Foundation Veteran Trades New York for Campus Life

After leaving behind the soaring skyscrapers of Manhattan for the bucolic lawns of Duke University,

Edward Skloot jokes that he’s now “a vertical guy who’s going to have to learn in a horizontal world.”

And Mr. Skloot, who also calls himself a “subway guy,” is in the market for a car that he can drive around Durham, N.C., a new experience for someone who has spent most of his life in New York without a car.

But changes in the way he lives are not all that Mr. Skloot encounters as he leaves his longtime role as president of the Surdna Foundation, in New York, for a position at Duke through which he hopes to help foundations become more-effective public-policy advocates.

“I’m going to a world that’s unfamiliar for me,” says Mr. Skloot. “I’m not an academic, so I’ve got to learn the ropes.”

Before heading Surdna for nearly two decades, Mr. Skloot founded New Ventures, a nonprofit consulting firm that helped other nonprofit groups find ways to earn income to complement their fund raising, and worked as a senior government official in New York City and New York State.

Since retiring from Surdna last June, Mr. Skloot, 65, has spent the past several months preparing to take over as director of Duke’s new Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society, a position he will begin full time July 1. (He began part time last month.)

The center, which is housed within the university’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, seeks to improve decision making at American foundations and help them develop effective ways to spur change on such public-policy issues as energy, the environment, and global health.

It’s a professional challenge that Mr. Skloot is eagerly embarking upon, and one that he views as distinct from the missions of similar centers at other universities.

Says Mr. Skloot: “The focus here is not on the third sector — which merges both nonprofits and philanthropy — but on the philanthropic and public-policy side of things and not, say, improving nonprofit management or studying how the sector behaves. There are enough folks out there already working on that.”

Mr. Skloot will find plenty of companionship and advice as he contemplates the center’s long-term activities, which he calls “a work in process.” He will work closely with other colleagues at the Terry Sanford Institute, including Joel L. Fleishman and Charles Clotfelter, two influential experts on philanthropy and nonprofit groups.

“Ed Skloot is widely admired and known as someone with creativity, dynamism, and a fresh perspective on a wide range of subjects dealing with philanthropy and the nonprofit sector,” says Mr. Fleishman, director of the Duke Foundation Research Program and a former president of the Atlantic Philanthropies. “This new center will help foundations make decisions about how best to achieve their goals, and one thing we’re going to do is help a limited number of foundations working in certain public-policy fields and bring them together with policy experts so they can develop more-effective foundation actions.”

Mr. Skloot — who wouldn’t specify his salary except to say that it will equal that of a full professor at Duke (approximately $153,000, according to data from The Chronicle of Higher Education) — will be something of a fund raiser as well. He hopes to raise $3-million over three years to cover the budget of the center, which is not endowed.

To date, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation have contributed approximately half that amount, and Mr. Skloot says that another foundation plans to bestow a large grant.

Also, by the fall of 2009, Mr. Skloot plans to introduce an executive-education program geared toward foundation CEO’s and wealthy people who are considering embarking upon philanthropic efforts.

In an interview, Mr. Skloot discussed the challenges — and opportunities — that await him at Duke.

What questions have you been pondering as you begin your new job?

First, what would a center like this at a first-class university look like in five years? And second, what would be the most effective way to teach strategic philanthropy, with a focus on high-net-worth individuals with new foundations, individuals with clear purposes and dollars to put behind specific causes?

What concerns you most about the current state of American philanthropy?

One of its Achilles’ heels is the difficulty in getting foundations to cooperate and collaborate in a way that will not scatter its influence or its focus. That has been a hallmark of American philanthropy: “I made it; I’ll spend it the way I want.”

Add to that the cultural mind-set, the individualistic strain that is a counterpoint to de Tocqueville, the idea that we are Americans who join together.

As a result, this license to do whatever we please has weakened, in my view — in others’ it’s one of the great things about the sector — the potential impact of philanthropy to have a consistent, long-term effect on social-policy issues.

What one piece of advice would you impart to foundation leaders?

Collaboration and joint programs need far more attention, as well as much more sharing of lessons learned, and not necessarily best practices. I’ve always thought that “worst practices” teach you much more.

What influence can philanthropy have on huge issues such as climate change?

There’s no question that without increased foundation money and activism in the area of climate change, we as a nation would have been even slower to pick up the baton.

Here’s a case when forces are marshaled well — and that hasn’t always been the best side of philanthropy — it can have a tremendous impact on articulating and solving social problems.

It seems inexcusable that we as a sector are not devoting vastly greater resources to climate change and global warming, because if we don’t take care of that, everything else will be diminished.

Let’s assume that that battle [regarding climate change] has been fought in 95 percent of America and that we’re not fighting some rear-guard action that’s taking all our attention.

The problem is that we’re not taking the next step, which is coalescing and building ever-better approaches and making this a touchstone of the work we do, because whether we’re talking about public health or urban design or migration, we are talking about a subject area that simply has to be dealt with.

How can this marshaling of interests best occur, particularly among the largest foundations?

If each of them had the inclination, they could challenge the others in a positive way. The great majority operate in perpetuity, whereas the window of opportunity to make any change in the environment is at most 10 years.

The argument takes on a much different kind of resonance when you look at it through the lens of environmental sustainability.

This all wheels back to the new center’s work, to looking at philanthropy from a more substantive, timely approach and not from a lackadaisical, “leave me alone” approach.

From the angle of looking at our own little baseball league, it makes tremendous sense to ask, “Are we going to allow people to throw sliders or curveballs?” But when you look at it from the larger stance of “Are we going to have organized sports at all?,” that’s a whole different level of question. This is what we’re hoping to do with the new center.

When you announced your retirement from Surdna, did you plan to take another full-time job?

I was very clear that I didn’t want to leave Surdna as my last job or, as I put it, die with my legs under the desk.

I really wanted another substantial piece of work, so my board was totally aware of this, and we worked out my departure accordingly.

Surdna has been entering into a serious new era: It has become more public, diversified, and moving down into the next generations, the fifth generation [of the Andrus family]. There was transition afoot, so it was a good time to imagine and try to find something else.

What do you see as your most lasting legacy at Surdna?

Taking what was at the time essentially a 70-year-old start-up foundation and moving it into the 20th century by giving it an assertive, creative, and strategic thumbprint. And I have no reason to think those characteristics have disappeared since my departure.

Are you prepared to enter into the frenzy that is Duke basketball?

You have no idea how much less important the issue of my heading up this center is than my ability to deliver two courtside basketball tickets to hundreds of people, some of whom I don’t even know.

Sadly, I’m not a sport aficionado, but I sense the education of a newly arrived Northerner is about to begin.