirely logical.
You should always ‘do’ the things that you are able to do because they are within your realms of ability and understanding. And ‘fund’ those things that are not.
It really is as simple as that.