Are We Ready for the Coming Wave of Tech Philanthropy?

Suppose you were the menahel of a large Torah school. There’s a knock at your office door and a fellow walks in with an offer. He can give you as much ongoing funding for your school as you want - ten million, twenty million, anything - with just one condition: you have to demonstrate that the new money leads to measurable improvements to educational outcomes.

That new building you’ve long hoped for that would allow you to add a hundred new seats? Well could you prove that the children occupying those seats would receive a measurably better education as a result? How about doubling pay for all your rebbaim and teachers - or doubling their numbers? Done, except that you’ll need to show that it made a difference.

How would you even go about measuring the quality of the education you currently provide? As I’ve previously written, I’m not aware of any Torah schools that currently address this problem. But wouldn’t it be nice if we could know which curriculum and scheduling combinations actually worked? Why wouldn’t donors want their tzedaka to have the greatest impact possible?

Measuring outcomes wouldn’t be easy. This is an area where even public schools struggle. They’ve got some minimal standardized testing, but it’s actively opposed (and sometimes sabotaged) by teachers unions.

I could imagine a world where all Torah schools tracked their graduates along with (confidential) assessments of what their post-graduation lives looked like. Ten years later, how many still devoted significant time and energy to Torah learning? How many reported being in stable marriages? How many were still frum? With enough data, we could correlate outcomes with policy choices (what real-world impact follows an extra hour of learning each day or starting Gemara a year earlier?).

The problem is that I couldn’t imagine a world where schools would agree to participate.

Perhaps, however, that world is closer than we think. I started thinking about this because there’s talk about upwards of $50 billion hitting the philanthropy world in the very near future. Many of the founders and engineers who stand to become fabulously rich from the coming OpenAI and SpaceX IPOs have pledged to donate a large percentage of their new wealth to charity.

Sure, not a lot of that money will find its way to Jewish causes. But the second order effects probably won’t be negligible. And in any case, there’s already an awful lot of tzedaka money cycling through the Jewish community with more coming.

This might be counter-intuitive, but spending millions of dollars is hard. Large charitable foundations often employ multiple professionals who are expected to identify potential projects, develop funding frameworks, oversee and audit program spending, and track outcomes. A charity law expert once told me that he’s suspicious of foundations that don’t spend at least 20 percent of their budgets on administration.

This is about more than just chinuch institutions. If I had $25 million a year to spend on tzedaka (spoiler alert: I don’t), I would want to make sure there weren’t any unmet needs being ignored in my community. That might mean hiring frum social workers to search for disadvantaged and marginalized individuals that no one else sees. It could also mean coming up with entirely new and innovative programs to solve problems no one knew we had.

There’s no end of opportunities out there for people of means, but the consequences of getting it wrong are scary.

One thing that does make sense for the rest of us is to anticipate what might be coming. I would expect that various roles adjacent to charitable project consulting will see high demand in coming years. The ability to deeply understand community dynamics, analyze data, and quickly cut through financial documents should prove valuable.

And a charitable organization that can demonstrate fiscal responsibility, self-awareness, and a desire to improve deserves attention and support.

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Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay