Bill Shore’s Letters
Letter from the Gates Foundation
Originally published: June 2008
A few days ago the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation released its annual report for 2007. Patti Stonesifer, who is stepping down as CEO of the foundation after 11 years wrote her final cover letter and described one of the most important lessons she'd learned at the foundation.
She said: "Years ago I heard an African proverb: "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." Stopping diseases like AIDS, restoring America's high schools, helping small farmers in Africa lift themselves out of poverty and hunger—these are goals that entail going very far. So you'll have to go with many partners, ranging from nonprofits and governments to businesses and individuals. And working with partners requires, more than anything, listening hard to what they have to say."
I'm sharing Patti's advice because our goal of ending childhood hunger in the United States is also one of those "goals that entail going very far." Patti's unique experience makes her worth listening to. Our own experience affirms the wisdom of her words. We need to reinforce and recommit to that partnering philosophy even more diligently.
One of the most critical ingredients of our ability to succeed is finding, inspiring, and empowering partners who can share in the heavy lifting entailed in raising money, organizing, and impacting public policy. We first became a truly national organization when we shifted from raising money ourselves to recruiting independent chefs and restaurateurs to participate in Taste of the Nation.
More recently we've seen the Great American Dine Out take off as leaders among the casual dining chains, beginning with our own board member Wally Doolin, reached out to others on our behalf whom we could not reach as easily on our own. At the state level, our strategy to end childhood hunger depends for its execution on local partners like D.C. Hunger Solutions, Florida Impact, and The Children's Alliance in Washington State.
Among the metrics we are developing to assess our impact, one should probably be how many effective partners we've cultivated. Whether working on Taste, Operation Frontline, The Great American Bake Sale, the Dine Out, our grantmaking, Hinges of Hope, or any other initiative, if there is not a champion for the program's mission and strategy outside of our office who is every bit as enthused and committed as you are, then it is unlikely we will reach our full potential.
I won't try to say it better than Patti Stonesifer did, but simply urge that it become our culture to seize every opportunity to ask with whom we can partner so that the community of those fighting hunger continues to grow.
- Share this:
Bill Shore is the founder and executive director of Share Our Strength. 