Rockefeller revolutionary
洛克菲勒基金改革掌门人

Judith Rodin is shaking up one of the world's most venerable charitable foundations

朱迪丝•罗丁正在对世界上最可敬的慈善基金会之一进行重新改组。

“I AM not a ‘steady as it goes’ sort of person,” says Judith Rodin, with admirable self-awareness. In the 21 months since she became president of the Rockefeller Foundation, Ms Rodin has shaken to its core the charitable foundation established by John D. Rockefeller, an oil tycoon, in 1913. （1）The 58 people who have left the staff, about one-third of those she inherited, are but the most visible evidence of the thorough change in culture over which she is presiding[1]—or, rather, the most audible evidence, judging by the vociferous[2] public complaints of some of the departed.

“我不是那种能够‘悠着点儿’的人。”朱迪丝•罗丁说，言语间流露的自知之明令人钦佩。在成为洛克菲勒基金会总裁以来的21个月里，罗丁对这个由石油大亨约翰•D•洛克菲勒于1913年建立的慈善基金会进行了彻底的改革。至今基金会已有58名工作人员离职（相当于她接手时总人数的近三分之一），这正是她对基金会文化实施全面改革的最“明显”例证——或者从某些离职的人公开高声抱怨来看，更准确地说应该是最“响亮”的例证。

Ms Rodin is helping to answer one of the questions raised by a new generation of business-minded philanthropists, led by Bill Gates: whether the older philanthropic institutions would respond, and if so, how. Few institutions are less accountable than charitable foundations, which face no meaningful market pressure to keep them on top of their game. Yet who wants to work for, let alone run, an outfit widely seen as out of date and out of touch, not least by the fashionable new entrants to the industry?

面对以比尔•盖茨为首、具有较强商业意识的新一代慈善家，老一代的慈善机构是否会作出回应？如果要回应，该怎么回应？罗丁帮助人们找到了答案。相比大多数机构，慈善基金会由于无需面对“争当一流”而带来的真实的市场压力，因此承担的责任并不重。可是，谁又愿意为一个被大多数人尤其是刚刚涉足慈善业的时尚人物认为过时和自闭的机构工作呢？更不用说管理了。

Certainly not Ms Rodin, who joined Rockefeller after a successful career at the top of American higher education—one that briefly established her as the world's highest-paid university president. She is determined to make the foundation fit for the 21st century. （2）She now talks of the “new Rockefeller”, while deploying the favourite buzzwords of the new philanthropists, stressing the importance of being “strategic”, of “leveraging[3]” the relatively small sums of money at its disposal (it makes grants of around $100m a year) through partnerships, and, above all, of achieving “impact”.

罗丁当然是不愿意的。在加入洛克菲勒基金会前，罗丁在美国高等教育界曾有过一段成功的高层任职经历，一度成为全球薪酬最高的大学校长。她决心要促使基金会与21世纪相适应。现在她说起“新洛克菲勒”，都会用到新一代慈善家的口号，比如要重视“战略性”，要通过伙伴关系“融资”来解决可支配资金相对较少的问题（每年大概捐助1亿美元），尤其是要获得“影响力”。

（3）As reformers often do, she describes her revolution as returning the Rockefeller Foundation to its roots—in this case to the “scientific philanthropy” of its founder, who said that the “best philanthropy is constantly in search of the finalities—a search for a cause, an attempt to cure evils at their source.” Among other historic achievements, the foundation played big parts in developing a vaccine against yellow fever and in the “green revolution”, which spectacularly increased farming productivity and reduced poverty in many poor countries in the 1960s.

像大多数改革者一样，她也认为她所进行的是一场让洛克菲勒基金会“返璞归真”的革命——既然如此，那就是要重新回到其创始人所开创的“科学的慈善事业”路子上来。该创始人（即约翰•D•洛克菲勒）曾说，“最好的慈善就是不断寻找终极目的——找出原因，设法从源头根治弊端。”该基金会的历史性成就包括参与了研发黄热病疫苗和推动“绿色革命”并起到重要作用，其中“绿色革命”在上世纪60年代大大提高了农业生产率，减轻了许多落后国家的贫穷问题。

By the early 1970s most of the Rockefeller Foundation's greatest achievements were in the past and a long period of drift had begun. Ms Rodin inherited a foundation that was no longer the best nor the biggest—in its early years it gave more foreign aid than the American government. There was a danger of “becoming marginal in our impact”, says Ms Rodin. “Impact needed to be reasserted as a fundamental criterion for everything we do.”

到上世纪70年代早期，洛克菲勒基金会大多数骄人的成就都已成为过去，基金会也开始长期处于飘摇状态。罗丁接手的是一个不再一流也不再是最大的基金会——早年该基金会的对外援助比美国政府都要多。罗丁说，基金会的影响力险些就“降到最低”，“必须再次强调影响力乃是我们全部工作的一个根本标准。”

This was not easy, partly because the foundation had been divided into several fiefs[4] (health, arts and so on), each defended with the vigorous politicking at which the charitable sector excels. Several of Ms Rodin's predecessors had arrived expecting to reform the foundation, only to leave disillusioned[5] a few years later. （4）For her part, Ms Rodin was confident of her ability to change an ossified[6] organisation and see off vocal critics, thanks not least to her successful ten-year reign as president of the University of Pennsylvania. There she returned the loss-making medical centre to profit and revived the impoverished community on the university's doorstep[7].

这并不容易，部分是因为基金会被划分成了好几个领域（健康、艺术等等），而每一个领域都竭力借助慈善机构擅长的政治活动来维护各自的利益。罗丁的几位前任刚到任时都期望改革基金会，可几年之后全都悻悻而去。就罗丁而言，她相信自己既有能力改革一个僵化的机构，也能经受住劈头盖脸的批评，这主要是因为她在宾夕法尼亚大学的十年中取得过诸多成就，比如使大学的医学中心扭亏为盈，又比如尽学校之责实现贫困社区复兴。

At Rockefeller, she promptly reviewed its programmes and their effect. She consulted experts, including two former treasury secretaries, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, to identify the big 21st-century trends that the foundation could hope to affect. She also sought advice from groups that are helping the new philanthropists foster a more businesslike approach, including Bridgespan, a management consultancy for non-profit organisations, and the Centre for Effective Philanthropy. The centre's survey of the organisations funded by Rockefeller revealed a high cost structure relative to its peers, cumbersome[8] decision-making and a culture that did not expect high performance or reward it.

在洛克菲勒，她迅速回顾分析了它的各种项目安排情况及起到的效果。她咨询了包括两位前任财长罗伯特•鲁宾和拉里•萨默斯在内的专家，认清了洛克菲勒基金会有望施以影响的21世纪主要趋势。她还征求了一些团体的意见。这是一些专为新一代慈善家出谋划策、助其慈善事业取得实效的团体，包括为非盈利性机构提供管理咨询服务的Bridgespan以及有效慈善事业中心。后者在对洛克菲勒基金会资助的一些组织进行调查后发现，相对其它基金会而言，洛克菲勒基金会成本结构高、决策效率低以及其文化不利于获得出色表现或高额回报。

（5）Ms Rodin decided that the separate fiefs had to go. Instead, Rockefeller would pursue big strategic projects with specific goals that would bring together people from all the different programme areas as well as outsiders. The change caused alarm and misunderstanding. An article in the Lancet, a medical journal, asked if it meant that the Rockefeller Foundation planned to “reduce or even withdraw its long-standing commitment to public health”—prompting a swift denial from Ms Rodin.

罗丁决心消除这种各自为政的状态。为了将参与各个不同项目的人以及基金会以外的人集中到一起，洛克菲勒基金会准备专门开展一些大型战略项目。这一变化造成了人们的警觉和误解。医学杂志《柳叶刀》有文章问，这是否意味着洛克菲勒基金会打算“减轻甚至放弃其长期以来为公众健康所承担的责任”——罗丁立即予以了否认。

Teaching an old dog new tricks

老树发新枝

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