The Art of Philanthropy | Tad Taube

Episode Transcript of: The Art of Philanthropy | Tad Taube

 

Alan
Welcome back and visiting here today with Tad Taube. And welcome to today’s show.

Tad
Thank you.

Alan
So, Tad you’ve done a lot throughout your life. But I want to focus a little bit on, on today more that philanthropic causes that you’ve, you’ve been involved with throughout the years and you received an award, the commander’s cross Star of the Order of Merit. How did that come about?

Tad
It was a direct byproduct of the work we’ve done in Poland for the last 15 years or so. We, being my philanthropic organization started working in Poland in about 2002. with the express purpose of trying to breathe a little bit of life into a diminishing Jewish population, I don’t have to repeat for most people, what happened to the Jews in Poland during the Holocaust. So in the aftermath, and particularly several generations now, after the Holocaust, and excuse me, the survivors are diminishing. But there’s a new group of Jewish people in Poland, which we refer to as the new Jews. And those are the people that have become aware of their Jewish background, maybe a grandfather or grandmother, an aunt. And we’re really afraid to talk about it during the German period, and certainly during the Russian or Soviet period. And then after the, after the 1989 revolution, were Poland, essentially, throughout the communists and became a free democratic republic. People felt that they could discuss things that were otherwise off limits in the prior 50 years. And what that gave us an entree to be involved in various programs in Poland to try to make it easier for those people, which we call the New Jews to come forward. And, interestingly enough, probably today, there are upwards of 40,000 people that we’ve now identified as part of the new Jewish population. And those people are getting organized, they’re joining organizations, they’re becoming involved with their synagogues there. We have two very active JCCs, one in Warsaw and, and one in Krakow. And we’ve been very supportive of, of the government’s effort to resuscitate Jewish life as well. And you know, we become well known to the government. Excuse me. And so, consequently, a byproduct of that has been a series of awards that that I’ve received from the President of Poland, one of which was the commander’s grace with oak leaf clusters, or whatever they call that. It’s actually my second one. And part of it was also the selection of me as the as the honorary consul for the Republic of Poland in the Bay Area.

Alan
So Tad recently, you were involved with one organization, that correct foundation, but you stepped down, and then you’re continuing on with philanthropic efforts, but what what role that correct play for what you are currently doing and have you really had to change anything with?

Tad
What correct grid Foundation was very important component of my philanthropy because in a sense, I came on as a founding director of the credit foundation and shortly after it was formed, or actually became part of the formation of the foundation in 1980, or 1981, or there abouts. So it was an education, because in 1980, or 81, none of us that were involved with the credit Foundation, including Joe curette, knew much about philanthropy. So what the credit Foundation did for all of us is it taught us the business of philanthropy. So the more I knew about that business, and the more I was actively engaged in promoting it for curette. I started also to different philanthropic organizations under the Toby banner, which was substantial in terms of their giving and substantial in terms of their corpus. And so when I retired from the credit Foundation, or at the point of retirement, I think about it for every $2 that I was giving, are involved in a gift from the caret Foundation, there was probably $1 that I was involved in giving from Toby foundations and philanthropies. So in other words, I had a, I already had a major philanthropic thrust. At the time that I retired from curette.

Alan
I’m visiting here today with Tad Taube, he’s a philanthropist and longtime resident here in the Bay Area helping many many organizations and I need to take a quick break, and we’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back and visiting here today with Tad Taube. And, Tad, in the first segment, we’re talking about your role as a philanthropist. How do you how do you decide which organizations that you’ll get involved with? Do you have a defined cause or mission within your, your plan giving Sure.

Tad
The process of identifying ideas organizations are people to support really originates both from the outside and the inside the inside is I tend to be attracted to organizations that that are consistent with my personal philosophy and goals. Things that I really believe in the ideology of, you know, giving the organizations that, you know, that correspond to my idea of how philanthropy should be organized. So that’s internal, external is just exactly what it means. In other words, I get solicitations from people, hundreds of them actually from organizations and people. And our job is just try to sort through those and identify those organizations that we want to support. Now, there’s an underlying element of that whole process that is very important. And that is, we try to only support organizations where we think that there is the ability to identify an impact. In other words, we’re not just going to throw money down a rat hole and wonder what’s happening to it. We have a very well defined idea at the onset, before we ever even put up any, into any organization as to whether or not my our money is going to make a difference, and how that’s going to manifest itself.

Alan
You know, oftentimes people that are donating to certain causes or charities will come back with a, we made a donation we got behind the cause, but our dollars did not reach where we wanted the dollars to go. They were siphoned off administratively into other other pieces. How do you ensure that when you make a donation that your dollars are reaching the cause and the need that you’re, you’re requiring to change?

Tad
I think after the fact, it’s not going to happen? In other words, if you give them money, and then you know, you want to take some measures or steps to ensure as you put it, that your money is going to go where you think it’s gonna go, That’s too late. Those decisions have to be made before a single penny goes out the door. You got to make sure that there is a stream of identifying where the money is going and what it’s going to do and how it’s going to affect whatever it is that you’re trying to impact.

Alan
And for substantial donations. Will you get involved with a board seat or oversight to behind the organization or, you know, it’s the question is more directed at doing your advanced planning. How do you communicate the oversight of the Friends are making sure

Tad
there. Yeah, I mean, there. As I say it’s very much an upfront process. And I want to stress that, that if you’re trying to figure it out after the money’s gone, it’s too late. But we also do monitor what’s going on within the organization, because generally speaking, the larger grants are multiple year grants. So we might make a five year grant, let’s say to the University of California at Berkeley to their anthropology department. And each year, you know, we are evaluating what happened and what was right and what wasn’t right and so forth. So we’re also making midcourse corrections as we go. And there have been instances where we’ve cut off the funding, because they the organization, either was not conforming to the to the grant itself and the conditions of the grant. Or they were financially in trouble and hadn’t been able to raise the monies from other sources that they claimed that they would be able to raise

Alan
if the charity is outside the borders of the United States to be come involved with them.

Tad
Well, we are involved in probably a third of all of our philanthropy now goes to Israel and Poland. So but it’s very similar process. I mean, we’re working with organizations that have good management, we’re working with grants that are well defined upfront. We’re working with organizations that appear to have the financial wherewithal to complete their missions. And we monitor and I would say that our, our results, probably comparable to what they would be here in the United States.

Alan
And basically here today with Ted, Toby and Ted, I need to take another break. And we’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back, I’m visiting here today with Tad Taube and Tad in the earlier segments, we’re talking about being involved with philanthropic causes and how you vet out organizations ensuring that the dollars get to where they need to go. And I imagine that years ago, you could have just hung up the shingle said I’m retired. Why philanthropy?

Tad
Well, you know, I think I answered that off, Mike. And that is that getting older. And I’m wonderful health and I’m very active, and I play tennis and workout and do all the good things try to keep my weight under control. But at some point, I’m not going to be here. And so I’m trying to focus a little bit on what happens at that particular point. And I think as I told you before, there’s four things that can happen, your money can go to the government, which is not exactly a positive outcome. From my standpoint, you can screw up your children. That’s not That’s not favorable. Let somebody else give it away, or you give it away yourself. And so the process of giving it away myself, is a cumulative process. In other words, it’s not only the grants that I’m doing today, it’s also the grants that I did yesterday and the day before and the day before that, that are coming back, you know, for reconsideration. So it keeps me very busy. I’m probably at this point. I would say I work about 60 hours a week. Most people think that to be my age and working 60 hours a week you got to be a lunatic. But I enjoy my work and and if anything, it keeps me going and keeps me young. I love young people, I spend most of my time with people that are far younger than I am. And and I you know, and I’m looking forward to doing this for a long time to come

Alan
down. I imagine that once you’re involved with an organization, there’s a tendency to become dependent on multiple year grants. You’re monitoring it but how do you how do you put the tail on the end of the donation Do you usually give for a certain period of years and say that says oh, they’re all different now okay,

Tad
yeah, they’re all Different mean, every grant is great unto itself. You know, there’s no two identical ways of giving away money. I mentioned multi year grants, because the bigger ones, you know, if we’re giving away, let’s say $5 million, or more, or even $3 million, we might do that in installments. And, and we monitor what’s going on, you know, constantly with each installment of our gift. And, and there is a tail. At the end of this, you know, we do come to an end. And then we do a very thorough evaluation of what we’ve done. And, you know, generally speaking, because we’re so careful, altogether about the way that we go about making our commitments, that we’ve had very few, really what I would call surprises, you know, businessmen, hate surprises. I hate them with a passion. I don’t like surprises. You could surprise me at a birthday party. But don’t surprise me with a grant that goes sour.

Alan
When you’re working with organizations outside the US, and you mentioned earlier that about a 30 of your money is moving that direction. Yeah. How do you how do you do the monitoring for someone that’s remote

Tad
somewhere, we monitor exactly the same way we, we have offices, in two cities in Poland, in Krakow and Warsaw, we have an office in, in Jerusalem. And, and we monitor just exactly the way as we do here, we have representatives on the ground, they’re involved in originating the grant, they’re involved in the grant process of determining what the terms of the grant are going to be. And they’re involved in the evaluation. Now, I will say that most of the grants that we do overseas, are larger. And they’re probably larger, because I guess partly because it’s a little harder because of the distance involved. And secondly, because we want to ensure an impact. And in a foreign environment, it’s easier to track your money if there’s a lot of it in play.

Alan
So you’re at qualified 501 C three organization, you’re at your tabi ventures are Tabi.

Tad
Well, we have, we have actually three separate philanthropic organizations that we use to for actually, that we use for giving money. One is I can give them money directly. And I don’t have to have any kind of a federal ID number to do that. We can give them money through Toby Family Foundation, which is a 501. C three, we give the money to Toby foundation for Jewish life and culture, which is a 501 C three, or we have donor advised funds at Stanford, which are significant in amount. And I quite certain that Stanford as a 501 C three designation, since they, you know, collect billions of dollars in philanthropic contributions.

Alan
So that the dollars that you’re working with as you play sim, essentially, you’re placing it into other organizations that are qualified 501 C threes. Now there’s you’re not doing the operations yourself? Oh,

Tad
no, of course not. No, we don’t do any of the operations. We basically support the operations of others, other organizations that are organized for this specific purpose,

Alan
to add when when everything’s said and done, and you’re looking at, you know, how you remembered in life, how do you want people to remember you as the greatest successes that you were able to accomplish?

Tad
Well, I have a number of children. And I’d like to be remembered as a good father. Certainly. You know, I don’t really view the work that I’m doing as a philanthropist as a sort of a flag over my over my remains. I just want to be thought of as somebody that was well intentioned, did good things. Had a great love of people, and a very great love of democracy. You know, one of the things that drives To be here, and this is something that, you know that I glad to have the opportunity to mention it. I’m an immigrant, as you know, from our prior conversations. This country has been extraordinarily kind to me. I love the United States, and he knows I’m wearing a little flag right here. I’m patriotic. And, you know, I am disturbed by some of the things I see going on today. You know, the riots and, you know, the attempt to not recognize the political process that has gone on in this country for for years to have an orderly change of government. You know, we’re one of the few countries in the world that has an orderly change of government. And I, you know, I’d also like to be remembered for my patriotism

 

 

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About Tad Taube

Bay Area businessman Tad Taube is the chairman of Taube Philanthropies and board president emeritus of the Koret Foundation in San Francisco. He is chairman and founder of the Woodmont Companies, a diversified real estate investment and management organization.

At his alma mater, Stanford University, Mr. Taube is founder and advisory board chair of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies, established in 1986. He is a member of the Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution and serves on its Executive Committee, and was founder and past chairman of the advisory board of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR).

In addition, Mr. Taube is past chair of the Stanford Athletic Board. His involvement in Stanford Athletics includes his family’s principal gift to Stanford’s Taube Family Tennis Stadium and his significant support of Stanford’s new football stadium, built in 2006.

He has served as trustee of the University of Notre Dame de Namur, the University of San Francisco, and as governor of The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and was chairman and CEO of Koracorp Industries (successor to Koret of California) from 1973 until its merger with Levi Strauss in 1979.

Born in Kraków, Poland, in 1931, Tad Taube immigrated to the United States in the summer of 1939, just months before the outbreak of World War II. In 2003, Mr. Taube established a philanthropic program – the Jewish Heritage Initiative in Poland (JHIP) – which supports the revitalization of Jewish culture in now-democratic Poland.

In 2007, the Republic of Poland named Mr. Taube Honorary Consul for the San Francisco Bay Area.

In June 2015, then President of the Republic of Poland Bronislaw Komorowski awarded Taube the Commander’s Cross of the Star of the Order of Merit, Poland’s highest level official state distinction for a foreign civilian, which Taube adds to his Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit, received in 2004.

Mr. Taube holds BS and MS degrees from Stanford University and served as an officer in the U.S. Air Force.