Q&A: Prudential Foundation new president's local approach to global philanthropy

NEW YORK — Local action is often a helpful first step forward when it comes to thinking internationally and creating global reach, according to Shané Harris, the new president of the Prudential Foundation. Since its inception in 1977, the Prudential Foundation has given more than $850 million in grants and contributions to nonprofit organizations, with a focus on inclusive economic growth. About a third of that funding has gone back to Newark, New Jersey, home to the company and foundation’s headquarters. “One of the biggest shifts has been taking the lessons we learned in Newark. In many ways Newark is a laboratory — primarily minority, a big city, with a lot of the barriers people of color and people who do not have the opportunity to face ... taking those insights and lessons learned and the community partnerships to understand what works,” Harris said. “A lot of the top-down approach that national funders use is very hard to deploy in the local context.” --— Shané Harris, president, Prudential Foundation Harris, former vice president of corporate giving at Prudential and a Newark native, assumed the post of president in mid-June. Devex spoke with Harris recently about how she plans to help the foundation grow and the most exciting trends in philanthropy. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Does the Prudential Foundation generally approach philanthropy from a local angle? The opportunity to engage partners in a more intimate way, which we can do from our headquarters in Newark, informs how we do work nationally and internationally. About a third of our resources actually go locally to Newark. We know how to go into communities and markets and develop collaborations, and figure out how you fit in to add value. Many times, philanthropy begins with ideas, like ‘I want to transform education with this strategy,’ and there is typically a top-down approach to implementing that in communities. We find that is not the most effective tool. How have you applied this local approach to your international philanthropic work? We work in partnership with our local business leaders to identify opportunities to advance issues that are important to the local community. We also try to look at emerging markets, primarily through our impact investing program, where we invest in a number of intermediary organizations in West Africa and in Asia. We were early investors in the LeapFrog Talent Accelerator, which supports emerging organizations on financial services and insurance. In Ghana, there were only three actuaries in the entire country a few years ago. There is a need for diverse talent, but there is not an ecosystem that can support talent. We have been committed to this issue for decades and that came out of understanding how acute the challenge was in Newark. Where else do you see the need to focus work on emerging markets and youth? This problem is acute particularly in countries such as South Africa and India, where you have had an explosion of young people. More than half of the population may be under the age of 30, but you have a high youth unemployment rate. What we found is that there are great programs in a local context, often with a global funder. We are excited and optimistic that there will be a network [with additional, yet to be announced foundations] that helps scale this work in the global context. That idea is convening and empowering folks to have agency in decisions that need to be made in a local context — and understanding that the local context is important. That comes naturally to us because of how we have operated in Newark. What are you thinking in terms of next steps for this network? There was a convening of a network of funders and we are currently fundraising for pooled funds and identifying countries and cities where we will be working. The goal is to try to have a presence in Asia — we are looking at India — as well as possibly Brazil, Kenya, and South Africa. There is a lot of work under the hood in building the infrastructure, but we are hoping there will be an announcement of this initiative in short order. What else would you like to see with philanthropy — what are you seeing as most exciting? Philanthropy is changing and evolving pretty rapidly. As you have more living donors really actively engaged in philanthropy, how does that influence what philanthropy looks like? We have to figure out how we define the ecosystem of philanthropy. In many ways, in Newark we operate like a local funder, doing place-based work, which requires a very different skill set and expertise, rather than national grantmaking. A lot of the top-down approach that national funders use is very hard to deploy in the local context. One approach is not better than the other. How do we work together so that we can collaborate to sustain work in the local context? That is something that we are still trying to figure out how to do as a sector.