Amy Cohen:
Welcome everyone, and thank you for joining us tonight. My name is Amy Cohen and I'm a member of the Class of '85 and a vice president of the Alumni Board. I'm also proud to say that along with Talee Potter, Class of '97, I am a co-chair of the Brandeis Women's Network. For those of you who don't know, the Brandeis Women's Network is a relatively new organization. Our mission is simple, to foster and build connections between Brandeis women. Since our formation in June of 2019, our network has grown tremendously. We have a vibrant Facebook group of almost 1200 alumni and mothers of Brandeisians. You can find us on Facebook by searching BrandeisWomen, one word, and I encourage you to do so. We've also been thrilled to offer a variety of programming to the entire Brandeis community, such as tonight's event with Laura Lauder. Before we hear from Laura, I have a couple of housekeeping matters to share.
Amy Cohen:
First, we'll be reserving time at the end of the discussion for questions. If you have a question, we request that you put it in the Q&A box, we will not be utilizing the chat box tonight. Also, we expect to have a lot of questions, as I'm sure you can imagine, and we will do our best to get through as many as we can in the limited amount of time that we can. And also this event is being recorded and the recording will be available after the event on the Brandeis alumni website. And if you haven't visited that website, I encourage you to go and check it out. It's got a lot of really great information on it.
Amy Cohen:
I would now like to turn the program over to Elizabeth Jick, Class of 1981. Elizabeth is a founding director of Zion's national nonprofit group. She is married to fellow alum, Daniel Jick, Class of 1979, who is the vice chair of the Brandeis Board of Trustees. Their daughter and son also graduated from Brandeis in 2009 and 2012 respectively. If that's not enough of a Brandeis connection for you, Elizabeth is also serving as co-chair for the Class of 1981's 40th Reunion. Elizabeth, thank you for all you do for Brandeis, and I will now turn the program over to you.
Elizabeth Jick:
Thank you, Amy and Talee. I can be proud of our families long term association with Brandeis University, and I commend you both on the remarkable progress that you've made with the Brandeis Women's initiative program. It is really an honor to introduce tonight, my dear friend, Laura Lauder. I could spend the full hour just talking about how amazing Laura is, her extraordinary generosity and all that she has accomplished as a social entrepreneur and venture philanthropist. Laura grew up in Ohio and graduated from UNC Chapel Hill. Her venture into deacon alum or repairing the world began shortly thereafter. In addition to her various philanthropic endeavors, which you will be hearing about this evening, she continues to be an active volunteer.
Elizabeth Jick:
Her current non profit board affiliations alone include, the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund of San Francisco. The Jim Joseph Foundation, the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, the Northwest regional board of APEC, the National Constitution Center, the Aspen Institute and Social Finance here in Boston. Laura's signature initiatives that she designed and launched include, the Center for Media and Democracy in Israel, which he co-founded in 2019. The DeLeT, Teaching through Leadership program launched in 2000, in conjunction with Brandeis University and the Jewish Teen Funders Network, co-founded in 2012, which is now an international program and thriving here in Boston, thanks to Laura.
Elizabeth Jick:
Laura is also very active with YPO and has received many awards over the years for her achievements. What you may not know about Laura, is she excels at virtually all sports and is an avid cycle, skier and hiker. Laura, thank you so much for being here tonight. Please tell us about the environment that you grew up in and how it has shaped who you are today.
Laura Lauder:
Elizabeth, thank you so much for that amazing introduction. I'm floored and touched, very humbled. I can't really live up to all of these expectations here. But I will say that anytime you ask me to do anything, Elizabeth, I am right there for you. Especially for Brandeis University, your Alma mater is a wonderful institution. Well, when it comes to phenomenal leadership in the academic world, Brandeis is right at the top. I have partnered with Brandeis many times in the past, we'll talk about that in a minute. But anyway, kol hakavod to you and the whole team for your extraordinary achievements at Brandeis. When it comes to the environment I grew up in, well, I'm a Midwestern farmer's daughter. My family is from Ohio.
Laura Lauder:
They were originally from parts of Poland and Russia. My father was president of the JCC. My mother taught the coolest subject at religious school. She taught Jewish sexual ethics with Alvord Span, and both were very, very involved in the community. My grandfather was president of the Jewish welfare fund of Canton Ohio in 1947. I have a letter framed on my desk, which is to him saying, "Paul Heller, it is your opportunity to raise over $200 million to help create the state of Israel. We will get there one day." Can you imagine the responsibility? I come from a long line of people involved in community of philanthropists and now it's my turn to try to pass this onto my kids.
Elizabeth Jick:
Thank you. You serve on many boards, how do you select the organizations that you get involved with and the causes that you give your time to? What do you say to the countless people who ask you to support their causes?
Laura Lauder:
Tough question. Thanks, Elizabeth. It's never easy. About 15 years ago, I was saying yes to everything. I felt it was my duty to give back in my community to whomever asked. I was giving to 400 different organizations and therefore having very little impact on any of them. And so I hired a consultant, a wonderful Jewish professional in San Francisco. She and I came up with a mission statement, a theory of change and ultimately we reduced the numbers of organizations. We pared it down over time and we gave exit grants to many of them so that they didn't suffer when we did that, but we pared it down to 80. From 400 to 80, over five years. Now it's even further down, it's down to 50 and yet we're giving many, many times more in terms of amounts.
Laura Lauder:
The reason is impact when you have focus, because unless you have focus, you're not going to have impact. I'm on 10 boards, you named some of them. And so when it comes to picking the ones that I get involved in, there are three criteria I have, first and foremost, the leadership skills of the CEO, because you're not going to accomplish anything unless you have extraordinary leadership. The second is a clear mission of the organization. It has to be a mission that I'm very passionate about and somehow I can add unique value. And third, there have to be a lot of other thoughtful board members, people who are co-collaborators in accomplishing the mission of the organization.
Laura Lauder:
A perfect example of this is right there in your local community, Social Finance, Tracy Palandjian is an extraordinary leader as CEO, and the other members of the board are friends of yours, Elizabeth, and wonderful people. I'm very passionate about Social Finance's mission and impact investing. That's how I choose and it's not easy.
Elizabeth Jick:
Thank you. How have your children's experiences influenced your philanthropy?
Laura Lauder:
A lot. A lot. In fact as a mom, I witnessed frankly, gaps in the community where I thought I could make a little bit of a difference. And so, for example, when they were at the Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School in Palo Alto, I noticed that there were two teachers in every single classroom. The second teacher was really, really helpful, focusing in on kids who needed a little extra help or focusing on kids who actually needed to be challenged more. And that second teacher, that assistant teacher was incredibly important. And then when I was involved with PEJE, the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, which was a day school initiative, I noticed that not everyday school had assistant teachers in the classroom. I thought, gosh, we need to train, master teachers to teach an integrated curriculum.
Laura Lauder:
And that way, make sure that the children our kids have that opportunity to have an extraordinary education in a Jewish day school. And so who did I partner with? Brandeis University. Sharon Feiman-Nemser, and Yudoha Reinhardts were my two partners, they were exceptional leaders and together we formed a wonderful partnership to create this DeLeT program, Day School Leadership through Teaching. It was a Jewish teach for America. And for 20 years we trained teachers at Brandeis and they then dispersed across, like a diaspora, all across the country. And now there are day school teachers that have been trained through DeLeT at all the day schools in Boston and of course across the country.
Laura Lauder:
That's an example of how my kids' experiences. I'm going to give you one more example, because it's actually a very recent example, which is fun. It's a new thing. I haven't even talked about it publicly yet. And that is, my son is now 25. He met his beshert in college and they just got engaged, and we couldn't be more thrilled. She is a dynamo and she's not Jewish. And so she is now really interested in converting. In fact, they just were telling me that he was teaching her the Schiano, which I used to sing to him at night every night, which just made my heart soar. And so we're going to create a program, a national program to help young couples who have one non-Jewish partner to consider working together to get educated Jewishly and potentially then convert, not required, but potentially, but the purpose is for them to then go on to raise a Jewish family.
Laura Lauder:
We'll do it in cohorts. It'll be a little bit Wexner like, where there are cohorts and folks that go through it together and we'll have rabbis from across the spectrum. There's no one denomination that we'll be using, and we'll partner with all kinds of institutions across the country. I already have a phenomenal rabbi to lead it and a CEO and funding. We're super excited, but it's exactly based on my kids experience, and for that, I'm very grateful to them for letting me know what's important.
Elizabeth Jick:
That is absolutely fantastic. Thank you for telling those stories. There's no doubt those will be successful. We have been personal beneficiaries of the DeLeT program. Our children went through Jewish day school, at Solomon Schechter Day School here in greater Boston, and we definitely had DeLeT fellows in the classroom. So thank you. Can you please highlight a few of the successful collaborations that you've embarked upon over the years?
Laura Lauder:
Well, DeLeT is certainly one. We had 12 co-funders for the DeLeT program, but I'll give you another example of one that actually was also inspired by our kids. And that was when they were teenagers and we wanted to teach them about philanthropy. I'll be happy to go into other ways that we've done that in our family later, but specifically it was very important to us as middle schoolers and early high school students. We wanted them to get a sense of what does it mean to have responsibility, to be charitable and to do all the research and the due diligence, and create strategic mission statements and all of those kinds of things, like I had done with that consultant many years before. And so I partnered with a very different, a friend of yours and mine, she works with the Maimonides fund.
Laura Lauder:
The two of us created this Jewish teen foundation board, it was an incubator and we encouraged communities across the country to apply to us showing that they had the commitment to create a program of their own in their own local community. And Boston applied and Boston was accepted. And now Boston has I think, three different teen foundation boards that are now spread across the city. It's a wonderful way for collaborators, for philanthropists to work together, to strategize together on the creation of it, and then also strategize on how to measure success and how to measure impact. I've just so enjoyed my collaborations.
Elizabeth Jick:
That's fantastic. Thank you so much. I know this is probably a question you expected, but how has COVID-19 impacted your philanthropy?
Laura Lauder:
It's a fascinating question, because of course the needs are extraordinary. I serve on the Jim Joseph foundation and we created J Craft, which is which was a fund of close to a hundred million dollars to help institutions across the community and every city in America, to get part grants and part loans to weather this horrible storm. So that was very, very important. Another area where I got very involved was at our Jewish Community Endowment fund in Francisco. I think your husband is the chair of your Boston federations and endowment fund. I've really enjoyed. I just finished my four year term being the chair of our endowment fund in San Francisco. We have $2.3 billion under management. And so it's an extraordinary responsibility to react quickly and strategically to this horrible pandemic and the economic crisis that it caused.
Laura Lauder:
What we did was, I helped seed fund, several different pots that were very, very strategic in terms of how to address the problem. For example, we created a day school scholarship fund for folks who normally did not need scholarships, or normally did not need more than 50% in terms of scholarship, but for this year and potentially next year, they need that help in order to keep their kids in school. Gary and I launched it, the endowment fund matched it and then we raised additional funds and the Jim Joseph foundation came in. As a result, we gave millions of dollars to day schools across our local San Francisco Jewish community. We had 11 day schools across the community who applied for the funding. And many told us that it really got them over the hump, so that they could continue to serve their parents.
Laura Lauder:
We did the same thing for preschools at JCCs and synagogues. Once again, parents who never dreamed that they would need financial support, we wanted to make that possible. And now we're doing it for camps for the summer, which we're thrilled to ensure that every parent can send their kids to Jewish camp. Those are one way. That's in the Jewish community. I'd also say, Elizabeth, that I actually got a lot more involved in the non-Jewish community in San Francisco area with food banks. I'd never been focused on food banks before, but we made a quarter of a million dollar grant to a food bank.
Laura Lauder:
The needs were so tremendous, but a lot of the reason was that we were educated by other funders who were focused in this area. And the other thing was, many of them offered matches. I found that matching grants were a really important way to leverage other dollars. We ended up matching many other funders in our local community to help through this COVID crisis. So those are some of the ways that COVID really dramatically impacted us, and we really scaled up our giving this past year, a lot more than we expected. But you know what, the times called for it.
Elizabeth Jick:
Fantastic. Good for you. Here's a three part question. How do you teach your kids about strategic philanthropy? Maybe you can even talk a little bit about what we mean by strategic philanthropy. Will they take over for your giving one day and are they interested in doing that? And if so, how are you going about training them?
Laura Lauder:
I know all of you out there have kids, and you're hoping that your kids will follow in your footsteps will share your values and potentially carry on when you're gone, and doing things in a very strategic way and impactful way. We felt that way from day one. When they were very, very first, bar and bat mitzvah, we created this little insert on the bar mitzvah invitation, and those days you didn't have papers as post. So this is more than 10 years ago. On the invitation, it said, in lieu of gifts, we would welcome your donation to a youth philanthropy fund. Essentially it was a donor advised fund at the Jewish Federation where we will be asking our parents to match our grants to different organizations over the next five years that we're still at home before college.
Laura Lauder:
Age 13 to 18, we then held these annual giving circles, these annual, we called them the Lauder family venture philanthropy grant rounds, very, very high brow, very fancy name for basically working together on Thanksgiving, and working with folks at the Federation to give us a docket, a list of projects that would be compelling, based on a set of criteria, that the two kids took turns, each year they would take turns to enumerate, to describe, to say, this is what's important to me. And so, one year it was criminal justice reform and how the Jewish community can help with that. But in general, how it affects San Francisco and particularly juvenile justice, another year, it was tech in education, and how can we provide more technology to educational programs?
Laura Lauder:
Every year the kids would pick something new and that was for five years. Today, now we give even more and we involve our kids in everything that we do. I'm proud to say that they've welcomed that. It's not easy, because they're big shoes and we don't want to have set expectations that they do what we do. But involving them in small ways. For example, our daughter is very passionate about the Black Lives Matter issues. She works for a criminal justice nonprofit in San Francisco, that's her full-time job. And she's also very concerned about our history of racism in this country. It comes from a way from a source of passion about the question of how Jews have been persecuted throughout our history.
Laura Lauder:
For her, that really makes a big difference. She found a fascinating statistic, which I'll share with you. It just really spoke to her. That is, that if you're a black child and you have another black teacher, sometime before the fifth grade, you are 20% more likely to graduate from high school. If you have two black teachers, you are 40% more likely to graduate from high school. You can't pay for those kinds of statistics. That is just extraordinary. Now she and I are working together to create what we're calling a black teachers matter project, where we're going to help identify ways to encourage black high school students to be a teacher.
Laura Lauder:
If they're interested, then we'll help them with their tuition, and we'll also give them mentors, so that while they're in college, they can help to work in local community schools and to teach reading in the summers and all kinds of opportunities, all paid, so that these kids can then graduate, and then go on and get a certification to become a teacher. It's listening to the kids, hearing what's passionate for them, and then ultimately partnering with them and letting them lead the way in creating initiatives.
Elizabeth Jick:
What a wonderful example. Thank you. Can you please share a few mistakes that you made along the way? I'm sure there weren't many, but you may have had one or two, and the takeaways from those.
Laura Lauder:
There's been so many, and of course, you learn the most from the mistakes, right? I'd say that one of the things that was a big mistake for me early on, as I mentioned earlier, is to not have an exit strategy. And so for grants, I had to then create a three year cycle, so that I could cycle organizations off of my grant list every three years. That way I can continue to give to a lot of organizations, but if it's on a three year cycle, then it's only a certain number, in this case 50 every year. And those are very specific organizations that can do without having a grant every year. But I feel it's a tax for me to make sure I give. For example, public radio, I make sure I'm very supportive of public radio in my local community and I give a very nice gift, but I cycle it.
Laura Lauder:
And every three years, I cycle off for three years and then I cycle back on and I put other things in their place. That has enabled me to fix the mistake of just giving to way too many organizations. I think another thing is, to have an exit strategy when you're creating an initiative. DeLeT, is a perfect example. At the outset, the 12 funders worked with Brandeis to say, once we have proven the model, then we would love for Brandeis University to take over the program. We'll provide a funding runway and then Brandeis can run it and take it over, and we don't need to be involved with it any longer.
Laura Lauder:
That actually happened. We ran it for the first, say six, 10 years, and slowly handed it off to Brandeis. That was a very impactful way for Brandeis to take ownership from the very beginning, knowing that it was going to be ultimately their responsibility to then run it. I would say that those are a couple of the mistakes that I've made.
Elizabeth Jick:
Thank you. Those are great examples. I know the same occurred here with the Jewish Teen Funders Network, where you made sure that you gave the seed capital to get it going, but the local community then had to absorb it and build it from there, in partnership with you.
Laura Lauder:
You were one of those people, Elizabeth, thank you for that.
Elizabeth Jick:
It makes a lot of sense, but I'm sure it doesn't always work that way in practice. Thank you for sharing that. Can you tell us what you to do when you are not saving the world?
Laura Lauder:
Oh gosh. Well, first of all, I am a diehard cyclist. I literally am addicted and the adrenaline rush of biking, there's something to it that just, it energizes me in such a way, even just thinking about it, I get all excited and energized. It is true that I participated in the Maccabiah games. For those of you who don't know what the Maccabiah games are, it's the Jewish Olympics. It's maybe a hundredth or maybe a millionth of the size of the regular Olympics. But it was so much fun. I participated in the cycling event there and won a bronze medal. How cool is that? I was on a podium and all that stuff. Cycling is a big thing for me. I can tell you what I never do. I never ever cook. I don't know how, I over cooked pasta and boiling water. I'm so bad at cooking.
Laura Lauder:
I'd like to say, that I can't cook, but I can bike. At least there's that trade-off. I love hiking with friends and I love reading. Sort of non-stop of all of the other things that I love.
Elizabeth Jick:
Thank you. Do you use a donor-advised fund or do you go through a private foundation? What's your thinking about that?
Laura Lauder:
Elizabeth, I think it's really important to you as a donor-advised fund. I think that creating a private foundation, unless it's huge. The numbers can be very, very big, and that makes sense for those who want to do that. But for me, we give away about $6 million a year and doing it through a donor-advised fund is really the best way. What I love about it, is that, it's through the Jewish Federation. I get help from them. They even allow me to have consultants that I can pay through my donor-advised fund at the Federation. I have two consultants who I work with, and I love that. One is my Jewish philanthropy, which is about half of our giving, and then one is my secular civic philanthropy, which is about the other half of my giving.
Laura Lauder:
Donor-advised fund have proven to be very, very effective. Now, you might ask, and you didn't ask this, but I'm still going to suggest that it'd be asked, should the federal government regulate donor-advised fund to require payouts? For me, the answer is, yes. I don't think it will reduce payouts. What we do is, we give away about 20 to 30% of our donor-advised fund every year, and then we refill it. But I think it should be a minimum of 5% spend, just like a foundation. The reason why, is because a lot of people have an exit from a liquidity event, they put a slab of money into a donor-advised fund and then it sits, so they've gotten a tax deduction, but they haven't used it to make the world a better place to do their tikkun olam. I think that's wrong.
Laura Lauder:
So while the average across fidelity and vanguard and federations and community foundations, maybe the average is 10 to 15% distributions, which of course is higher than regular foundations. That's because a lot of people spend down their donor advised fund and then they refill it. But a lot of people don't spend on one. I don't know what the Biden administration is thinking about this, and they're not listening to me, that's for sure, but I do think it would be appropriate, and it may even be appropriate for the institutions, the DAF sponsors themselves, to encourage at least a minimum of a 5% spend. There's an answer that you didn't ask.
Elizabeth Jick:
Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to ask two more questions, then I think we'll open it up to the audience for questions. How do you decide what to make public about your philanthropy?
Laura Lauder:
Good question. Okay. We have a website, it's lauderfamilyfund.org. I put up there things that I think, that the audience is frankly other funders. It's folks who are trying to think about how they can have impact and to learn from my mistakes or our process of thinking how to be more strategic and how to scale impact. We have a website. I also post up there any press that we've ever had or interviews, Brandeis interviewed me once and I posted that on the website. But frankly, I don't want a lot of attention, and so I really would prefer not to be very public, in terms of issuing press releases or anything like that. I'm always willing to be public about what we support.
Laura Lauder:
For example, I'm on the board of an organization called the Service Year Alliance, and it's run by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and it's to try to encourage everyone to take a year of service after high school, after college, during college, a gap year, anytime until age 28. The AmeriCorps program is very much a part of that, but we'd like to scale it even beyond AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps only has 80,000 spots, and there are 600,000 people who apply to AmeriCorps. We'd like to scale this up to, as Gen. McChrystal says, matching the numbers that the US military has boots on the ground. We have a million young people serving in the military and Gen. McChrystal would love to see us have a million young people serving their country, doing national service. I serve on that organization's board and I love it.
Laura Lauder:
I'm always happy to write an op-ed, or to be mentioned as a participant. But when it comes to our personal initiatives, I don't seek the attention. I don't actually publicize some of these things that I'm involved in, but I'm always delighted to talk with other funders and hear what they're thinking and hear how they're thinking about impact and strategy and scaling. And for that, I'm willing to be public about certain things to hopefully encourage other funders to potentially also do things in this space and also to just chat.
Elizabeth Jick:
Thank you. Before we open it up to the audience, are there any final words of wisdom that you'd like to offer this group?
Laura Lauder:
Wow. First of all, I'm so impressed that Brandeis has this alumni program for women. It's just phenomenal to convene all of you and in special forums with women that care about philanthropy, that care about tikkun olam, that care about making the world a better place. I'm guessing that about half of you are Jewish and half of you are not, it doesn't matter, it's wonderful to have such a diverse population that are participants in Brandeis programs. But I will say, that for me, it's just so important to teach your kids and make sure that you involve them and have them struggle with the decisions that you're making every day about your philanthropy, and to teach them why you care so passionately about Brandeis and everything else that you care about.
Laura Lauder:
Not to force them into doing what you do, but really just to make them feel they're your partners. I can tell you that when my parents did that for me, it was transformational, and it's why I'm doing what I'm doing now. That would be my words of thoughts.
Elizabeth Jick:
Thank you. Okay. As expected, there are many questions that have come in, so just start, don't worry, we will have everyone out of here by eight o'clock. First, what is your advice for a young professional looking to make a philanthropic impact with limited resources?
Laura Lauder:
Okay. Now, is the question of a professional, meaning someone who works for a nonprofit in order to have impact. Is that the question?
Elizabeth Jick:
I don't believe it's specific to a nonprofit worker, anyone in their 20s or 30s who want to make a difference, but they don't have significant resources to work with.
Laura Lauder:
It doesn't matter the number of zeros. Zero's are not a thing, frankly. It really is about your thinking, your network, the time that you can give, the ideas that you have. That's what it's about. My daughter is working at a nonprofit and she is loving it, and she's not giving any money to them. They say, what is it? Wealth, wisdom and-
Elizabeth Jick:
And work.
Laura Lauder:
And work. The work part is the key part, because none of these nonprofits would ever survive without the work part. Volunteers and professionals involved at these organizations. That's what it's about. I would say, the most important thing though, is focus, focus for impact, because you're not going to have impact if you spread yourself too thin. And that goes for whether you're giving money, small amounts, large amounts, or you're giving up your time. So focus is the key.
Elizabeth Jick:
Excellent advice. Okay. How should we talk to young children about philanthropy?
Laura Lauder:
Young children? Okay. I'm going to take that to mean young children, like, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 years old. Okay? There is a website called sharesavespend.com. This website talks about how you should give allowance to kids based on their age, and you should divide it by three, share, save, spend. It starts at age six. At age six, the kids get $2 a week for spending, $2 a week that they should be saving, putting in their piggy bank, and $2 a week for giving, for sharing with others. We did that with our kids. By the way, the special, the break off point is age 11, where you double it. At age 11, you go up to $22 a week, share, save, spend, divided in thirds.
Laura Lauder:
What we did is, we had the sharing part in this family meeting once a year at Thanksgiving. We didn't have them give necessarily every single to something. But $2 a week, times 52, you're getting over a hundred dollars there, and that's a lot of money for a six year old child to think about how to have some impact. I would say teaching them very early about share, save spend, is a really important way to make sure that they begin to take ownership of managing money, saving money, and frankly giving money away. The only rule we had was, you can't spend it on candy.
Elizabeth Jick:
Sounds very sound and healthy. Thank you. Here's one from clearly someone from the younger generation. I'm a recent graduate from Brandeis, May, 2020. Do you have any advice for a young female looking to get started in venture philanthropy, or where is a good place organization to begin with?
Laura Lauder:
Wow, that is such a cool question. When it comes to getting involved in venture philanthropy, as a young person, I love the idea of impact investing and there are a lot of nonprofits that are doing that. In San Francisco, one of the things that we did was, we worked with all kinds of nonprofits in the community to provide them with loans, with connections to other people, and with opportunities to collaborate with each other. That was impact investing for us. And so if I were a young person, I would want to get involved in some of those organizations that are working collaboratively with others, that are getting funds that are in the form of loans or in the form of partnerships. And so finding way to leverage your work, your wealth, your wisdom, all of those, it's about leveraging, it's about scaling based on your example of one organization. Again, it's about focus. That would be my advice.
Elizabeth Jick:
Thank you. Here's the personal one. Are your kids involved in the training of junior boards?
Laura Lauder:
Really interesting question. It turns out that my father-in-law Leonard Lauder started the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation. Okay? And ADDF funds research of Alzheimer's drugs. It's a very, very tragic disease. 50% of all 80 year olds are already have Alzheimer's disease. It's something that in 40 years, we've never had drugs that reverse Alzheimer's disease. Having said that, we've found some drugs that now make it, the development is slower, which is of course wonderful. You can slow the onset as well as slow the progression of the disease. One of the things that I'm so delighted is, our son, Josh has a very close relationship with his grandfather. He calls him pah, and pah invited him to an ADDF board meeting one day. And while he was there, Josh agreed to help co-found the young leaders junior board of the ADDF.
Laura Lauder:
It's essentially the next generation, the 20 somethings whose grandparents might be getting Alzheimer's disease or who already have it. And so in that sense, Josh created this junior board and then recruited bunches of friends from college and from his new work environment and all kinds of places, for everyone to come together and create a community. And now they're trying to raise money, not just from each other, but from their grandparents and their parents, and believe me, I know. In that sense, it's wonderful to see them creating their own new initiatives. That's an example. I hope that helps.
Elizabeth Jick:
It does. And they had a wonderful role model. Here's a good one. What do you wish you would have been told about board service?
Laura Lauder:
Well, first and foremost, every board has to have term limits. I just joined a board that does not have any term limits and I couldn't believe it. I asked, what are you expecting? And they said, well, we have three year terms. It's just that they're unlimited. I'm like, no, no, no. I would say that somebody should have told me, don't ever join a board that doesn't have term limits. That's one thing. I think the other thing is, don't ever join a board that you're just going to give money, that you're not going to be involved. If you're just a donor and they're using your name, what's the point? Why be on the board? In fact, better to be on fewer boards, and frankly, not necessarily have your name in all kinds of places, because it's not really that impactful.
Laura Lauder:
Instead get deeply involved in all the boards that you serve on, at least having one big project that you're working on, or something that you're specifically funding. That's another lesson that I think is super important about serving on boards, is to be actively engaged.
Elizabeth Jick:
Agreed. Thank you. Okay. What is the program called, for inter married families that you referred to earlier?
Laura Lauder:
Okay. The working title, haven't chosen this yet, but I'm going outside the box here, it's called, Choosing a Jewish Life. Do you like that name? Kind of fun. Choosing a Jewish Life. That's the idea. The particular rabbi that is helping us create this, has had a congregation for the last 10 years where she focused almost exclusively on millennials. For her, she realized that it's really important to talk about choice, to talk about having a Jewish life, because it's not about how Jewish are you, no. It's about, what do you want to choose to incorporate in your Jewish life? Frankly, it's not really about conversion. It's really much more about finding the elements of Judaism that speak to you. If that leads you to conversion, either now or later, great. But if not, you know what, that's okay too, because choosing a Jewish life is incredibly meaningful at whatever level is appropriate for you.
Elizabeth Jick:
Thank you. Our federation here in Boston, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, has a program with missions and there are all kinds of missions. There are women's missions and young professionals missions, and municipal official missions, but they also started an interfaith couple mission with just interfaith couples and that's been wildly successful. I don't know if that helps as part of this program you're involved in, but I know it's worked here in Boston. We're happy to give you more information on that.
Laura Lauder:
I have to tell you that, that does sound great. I know that there's a wonderful organization run by Joanne Jacobson or funded by Joanne called Honeymoon Israel, which of course does that on steroids, and they are way over subscribed.
Elizabeth Jick:
Yes. That's the one.
Laura Lauder:
That's the one. Okay.
Elizabeth Jick:
Yes. They do it in conjunction with the federation. Yes, exactly right.
Laura Lauder:
Okay. Great. Well, I definitely need to talk to Joanne and the federation about it, to partner, that's a great idea. Thanks so much.
Elizabeth Jick:
Great. Okay. We have a few more here, that just came in. What do you think about the opportunity caused by the COVID crisis to look for more efficiencies, for example, mergers of synagogues or organizations with mission alignment in the nonprofit world, particularly the Jewish nonprofit world?
Laura Lauder:
I couldn't agree more.
Elizabeth Jick:
Loaded question. Yes.
Laura Lauder:
It is a loaded question. I will tell you that when I was chair of the Jewish Community Endowment fund in San Francisco, we actually created a little pot of money to smooth, to grease the path of enabling those nonprofits that wish to merge, to do so. Frankly, we got no takers, we got no takers. There were preschools that were literally a mile or two apart, small preschools at synagogues. We even wanted to just offer the idea of being able to share resources, like HR department or payroll or whatever it is. The reality is, is that people like their organizations and they really don't want to merge them out of existence. That's frankly very sad.
Laura Lauder:
Now, I will tell you that one really exciting merger that just happened, is a nonprofit that I was on the board of, for many, many years and I loved, I loved the organization. It's called Onward Israel, and they just merged with Birthright. Here's an example, I don't think it was COVID related, but it was an example of David and Cynthia Shapira who are dear friends and I adore them. They merged onward with Birthright and it was a sensational merger. There's an example.
Elizabeth Jick:
Fantastic. Thank you. Okay. What junior boards would you recommend to get started?
Laura Lauder:
What junior boards would I recommend? I don't know about every other community, but in San Francisco we have something called Fed Fellows, the Federation Fellows program, and that's for 20 somethings, to be a board observer on a Federation beneficiary agency and on the Federation board. I did that when I was in my early 20s and I served on the Hebrew Free loan board. I got to tell you, it was the best thing I ever did, because it made me feel very grown up and it made me feel I actually had something to offer. They actually would ask me for my opinion about things, and it was so fun. If there is a Fed Fellows kind of program in your local community, that would be a really great place to start.
Laura Lauder:
Because then you have the opportunity to serve as an advisor or a an auditor on a board, to audit, to just listen. You're not a voting member, of course. By the way, if this doesn't exist, then find a really wonderful nonprofit and ask if you could be a board auditor, if you could audit board meetings and be a participant. I think that they'd love to have you, if you offered your time. I think that they would love that.
Elizabeth Jick:
Agreed. Okay. What is your philosophy about giving endowments versus current use? I know we face that all the time.
Laura Lauder:
This is a big question. It's even a question for large foundations, we at the Jim Joseph foundation, don't support endowments, period, end of story. At the Jewish Federation where I was just the endowment committee chair, we love supporting endowments and especially capital campaigns that have endowments. It just depends, big institutions that give lots of money have different approaches. But personally, I think it's really important to support endowments. And I'll give you an example. Here's the most important thing, when you're raising capital funds for a building, Elizabeth, this is something you're so experienced with, especially when people are using municipal bond funding, for capital campaigns and that wonderful opportunity for no interest bonds, or low interest bonds to help support this. That is a perfect opportunity to raise endowments.
Laura Lauder:
For day schools or JCCs or synagogues or whatever the institution, Brandeis University, for any institution to not concurrently raise endowment money, is a tragedy. For example, I was the capital campaign chair of the Jewish Day School in Palo Alto, where our kids went to school from 1996 to 1999. I will tell you that, in 1996, I had a one year-old at home and I was pregnant with my second, and I was the fricking chair of the capital campaign. I made a point of saying to every single donor, 10% of your gift to go build this building is going to go into an endowment, you know what, they just didn't have a choice. It was critically important.
Laura Lauder:
Today the day school now has a very significant endowment. I think the endowments are so important, but they're so important to raise while you're raising money for other things, because it's easy to raise money for that exciting new gym at the JCC or the exciting new building for the engineering school. And unless you do it then, it doesn't happen because nobody likes to give to endowments. But of course, critically important to raise operating funds, that goes without saying.
Elizabeth Jick:
Absolutely. Okay. Just a few more. Any good books you would recommend to read about philanthropy?
Laura Lauder:
Oh gosh. So many. So, so, so many. I leave that to others to suggest great books. I'm reading Obama's book right now, I can't put it down, it's just so exciting. So wonderful. I'm not really in the mode of philanthropy books. I would tell you that Joel Fleishman has written wonderful books about giving. He and Tom Tierney had a Bridgespan, coauthored a book about philanthropy and about spend down foundations. I think that's really an important thing to consider. We don't have an endowed foundation. We use donor-advised fund. I think that it's wonderful to read Joel Fleishman from Duke university, go Duke. He has a wonderful, a book about spend down foundations. I think he followed the AVI CHAI Foundation for a very significant amount of times, just to watch them and to evaluate the effectiveness of a spend down foundation. Charles Bronfman did the same thing. He also spent down his foundation. I would take a look at Joel Fleishman work.
Elizabeth Jick:
Great. Thank you. Okay. I'm not sure this is exactly what the person meant to ask, but what's your pet peeve when you were solicited for not for profit funds?
Laura Lauder:
A pet peeve when I'm solicited, is that the person who is soliciting me doesn't know a lot about the organization. If they can't answer my questions and I'm going to ask a lot of questions. I'll give you an example. I was just solicited, and frankly, asked to serve on the board of a nonprofit. I said, I'm delighted to talk with you. Here's a list of questions that I have. When you have those answers, please get back to me. Things like, can you tell me what are the most difficult challenges that the nonprofit is facing right now? What are the most compelling ways that the nonprofit raises money? Who on the executive committee is a potential next chair of the board and what is your succession plan?
Laura Lauder:
Things like that, strategic questions to actually really understand, because I'm not going to get involved in anything in a small way. I get involved with both feet, and 80% of our philanthropy goes to 20% of the nonprofits that I'm involved in. I expect really a lot of understanding of the mission and purpose and impact of the nonprofit, if someone's going to solicit me.
Elizabeth Jick:
Thank you. Okay. What do you think about impact investing, investing in for profit companies that are doing to tikkun olam, the Teslas of tomorrow?
Laura Lauder:
I love them. They're the best. They are absolutely sensational of course. Right? In fact Gary and I are investors in an Israeli impact investing fund that is investing in Israeli startups, that are absolutely phenomenal, doing incredibly cool work, and they potentially will have significant exit strategies. Everything from drip irrigation technologies to expand them and extend them beyond Israel and of course, beyond Africa, to solar energy approaches, to taking Israeli technology and having it manufactured in China, to really scale it up. To all kinds of really exciting Israeli technologies and know how. I would say that's really important. Now, I would also say that that is not in our philanthropic bucket. So when we make investments in social impact companies, then we put those into our regular investment bucket, not into our philanthropic bucket.
Elizabeth Jick:
Thank you. Okay. Final question here. Do you consider environmental, social governance when you're investing in banking?
Laura Lauder:
Wow. Great question. Environmental impact is so hard to measure. I would love to include it more. The millennium goals that were created around the turn of the millennium, included social impact, included environmental impact of companies. And so it's a wonderful screen. If you're going to buy public equities, you can look at how others have evaluated the environmental impact of companies. Walmart, for example, has done a great job putting solar panels on top of every single building in every actual Walmart store, is uniquely and individually self sufficient environmentally in terms of energy. There's definitely ways to do that. In terms of nonprofits. I think it's hard to measure the environmental impact nearly as well.
Laura Lauder:
And so if this person has a great way to do that, I'm sure that if they can get to you, then send me a note. I'd love to hear their ideas, but always open to new ways of doing things. Thanks for the suggestion.
Elizabeth Jick:
Laura, I just wanted to thank you once again for joining us here this evening and sharing your experiences. This has been fantastic and so informative for all of us, and we wish you and Gary and Josh and Eliana the best as you can continue to make this world a better, safer place.
Laura Lauder:
Thank you so much. Thanks so much everyone, really great to be here today. I just loved it. It was so fun and such an important cause and a great institution.
Talee Potter:
Laura and Elizabeth, thank you so much. My name is Talee Potter, one of the co-founders of Brandeis Women. Thank you for this incredibly interesting conversation. I know I personally feel energized and inspired and I'm sure our participants all feel the same way. Thank you for coming and for taking your time to join us tonight. For the participants on the call. Just want to remind you, if you're not a part of our Facebook community or LinkedIn community please look for us Brandeis women, they're private communities, just type it into the search and please join our groups.
Talee Potter:
It's open to Brandeis alumna's and parents of Brandeis students. We have some exciting programs coming up. We have pizza making workshops coming up. We have a professional pivoting during COVID, each have different careers. Look out for our future programming and join us for additional programming. Please keep safe and looking forward to seeing you all in our next programming. Again, Laura and Elizabeth. Thank you so much for tonight.
Elizabeth Jick:
Thank you.
Laura Lauder:
Thanks. Bye everyone. Thanks so much.
Elizabeth Jick:
Bye.