NEW YORK – Open Society Foundations, the philanthropic organizations that billionaire investor George Soros has built up since the 1970s, revealed its first new major commitment on Tuesday after a years-long internal reorganization, pledging $400 million over eight years to support green economic development.
In some of her first public remarks since she was named president of OSF in March, Binaifer Nowrojee told The Associated Press the goal of the investment was to produce sustainable jobs and a shift toward clean energy and away from carbon intensive industries in Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Senegal, Malaysia and Indonesia.
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“The idea of free markets cannot solve everything, particularly it cannot solve the climate crisis,” she said speaking from OSF's offices in Washington on Monday. The foundations will support think tanks, governments and civil society groups in these middle-income countries.
“How do you improve regulations so that pollution comes down? How do you create tax breaks for businesses that adopt green technologies? How do you address the whole issue of critical minerals?” Nowrojee said were the types of questions OSF is asking with this new funding. “How do you help governments with building up green infrastructure — solar, wind, hydropower? And then with the nature of work changing, how do you upskill workforces?”
Nowrojee, a human rights lawyer from Kenya who has worked at OSF for 20 years, took the helm of the $25 billion philanthropy after three years of buyouts, layoffs and structural changes that have rippled through the places and causes it supports. One of the biggest funders of human rights advocates and supporters of political dissidents around the world, OSF largely paused making new grants in the past year as it transitioned to what it called a new operating model.
The changes are widely seen as driven by Alex Soros, one of George Soros' sons, who was elected as chairman of OSF's board in December 2022.
Grantees whose funding will end have been notified, Nowrojee said, with OSF giving $300 million to those organizations in final grants.
Kathleen Enright, president and CEO of the Council on Foundations, said foundations reevaluate their strategy in response to changing external conditions like new regulations or changing political environments and that philanthropic leaders actually have an obligation to make strategic changes to better accomplish their missions.
“If, in any way, you’re being hamstrung by your own internal processes, of course, you have the ability to to make that change,” Enright said.
When OSF began 45 years ago, it established country-specific foundations, which Nowrojee said worked well as a wave of democratization swept through Eastern Europe and elsewhere. OSF has spun off many of those foundations as independent organizations.
“Now, you look at a global pandemic or you look at climate change, and the national model where we invested in separate, different teams sitting in different countries, it doesn’t add up. We were not adding up to the sum of our parts,” Nowrojee said.
Soros, a Hungarian Jew who made his fortune as an investor, most famously in foreign currencies, survived the Nazi occupation and eventually emigrated to the United Kingdom and then the United States, where he became a citizen. The foundations, comprised of a number of international and U.S.-based entities, have worked to promote his view that “no philosophy or ideology is the final arbiter of truth, and that societies can only flourish when they allow for democratic governance, freedom of expression, and respect for individual rights,” according to the foundations' website.
That remains their mission, Nowrojee said, though their approaches may change because the world has changed. The spaces for political dissent and free expression have closed in some countries where OSF invested heavily for years. Those include Myanmar, which has been ruled by the military since 2021, and Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's government effectively forced out OSF and the Central European University that Soros also founded. Authoritarianism and populism is surging in many countries, including in Europe.
Last year, OSF said it would lay off 40% of its 800 employees globally, a process which is still unfolding. They expect to have between 500 and 600 employees, Nowrojee said, acknowledging that the cuts have taken a toll.
“These changes have been extremely difficult, and not just for us, but also for grantees and people in the larger network that we work with,” she said. Her goal for her first year as OSF's president is to try to heal some of the sadness, grief and anger that is felt internally, and she is also focused on finalizing the other new major funding programs, which must be approved by the board.
OSF's board now consists of six members — including three Soros family members — down from more than 20 board members in 2016 and 2017.
When funders realign their priorities and end relationships with long-time grantees, they should intentionally involve them and the communities where they worked to see who will be impacted by the changes, said Mark Greer, a philanthropic advisor with Phila Engaged Giving, a consultancy that works with wealthy donors.
“Everyone has biases. Everyone has the blind spots. And a lot of times, if communities are not intentionally involved in the process, they’re often looked over,” he said.
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