February 21, 2008 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, will become the chairman of the New America Foundation’s Board of Directors on June 1, the group announced. He plans to mark his new role by making an unrestricted $1-million donation to the Washington think tank.
Mr. Schmidt has served on the board since the organization’s founding in 1999, but he has not been as actively involved in philanthropy as many of his fellow billionaires.
He says he was attracted to the charity from the beginning because “they would try to do things that were unconventional. They were like Google, but before Google existed.” Even when he disagreed with work produced by the scholars and journalists at the foundation, he says, he still found the efforts worthwhile and provocative.
Mr. Schmidt adds that he plans to be more involved with nonprofit groups over time, though he declined to say how. “My No. 1 and really only goal is Google,” he says.
The $1-million gift is a boon for the relatively small organization, which operates on $13.5-million yearly.
Steve Coll, a New Yorker staff writer, former managing editor of The Washington Post, and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, took over as president of New America in September. He says he hopes Mr. Schmidt can help the group evolve into a “digital think tank.” In the organization’s history, Mr. Coll says, the journalists and scholars at New America have often emphasized innovation in their writings, but the group itself hasn’t been as innovative in adopting new technologies.
In the future, he says, perhaps the group can incorporate social networking and wikis rather than relying mainly on published print op-eds and magazine stories.
If and when Mr. Schmidt does expand his philanthropy, he says, education and the environment would probably be his major focuses. He already serves on Princeton University’s Board of Trustees, and Google.org, his company’s philanthropic arm, has promoted a number of environmental projects, including electric cars.
He declined to say much about the current state of philanthropy, calling it “arrogant” for a newcomer to make such pronouncements. But he did say that he saw strengths in “the new style of philanthropy [that] is much more outcome-based.”
