DURING 2002 AND 2003 WE RECEIVED REQUESTS TO START ROOM TO Read programs in over a dozen countries, ranging from Cameroon to Nicaragua to Pakistan. The demand for our programs seemed to be limitless. Personnel and finances, however, were not. Each time I had to write an e-mail to explain, calmly and rationally, to a mother in rural Bangladesh why we could not help her children, it burned me up. I was a rookie at this. Who was I to be making these decisions that would result in a kid in Vietnam gaining access to a school, while we told this mother in Bangladesh that our best answer was “not yet.”
We made plans to add at least two more countries in 2002 and 2003. Several of our funders told me that we were crazy. “You have barely launched in two countries, you are only a few years old, and now you’re thinking about additional countries?” One donor even threatened to withdraw his funding if we did not “stick to our knitting” and remain in just Nepal and Vietnam. I tried to explain: “With all due respect, three years ago we knew next to nothing about working in Vietnam and Nepal, and now you are not only praising our work, you are writing an annual check for $20,000 to fund it. I need to ask you if you’ll give us a similar vote of confidence to go into other countries that need Room to Read. I promise you that we will study each opportunity carefully and that we won’t make any capricious decisions. But the world needs these programs. These kids do not get a second chance. If I follow your advice to wait five more years before launching any other Room to Read countries, then the kids who are now five years old will be ten. They may have missed their entire primary education. Please, can you trust me? Erin and I know what we are doing, we are hiring smart staff, and we spend money wisely.” He agreed and pulled out his checkbook.
In 2002, we launched Cambodia as our third country. The nation had a desperate need to rebuild educational infrastructure that had been decimated by the Khmer Rouge. Cambodia’s genocidal murderers had burned down 80 percent of the schools and killed 90 percent of the teachers. Getting children back into school would be one way to help life return to some semblance of normalcy.
Despite Room to Read’s limited resources, Erin and I decided to leap in. We both knew the horrors of Cambodia’s past from travels there and were both passionate about playing a role in the country’s redevelopment back from the Pol Pot–imposed “Year Zero.” We were concerned whether donors would show up with their checkbooks to help finance our aggressive growth plan, but took the philosophy of Boxer the horse, from Animal Farm, that all things were possible if the protagonist vows, “I will work harder.”
As if launching in a third country were not enough, we were also being encouraged by numerous businessmen of Indian descent to launch Room to Read India. Sabeer Bhatia, a man famous in the “nonresident Indian” (NRI) community for having been a co-founder of Hotmail and then selling it to Microsoft for $425 million, challenged me one day over lunch. As we drank tea and enjoyed the view of San Francisco Bay from his lofty Pacific Heights terrace, he threw out a scary statistic: “The United Nations estimates that by the year 2020, half the world’s illiterate population will live in India. So unless you have an India strategy, you don’t really have a strategy for world education.”
All of these ambitious growth plans would, of course, come to nothing without capital. Thankfully, we had quite a few rainmakers helping to connect us to wealthy donors. This included Hilary Valentine, who had decided that in addition to being a school donor in Nepal, she would become a fund-raiser for us. This was part of the power of the Adopt-a-Project model. Once someone like Hilary saw how much good could be done for so little money, and had proof that we’d deployed her money wisely, she wanted to introduce her friends to the opportunity.
She started by hosting a fund-raising event on a Friday evening in early 2003, shortly after our Cambodia launch. The venue, the Alpine Hills Tennis and Swim Club, lies amid the sun-scorched hills of Silicon Valley. It’s an understated club, but as I walked in, I could not help but think that the cost of each German luxury car in the parking lot could probably finance five schools in Nepal. I had to remind myself that my newest little mental game—fantasizing about turning luxury items into Third World educational projects—was quite annoying to others. A friend of mine put it best: “I could show up in a hot new pair of Manolo Blahniks and you would not say that I looked cute. You’d be too busy thinking about how the price of my shoes would fund two years of a girl’s scholarship.”
We had high hopes for the evening. Hilary and two of her friends on the host committee had invited a moneyed crowd with a strong philanthropic bent. They had identified the heavy hitters and sent me briefing notes in advance. During the cocktail hour, I was walked around the room and introduced to the biggest fish.
Shortly before I started my presentation, Hilary gave me a pep talk, “Okay, I’ve done my part. Now it’s up to you. If your slide show and talk are good, you’ll easily make $20,000 or $30,000 from this crowd. Don’t screw it up!” she said with a sly smile.
This made me a bit nervous, but also gave me a surge of energy. If I could nail this, we would be able to say yes to many more villages and hopefully make strides in getting Room to Read Cambodia off the ground. Showtime!
I began my slide show talking about why I had left Microsoft and what I had experienced during the transition. Many people in the business world have a fantasy about leaving their job to do something that is more meaningful to them personally, but there can be huge constraints, from financial to societal. I said that even though I was living on far less money, there was a “karmic pay-back,” at which point I brought up slides of Nepalese and Vietnamese students eagerly reading books, of several of our newest school projects, including three new kindergartens in Vietnam, and of smiling girls the day they started school on Room to Read–sponsored scholarships. I used the shots of the girls to transition to our dreams for expansion.
“We currently run the Room to Grow girls’ scholarship program in Nepal and Vietnam. We are hoping to expand it to Cambodia. There is a huge problem with girls orphaned by the Khmer Rouge being sold into prostitution. Our hope is to instead keep teenagers in school so that they develop self-confidence and an opportunity to work in a good job. We have identified one hundred girls whom we would like to put on scholarship, but we lack the funds. I have three months to raise the money before the school year starts. If we succeed, it means that these girls’ destiny will be forever changed by the lifelong gift of education.”
“How much do you need?” a voice boomed from the back of the room.
Don Listwin, a Silicon Valley legend, had thrown out the question. Dressed nattily in blue blazer, jeans, and loafers without socks, he looked like a cross between Wired magazine, Esquire, and the J.Crew catalog. He had been the number two executive at Cisco, then left to become CEO of Openwave, a company he took public. As though one fortune by age 45 had not been enough, he now had a second. He was known as a generous investor in areas ranging from education to cancer research. I’m not used to being interrupted in the middle of presentations, so I asked him to repeat the question.
“I said that I want to know exactly how much money you need to get all one hundred girls in school.”
This, after all, is Silicon Valley, where deals are made quickly, and Don didn’t want to focus on the concept; he wanted to move straight to the practical execution.
I answered that it took $250 per year to put a girl in Cambodia on scholarship. In total, we needed $25,000 per year, or $150,000 over the life of the scholarships.
“Great, thanks,” Don roared. “I’m going to interrupt our regularly scheduled slide show with an announcement, and a challenge. There are more than fifty of you here tonight. For every one of you who sponsor a scholarship, and you have to write the check tonight, I will match you, dollar-for-dollar, girl-for-girl, year-for-year. You fund fifty and I will fund fifty. We need to do this. No excuses.”
There were audible gasps, and some chuckles from people who knew Don well. He was known to be generous and also for challenging others to match his example.
Don was not yet done throwing down gauntlets.
“Furthermore, there are some people here who used to work for me at Cisco, and a few who work for me now at Openwave. I want them to pay attention to this next part. For every school that one of you underwrites tonight, I will match you school-for-school.”
Dramatic pause.
“How about it, Mark?”
Mark, sitting one row in front of Don, emits a nervous laugh. He pauses, probably doing the math on how much money he’s made while working for Don through some flush years in Silicon Valley. Realizing that $8,000 is probably a rounding error, he replies, “Count me in, Don!”
“Great. And how about you, Bill?” Don’s eyes are laser-locked on his next target.
Poor Bill. He not only has Don’s pressure on him, but also Mark’s example.
“Count me in too, Don.”
With that, Don smiles at his ability to close deals and nods in my direction to say that I may continue.
My mouth is agape. My brain is running the numbers. I think that in less than two minutes we’ve received over $150,000 of commitments. I want to bottle this moment, place it on dry ice, and preserve it forever. It’s not all that often that someone you barely know not only does your job for you, but does it better.
“Okay, Don, but before I go on, let me repeat what I think you just committed to.”
“Don’t repeat it—that will only depress me.”
He gets his laugh, and I resume the slide show completely relaxed that there is no pressure on me to close the deal. All I need to do is finish quickly so that fifty people can rush to the donation table and sponsor scholarships.
Thankfully, they do. Don’s challenge is met, then exceeded. Dina, who had worked for Don at Cisco, writes a check that is “much larger than I had planned, just to stick it to Don.” Another donor quietly and without fanfare hands me a $20,000 check and tells me to allocate it wherever we need it most.
It’s the most successful night in our young history. Eager to celebrate, the host committee and I head out for a late dinner. My head is spinning as I crunch the numbers. I feel as though our little charity has just stepped up to a new level. Hilary orders champagne, and we toast what, to us, feels like one of the best deals in the history of Silicon Valley.
POSTSCRIPT: HILARY AND DON, THOUGH NOT DATING AT THE TIME OF the event, soon were. They were married in June 2005.
In honor of their wedding, I endowed a girl’s scholarship. I did not, however, ask Don to match me.