Taming the New Frontier

Markle to focus most of its resources on information-technology issues

From Zoë Baird’s office 18 floors above the bustling international business and media capital that is Manhattan’s Rockefeller Plaza,

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it is a little hard to understand why this foundation president feels like she’s in the “wild West.”

But after she explains how she has spent the past year overhauling the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation’s grant-making programs to focus on the Internet revolution, her metaphor becomes clearer. This week Ms. Baird, who has presided over the fund for more than a year, is announcing that the foundation plans to spend about $100-million of its $180-million in assets over the next three to five years on projects related to the Internet and information technology.

The one-time Attorney General hopeful, who withdrew her nomination in the wake of the controversy that erupted because she failed to pay Social Security taxes for her child’s nanny, says the infusion of money is essential at a time when the Internet operates like a free-for-all, relatively uncontrolled arena, with few rules or policies guiding its use.

As in the Gold Rush era of the late 1840s and early 1850s, when thousands of pioneers stampeded westward in search of fortune, Ms. Baird sees the current era as a modern-day Information Rush. From California’s Silicon Valley to New York City’s Silicon Alley and elsewhere around the globe, “people are rushing to make their fortunes,” she observes. But in this new frontier, like in the old one, a certain amount of chaos still reigns, whether it’s over how to protect individual privacy or halt fraud.

As the communications landscape — including the Internet, cable, television, and telephone industries — is about to enter a critical period of consolidation and stabilization, she says, foundations like Markle have a limited time to act to insure that public interests don’t take a back seat to commercial ones.

“If we are creating a new digital society, then we need to make sure it is a strengthened society: a society made up of citizens as well as consumers,” she says. “We need to try to insure that no one is excluded from its benefits and that everyone is protected from its possible harms.”

Ms. Baird is also announcing four new grant-making programs designed to carry out those objectives. They will focus on communications and technology policy, the effects of interactive media on children, the use of information technology in health care, and ways that interactive communications tools can draw the public into civic affairs.

Ms. Baird says the foundation will become a “hybrid” organization. “We will look sometimes like a grant maker, sometimes like an operating foundation running our own non-profit programs, sometimes like a think tank or laboratory, sometimes like a business, and sometimes like a public-information firm running an educational campaign,” Ms. Baird writes in a public letter announcing the changes at the foundation.

While Markle’s assets place it among the 250 largest of the nation’s more than 44,000 foundations, its grant-making capacity is still limited relative to some of the major players in philanthropy.

For example, while Markle has typically awarded about $10-million in grants each year, the Ford Foundation gives away nearly $400-million.

To make a difference, Ms. Baird felt, the foundation needed not only to change the scope of its giving, but to significantly increase the amount as well.

Larry Kirkman, executive director of the Benton Foundation, a Washington organization that focuses on communications policy, calls the $100-million commitment “enormous” and says it puts the Markle foundation on the map as one of the important leaders in the field.

While few foundations other than Markle focus solely on information-technology and communications issues, Mr. Kirkman notes that it is not alone in its commitment to helping society cope with the Internet and other new technological forces.

“There is now a critical mass of foundation resources, and a shared vision and passion for taking advantage of this window of opportunity to make the Internet more than TV by another name,” Mr. Kirkman observes. “There is a lot of new blood out there, and it is very exciting.”

Among the other foundations that are working on Internet-related topics, or expect to make grants soon:

* The Ford Foundation, in New York, is considering a new program to make grants for communications-policy projects. It has already made grants to groups such as the Media Access Project, the Center for Media Education, and the Benton Foundation. It has also awarded research grants to institutions studying communications policy, including the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Pennsylvania State University.

* The Pew Charitable Trusts, in Philadelphia, has been increasing its grants to organizations that use information technology to stimulate interest in politics and civic life, especially among young people, and to promote more-effective communication between candidates for public office and voters.

* The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in Princeton, N.J., conducted an extensive study of how technology could improve its grant making, which focuses largely on health. It is now using those results to make grants for projects that use technology to distribute information, educate the public about health-related issues, improve medical decision making, and improve the efficiency and management of health-care systems.

The Markle Foundation’s shift follows an extensive period of self-examination undertaken at Ms. Baird’s behest. While interviewing for the president’s job, Ms. Baird told the trustees that if she were offered the position, she would expect to take a thorough look at Markle’s grant-making priorities to determine if they needed to be updated to deal with the needs of the next century.

The board agreed, and over the past 18 months, foundation staff members and trustees have met with consultants, commissioned papers, and gathered small groups of experts to discuss communications issues.

Joel L. Fleishman, a professor of law and public policy at Duke University and a long-time Markle board member, describes the process as “one of the best” ever undertaken by the 15 to 20 non-profit boards on which he serves.

“It has been genuinely exciting and exhilarating,” says Mr. Fleishman, who has served on the Markle board for about 20 years. “This is the first time we had the opportunity to reexamine everything from an entirely fresh horizon.”

In fact, he says, few of the other non-profit boards he serves on have ever undertaken such serious reflection on their long-term mission and goals.

“It is not anywhere near often enough that foundation boards have the opportunity to participate in an extensive process of this sort, where the board members are involved from Day One,” he says.

Over the course of the past year and a half, the board considered as many as 10 or 12 possible new grant-making programs before narrowing the number of new ones to four.

The foundation says it has not yet decided exactly how much each program will receive, but here is what each one expects to support:

* Public Engagement Through Interactive Technologies will support programs and research that use technology to improve the quality of and level of participation in elections and political debate; help citizens obtain information about important issues; and demonstrate different approaches to providing news through the Internet and other new media, as well as new economic models of how to finance those approaches.

* Policy for a Networked Society will support efforts to help non-profit, business, and government leaders develop principles for regulating technology and communications that keep the public interest in mind. Specific priorities include protecting “democratic values, individual liberties, universal access, and consumer interests.”

* Interactive Media for Children will support research to determine the influence of interactive media on the way that children learn and develop, and encourage technology companies to use those findings to come up with products that better serve children. It will also support projects that help parents understand how their children are using technology.

* Information Technologies for Better Health will support efforts to use technology to provide individuals with information about their health-care needs.

The foundation will also earmark some of the money for what it calls an opportunity fund — making grants for projects when a special need arises.

In addition to making grants, the foundation expects to continue its tradition of making loans and other so-called program-related investments. In one of the new projects it announced along with its new program areas, the foundation plans to provide $3.5-million over three years to a new corporation being created by Oxygen Media, the high-profile Internet and cable company created by Geraldine Laybourne, a former executive at Nickelodeon; the talk show host Oprah Winfrey; and the television producer Marcy Carsey.

In exchange for the money, the foundation will receive a 38-per-cent equity stake in the new entity, which is known as “The Pulse.”

The Pulse, an Internet site that will be accessible through Oxygen’s World-Wide Web site (http://www.oxygen.com) will provide polling data and other research about women’s opinions on public-policy issues. It will also include general information about the state of women in America.

Oxygen Media will use that information to improve the overall quality of its Internet and cable programming, as well as to make it more responsive to what women say they want to read and watch, according to Julia Moffett, Markle’s vice-president for public affairs.

“It’s a perfect partnership,” says Ms. Laybourne of Oxygen. She says that if it were not for the Markle Foundation’s support, her company would have had to sell the information, rather than make it available to the public free, or not develop the site at all — even though Oxygen has already raised at least $200-million in venture capital.

In many ways, the new Markle programs are an evolution from its previous programs, and not a radical departure. In recent years, the foundation has supported numerous projects that focus on technology and its use in politics and learning — and many of those awards will continue, even under the new program areas.

Nonetheless, the newly announced program areas reflect Ms. Baird’s influence — and her professional and personal expertise as a corporate lawyer in the health-insurance business, a children’s advocate, and a savvy individual who is well-connected in political circles.

While the presidency of Markle is the first time that Ms. Baird has held a full-time job at a non-profit organization, she does have experience in the field.

In 1994 Ms. Baird, Lesley Mara, and other members of her legal department at Aetna Life & Casualty insurance company helped establish the non-profit organization Lawyers for Children America. She currently chairs the group’s board, while Ms. Mara is its executive director.

The group provides free legal assistance to abused and neglected children in three Connecticut cities, as well as in Miami and Washington. In addition, it operates programs in which lawyers teach schoolchildren to resolve conflicts peacefully.

As the group’s co-founder, Ms. Baird was one of its primary fund raisers. She says the experience provided valuable insights — even when her requests were turned down.

“There were so many times where I thought our program fit squarely in someone’s guidelines, and I couldn’t understand why it didn’t,” she notes. But she found it helpful when foundation presidents still took the time to help her identify other grant makers who might support the program. Based on that experience, she hopes to be able to do the same for applicants to the Markle Foundation.

Ms. Baird also brings experience as a non-profit trustee. She has served as a board member for more than two dozen non-profit organizations, including the Brookings Institution, Save the Children, and the Mexican American Legal and Educational Defense Fund.

While Ms. Baird is still in the process of getting to know the organizations that Markle supports, one grantee says his long-time association with her makes him sure that she will excel as a foundation leader.

President Jimmy Carter, whose international center received money from Markle to promote broadcasting enterprises in the former Soviet Union and other new democracies, says he has had much respect for Ms. Baird ever since she worked for him as a White House associate counsel. She “was very self-assured and not afraid to put forth her ideas, sometimes when they were innovative and even controversial,” Mr. Carter recalls.

But some other non-profit officials are worried that Ms. Baird’s background may hinder her abilities to promote the public’s interest in telecommunications. They say that her years as a corporate lawyer — at Aetna and previously for General Electric — may bias her decision making in favor of corporate rather than public interests.

“Public-interest advocates who know how to affect what business does and who devote their energies to transforming the business climate to meet public needs are some of the most effective,” says Ms. Baird in response. “I am fully committed to doing exactly that.”

While Ms. Baird does not have a long history of dealing with communications or technology issues, Lloyd Morrisett, whom Ms. Baird replaced after he retired, says his successor has been a quick study. And while Ms. Baird may not be a technology whiz herself, she knows how to hire such people, he says.

Her recent hires, for example, include Andrew Blau, a well-regarded communications-policy expert who previously worked for the Benton Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

This fall, another respected expert will join the staff: Andrew L. Shapiro, a writer and lawyer who has served as the director of the Aspen Institute’s Internet Policy Project. Mr. Shapiro, who has also held a number of fellowships — including a recent stint at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society — is the author of a new book, The Control Revolution: How the Internet is Putting Individuals in Charge and Changing the World We Know.

Mr. Morrisett says he has been very impressed by the way Ms. Baird has taken over the foundation that he led for nearly 30 years. She has been well served by “her ability to learn quickly, her energy, her intelligence, her questioning mind,” he says. “Zoë has been very careful about her examination of the field and setting her priorities in an orderly and sensible way. From what I see, everything is going well.”