Connection, access, and visibility accelerate transformational social change. The Skoll Foundation works to embrace less obvious collaborations across sectors and geographies, within and beyond the field of philanthropy. Over five years of intentionally weaving TED and Skoll networks and platforms, we’re seeing patterns worth sharing. Today, we fund TED core capacity and partner on several programs, co-invest in The Audacious Project, and facilitate connections between our organizations and networks.
Organizational strategies and synergies evolve constantly. It takes time to build trust, follow through, and experientially understand how another organization works. The key ingredients? Mission alignment, key staff to steward, enough structure to build from existing assets and shared capacity to co-create new possibilities.
“We saw extraordinary potential to combine ‘ideas worth spreading’ with ‘impact worth doing.’ This partnership was designed around the idea that our global networks and platforms can transform ideas into action at scale.” Jay Herratti, TED Executive Director
Connections and collaborations seem to bloom after a few years. We see Skoll’s primary role as a connector – consistently showing up, meeting, and connecting people in and across networks, identifying synergies. This fuels co-creation and co-investment (more on that later). We leverage the strength of weak ties, a network theory principle of weaker (more distant) ties which offer exposure to novel ideas and information. With weak ties, our own ideas can travel farther and find more diverse networks, rather than relying on our strongest, but most insular, ties. By connecting networks, we can access a broader set of so-called weak ties, which can expose us to new ideas, and bring our own ideas to new networks.
In 2017, we cross-analyzed TED Vancouver and Skoll World Forum attendees and found a 3 percent overlap. In 2022, that number jumped to 34 percent. Profiles span philanthropic and private funders, NGO leaders, entrepreneurs, and storytellers. Is a growing network overlap good? Does it matter? From our experience, yes. Increasing visibility and connections can power ideas and solutions worth sharing and funding. Our networks have very different DNA, member profiles, and motivations.
The reverse is also happening. We have brought hundreds of leaders into the Skoll network through TED and collaborations with local TEDx curators across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We have met incredible leaders that have joined our programs and portfolios, advised our teams, and extended our global reach to support social innovators. Two such organizations even received the 2022 Skoll Award for Social Innovation: Nossas and MapBiomas.
Practically speaking, we design and host spaces for connection within TED events, meet with as many people as we can, and cultivate ongoing connections year-round. Sometimes this looks like a topical workshop or focused discussion. Other times, a simple meal can be a powerful catalyst. All you need is intentional curation of attendees, a warm welcome, and space for people to talk to each other. Focus on relationships. Transactions can come later.
As of 2022, The Audacious Project has catalyzed $3 billion in private philanthropic capital towards bold social innovation. Housed in an unlikely place, Audacious has become a leading co-investment vehicle for individual donors and established philanthropies alike. The 2021-22 Audacious cohort of nine organizations (including eight Skoll Awardees and grantees) protect indigenous land rights, work to stabilize voting infrastructure, accelerate the transition to clean transportation, equip small farmers with the power to invest in themselves, build mental health support in communities exposed to widespread violence, train family caregivers to help their loved ones heal, support refugees to resettle safely, and transform the U.S. social safety net.
“Our experience with both Skoll and Audacious has given us courage, strengthened our organization, and enabled us to think big—scaling our impact exponentially. As a Central American organization, we, too, hope to elevate the work of other locally-led organizations driving change in their own communities.” Celina de Sola, Glasswing International (2020 Skoll Awardee & 2022 Audacious)
While there is even more to celebrate with each year of this partnership, we do not forget that what would become the Audacious Project began humbly with a few people dreaming together about a different future. Seeded in 2014 by TED’s Chris Anderson, Jeff Skoll, and others, the Audacious Project is now a leading platform for courageous collaboration to drive lasting and transformative change on the world’s most pressing challenges. But the dream had to be nurtured with a willingness to experiment and iterate with flexible core funding that prioritized shared learning and adaptation over specific targets and milestones. We are excited that this spirit of experimentation continues to be a feature in the Audacious Project’s next 3-year strategy. And to support it, Skoll is now providing its third round of multi-year core grant support, alongside other funders who have been there from day one.
“Partners like the Skoll Foundation have been vital in helping us to test new models and expand how we fuel transformative change. What’s thrilling is to see a collective raised level of ambition—from those imagining the solutions to our big challenges, and those with the means to resource them and give them lift-off.” Anna Verghese, Executive Director of the Audacious Project
TED is known for, of course, TED Talks, their flagship conferences, and other popular media formats. Over the years, TED has grown many additional impact-oriented platforms, including TEDWomen, a climate action initiative called Countdown, and The Audacious Project. The organization also houses multiple cross-sector and global networks – TED speakers, TED attendees, TED Fellows, TEDx curators, TED-Ed storytellers, TED Translators, and more.
We’ve specifically partnered with the global TEDx network of ~4,000 volunteer curators to connect, learn from, and bridge local and global. This partnership avenue wasn’t obvious at first. TEDx curators are known for surfacing local ideas and producing community events. They’re proximate community leaders who work to know new solutions and emerging ideas with local impact. We’ve learned many TEDx curators are also kind, generous, and networked connectors. Over the years, we have met and curated a subset of ~300 impact-oriented curators, brought 50 TEDx curators to the Skoll World Forum and TED flagship events, held dozens of targeted workshops, and ongoing conversations to collectively share insights and observations. Importantly for Skoll, TEDx curators reside outside of social impact echo chambers. Importantly for TEDx, Skoll offers a global suite of connections and spaces for curators to go ‘beyond the talk.’
“TEDx is a unique global community made up of powerhouse event organizers and idea curators. Through these local events, TEDx curators have cultivated years of social capital with the potential to break down silos, bridge divides, and inspire new thinking on a local to global scale. Partnerships with impact-oriented networks like Skoll’s helps these local organizers share grassroots ideas with the world.” Michael Ryan, TED Director of Philanthropy
Meet Temie. We spent time with her company, LifeBank, around TEDx Lagos in 2018. A year later, she spoke during a Skoll-hosted convening in Lagos (the first on the continent) alongside Ford Foundation, a venture capitalist, and Skoll Awardee, Babban Gona. We loosely kept in touch with Temie as Skoll’s strategy evolved and LifeBank continued to grow. In 2020, when the pandemic wreaked havoc across supply chains and healthcare, LifeBank accelerated their work to digitize supply chains to ensure critical medical supplies like blood, oxygen, medical consumables, vaccines, and medical devices reach last mile patients across Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
Our investment team made a significant grant to LifeBank within our Pandemics & Health System Strengthening portfolio. Fast forward to 2021, we referred Temie for speaking consideration at TEDWomen, TED’s flagship platform centered in equity and social progress. You can watch it here. We have dozens of stories like Temie’s illustrating loose ties and direct collaborations.
Our grant funding is an important partnership element, yet we have seen how our brand, platforms, and network opened far more capital than Skoll could ever provide directly. Connection, access, and visibility accelerate social progress.
“The alignment of values between TEDWomen, an annual TED conference created 12 years ago to elevate the ideas, innovations, stories and experiences of a global women’s community, and the Skoll Foundation’s priority commitment to increasing gender and racial justice is one of the reasons that this particular partnership works so well. As the co founder/curator of TEDWomen, and a trustee of the Skoll Fund, I witness the impact of TEDTalks by Skoll supported innovators and entrepreneurs, and the immense interests in Skoll and Ted partnered Discovery workshop sessions. I’ve also seen the long term impact of he connections made at this global gathering, connection that often catalyze other opportunities to expand the impact of both organizations.” Pat Mitchell
To recap our reflections on what makes this partnership (and others) work:
