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We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits
620. 100% For Purpose Model: The Legacy and Future of Newman’s Own Foundation - Alex Amouyel
00:31:16
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- [00:01]
John
Hey, I'm John.
- [00:02]
Becky
And I'm Becky.
- [00:03]
John
And this is the we are for Good podcast.
- [00:06]
Becky
Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more, and be more for the causes that improve our world.
- [00:15]
John
We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
- [00:24]
Becky
So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers, and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
- [00:34]
John
So let's get started. Hey, Becky, what's happening?
- [00:38]
Becky
I'm fangirling over here, but it's fine. Everything's fine.
- [00:42]
John
I cannot wait to tell my kids who I got to talk to today. Yes, what an honor. I mean, we love philanthropy, we love telling mission stories around here, but to get to meet the people behind some of our favorite brands that are pouring into this, that are living their values out loud is. It's just kind of a pinch me moment. Because it is an honor to introduce you to Alex Amorel. She's the president and CEO of Newman's Own Foundation. Go over to your pantry, friends. I bet you got some Newman's Own hanging out in there. Well, the power of that is that if you didn't know, 100% of the profits from the sale of Newman's Own products go in service of their mission. 100%. We're going to talk about that, about how that's evolved over the years and, like, what it actually does. But Alex is the president and CEO of Newman's Own foundation, which is a private grant making foundation. Their mission is to nourish and transform the lives of children who face adversity. But before there, I mean, Alex was slaying it. She was over at MIT SOLVE as the founding executive director with a mission. Oh, my gosh, it's so good to drive innovation to solve the world's biggest challenges. She steered Solve's growth to support over 268 solver teams and Indigenous community fellows, catalyzed over $60 million in commitments, and brokered more than 600 transformational partnerships. My goodness. Okay, that's a whole nother podcast episode. But Alex has cut her teeth everywhere. From the Clinton Global Initiative, and she worked for Save the Children International and the Boston Consulting Group. She's also the author of the Answer is you, A guidebook for creating a life full of impact. And my friend, I can't help but notice that's exactly what you're doing. So honored to have you in our podcast today. Welcome to the show.
- [02:16]
Alex Amorel
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for your having Newman's Own products in your fridge and pantry. That's a donation to our work. So thank you for being our donors.
- [02:28]
John
Oh my gosh. It's like tasty.
- [02:29]
Becky
Feels good. Yes, I know.
- [02:32]
John
So, Alex, I mean, the brand is bigger than life and we'll talk about that for a second. But we want to get to know you, the human behind this work. Would you take us into your story and tell us some of the formative moments that led you in to what you're doing today?
- [02:45]
Alex Amorel
Absolutely. So as you can see from my T shirt, I grew up in Paris, France. And when I was like kid, bizarrely, I wanted to become a scientific researcher and rid the world of cancer. That didn't get me too far. I quit. I quit a PhD the day I turned 21. So I, I did something different after that. Studied international relations. No one would pay me to do anything interesting in human rights, which is what I wanted to do. I joined the Boston Consulting Group. They would pay me and it seemed like the work would be interesting. Did that for a couple of years and luckily for me, they had a pro bono partnership with Save the Children. So I started my project and then did the thing you shouldn't do, but managed to get a full time job and quit BCG from then on. And that really kick started this career in social impact. From there I joined the Clinton Global Initiative and then MIT sold and now Newman's own foundation, Full Circle Moment one. Our mission is nourishing and transforming the lives of children who face adversity. I'm sure we'll talk more about that. We support grantee partners such as FoodCorp and Frac and a number of indigenous food justice grantee partners. But one of the anchor grantees we have is another organization founded by Paul Newman, the Serious Fund Children Act Children's Network, which is a network of camps, summer camps, and programs all around the world which support kids with serious illnesses, childhood cancer being one of them.
- [04:29]
Becky
I mean, you were meant to be in this work and it feels like you're, you're in Paul's hearts for wanting to help and care for kids is at a real epicenter of what brings you together. And I, and I just love Paul Newman. I love his family films. But like I, you just mentioned this camp. That is what I thought. A lot of what Newman's own poured into were these camps for children. But it's such a Big legacy. You donated over half a billion dollars to support children in your work. I, I can't even imagine what Paul thought that his impact would be. But for listeners who just aren't familiar with this, like, tell us a little bit about the original vision, why it was started and how it's evolved to, to today.
- [05:19]
Alex Amorel
Absolutely. Well, as you know, Paul was an award winning actor and also an incredible prize winning race car driver. But from a very young age, he was also an activist and a philanthropist. He was at the march in Washington in August 1963.
- [05:38]
Becky
Amazing.
- [05:38]
Alex Amorel
He was named by President Carter around disarmament, the United Nations. He campaigned for equal pay for his female actors that worked alongside him and many other causes. And at the young age of 57, created Newman's Own with his good friend A. Hotchner, who went by Hodge. And they invested $40,000 of their own funds to get Newman's Own started selling salad dressing. He was obsessed with salad dressing and he, when he would go to a restaurant, he would insist on making his own salad dressing. So they started by giving it away, friends at Christmas around the Westport area and then decided to start selling it. And once they started selling it, the first year they made a profit of $300,000, which was quite good. That's quite good turnaround in just a year. And he decided to give all the money away to good causes and that the year after that, the year after that. And that's how it's been happening for the last 40 years. So in total, that's in fact exceeded $600 million given to good causes, which is pretty incredible. And now as you can see, it's still a pretty rare. People don't believe us, I think. And when we say we give 100% of the profits away because it's still such a rare occurrence as a, as a business that is owned by a foundation, people still have trouble getting their head around that. But it's true, it was set up by that from the beginning.
- [07:17]
John
I mean, holy heck, the generosity of spirit. And I love, I would say even, I don't want to say naivety in like a bad way, but just this beauty of like, I want to give it all away. But we all know as business owners, as entrepreneurs, as nonprofits, it's hard to follow through on something that generous. You know, I got to understand the background of this has got to be so much more difficult to follow through on. So I just love to hear more about how does that model work, you know, and I'm sure it's had to evolve in some ways behind the scenes, but Phil's transformative in the others that you've inspired, looking at Patagonia and Bloomberg others by that work, I mean talk about the model and how it's been so central to this.
- [07:57]
Alex Amorel
Absolutely. One of the big transitions was when Paul died in 2008. He gifted the food company to the foundation, but that was actually a problem in the sense that it was sort of illegal. So when he was alive, he could just see how much profit the company had made at the end of the year and then write checks. And that was fairly easy. But technically, in the US at the time, foundations owning more than small slivers of private businesses was very restrictive and it was around a tax loophole and we got an exemption from the IRS to be able to continue operating as we did. And then that in the end that we got support for the passage of the Philanthropic Enterprise act, which got passed in 2018, to in fact allow businesses like us to exist as in foundations, to own 100% of for profit businesses, providing they give all their profits away. And we're still, I would say, a small club, this 100% for purpose club, basically. But there are others, so such as Patagonia, most recently in September 2022, who converted to its slightly different model in the U.S. the perpetual purpose Trust, which is slightly different in its legal, legalese, as one would say. But the suddenly the sort of intent and the outcome is the same. They give all the profits that they make to a trust and then that trust gives it to C4 and then gives it to C3. And that's all focused on climate change. There's a couple of ways of doing it in the US and then the other people, which I think are really interesting. There's an event ticketing company in a strip out of Australia, but now also operating in the US and launching soon in the uk which is called Humanitarics. And they very much, yeah, Humanitax friends. Oh my God, Adam and Josh. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yes. I'm seeing them again soon. But with them we created, you know, they also credit growing up with Paul Newman salad dressing in their refrigerator for some of the inspiration and wanting to do the same thing. But in the high growth, high growth tech industry, which I think makes a lot of sense. And so with them we created the 100% for purpose club. And definitely we'll make sure that you have the link for any of your listeners. But this is a network of companies that are interested which are doing it already, such as us And Humanitarix and there's also Cummings and Ecosia and. Thank you. Who are some of our founding members. But then also people who are interested either in the sort of Patagonia model, maybe as a legacy sort of you have a profitable business and you're wanting to convert it to 100% for purpose, or you're starting a business in the same way that Paul did back in the day and you want from the beginning to start it and give all your profits away. So we just got started this year and we're talking about it and hosting coffee chats and other things like that.
- [11:20]
Becky
I just think it's a beautiful model and I want to talk a little bit more about just the, the future of philanthropy and giving models because I think when people think about like gifts like this, when they think about Newman's Own making a very big donation into something, it puts their head squarely in corporate giving. They, they think of how can someone of a more mom and pop organization or maybe an individual, how could they embrace this ethos of 100% purpose? Like what would you, what a counsel would you give to them and being able to connect with the meaning in the way that you all have with this 100 purpose model. Hey friends, it takes a lot to power a movement as mighty as the Impact uprising. And we couldn't do it without We Are for Good's Value aligned partners.
- [12:15]
John
Yeah, you're right. Our partners make it possible for us to keep showing up with free education tools, series, summits and resources because they believe like we do, that investing in people and community creates real lasting change.
- [12:27]
Becky
So if you're looking for a trusted partner to help you find a new tech solution, a CRM, maybe a new direct mail strategist, or you're even looking for an entirely new brand partner, start here. We've curated a direct line for your VIP access to these groups. Just by saying you're with We Are for Good.
- [12:44]
John
Yeah. Big gratitude to our ecosystem. Partners at Donor Doc, Feather, RKD Group and Whiteboard. They're not just partners, they're walking alongside us to build something better and more inclusive.
- [12:55]
Becky
Head to weareforgood.com Rex to explore our go to tools and humans doing this great work. Lock arms for Impact and put more fuel back into this community. That's weareforgood.com RECS now back to the show.
- [13:21]
Alex Amorel
I think you know this better than I do, but small donors in the US make up more collectively than large donors and sort of the biggest philanthropists. So I think part of the mission of, you know, us in the philanthropy space is saying everybody can be and is a philanthropist, and these small donations matter in terms of the percentages and in terms of absolute value as well. Now, obviously, how you, as a one individual can make change, that's, you know, that's always a question. But I think there are ways. Through your giving, your investing, your purchasing decisions, you're volunteering, what you choose to do as side gigs, what you choose to do for your career, all of those things can matter. And you can do them at all the different levels. You can do it with your family and being generous with your family. You can do it at the community level, at the city, state, federal level, if you can. We have all these stories of people who changed the laws in the United States and. Or even globally. And so all these little things add up, and they're really important, and they actually, I think, drive the movement. And I'm really keen of. I think if Neumann's own foundation money doesn't come from. It doesn't come from Paul Newman, and it doesn't come from a large endowment. It comes from people like you, which are purchasing the product, and any profit that is made is then going to the foundation in service of our mission. And. And I'm keen to find other ways that we can encourage participatory giving. Where. And one of these things is we created this community fund on Grapevine, which is a collective giving circle.
- [15:20]
Becky
We love Grapevine.
- [15:22]
Alex Amorel
Yeah. So we have a community fund, and we have about a thousand members in this community fund. You don't have to give money in this to participate. You can just, you know, sign up to vote for a nonprofit. You like to nominate people to attend some of our events, but you can also give, and many people have. So that allows us to pull sort of further donations from people. But there's lots of different ways that that can show up and get involved. We also just hosted one of our grantee partners as Mosaic Film Experience, and they just hosted a youth film competition in honor of Paul Newman. Would have turned 100 this year. So we wanted to do something in film, but that really reflects our mission. So we asked youth under 18 to submit mobile videos of what food justice means for them. And then there's a jury, and the films are going to be picked. They'll win some money and also get to go to LA to tour the studios and many, many other things. But that's also sort of a vision of having young people, the people we serve, participate and tell us how they would like to see food justice represented in their world.
- [16:46]
John
I just think it's cool to see y' all embrace that narrative. You know, it's something that Becky and I feel really passionate about. This platform that Change Makers is not just giving money, you know, it's. It's about using our voice, our storytelling, our different gifts. And I've seen you spoken about participatory and community based giving and some of these examples you're just threading right now. I mean, at the end, you're making philanthropy more inclusive and more accessible through Newman's Own. Is there something else that lifts that you would, I don't know, just want to share and someone listening that's like, how do I do this at my own mission? How did we evolve maybe the thinking of our board or our stakeholders to be like, it is a bigger conversation than just money.
- [17:26]
Alex Amorel
I mean, I don't know where people start from to begin with, but. But I definitely think the more we can decentralize and democratize and indeed open the doors of philanthropy and sort of have a bottom up rather than top down approach to. To the problems we're seeking to solve, the better. And that there are various ways of doing that from the very beginning, just even the food. We hosted this Food justice for Kids prize last year and selected 12 organizations from across the United States. We recruited a jury of different. I think in total there were 75 reviewers. But that's the point it was looking for. I didn't score a single application. It's not my decision. It's the decision of a diverse group of leaders of people who had both expertise, lived, experience, community members really looking for that. And then we also had a Community Choice Award where people on through the Grapevine platform got to vote and, you know, voted for which one would be some of their favorites so that they could get an additional $10,000. So again, thinking about the decision making of philanthropy being different than perhaps it's been done in the past, I just.
- [19:01]
Becky
Think that you look at the world in a different way, Alex, and I love it so deeply because it's disruptive, it is inclusive, it asks bigger questions rather than better questions. And. And I'm just looking at the state of the world right now. And as, as you're aware, you know, what it's done for philanthropy and people on the front lines of massive social issues, on climate issues, on human rights issues. I want to know where you, as the leader of this very influential nonprofit, where are you putting your focus this year? How are you keeping that. That posture of doing the most good for kids at the front. And how are you meeting this moment with you, with your staff, with your board? Where's your focus right now?
- [19:58]
Alex Amorel
Keep calm and carry on.
- [20:01]
Becky
Right.
- [20:02]
Alex Amorel
It's real probably that what at the moment would be, would be the motto. We're definitely in, in interesting times, especially if I sort of zoom in to one of our core issue areas, which is child nutrition. And we have sort of two portfolios around that. Nutrition education and school food and indigenous food justice. And there's a lot of. We have about 50 grantee partners in, in that, in those two portfolios. And they range from Food Court and Frack National Farm to School Network to. You'll see. You'll meet Sean Sherman who's just won the Elevate prize recently. But this is the, the. He runs an organization called Natives which is about training the next generation of indigenous chefs, which is really fantastic. And you know, all of them are directly or indirectly affected by the recent changes and potential. Or potential changes and figuring out how to continue this work, how to best support people as we go along. Obviously were less affected directly, but the work of our grantee partners is very much affected. At the same time, there's still great, great work to be done at the community level, at the city level, at the state level. And a lot of what we do is about long term community based, systemic change. So you have to continue. Basically, that's what we're doing.
- [21:44]
Becky
That's it.
- [21:45]
John
I think that Keep Calm could be a successful poster if we looked into putting it out there.
- [21:50]
Becky
I'm sure it's not trademarked whatsoever. Keep Calm. Calm and nurture on. Yes. But I mean, this is a very important issue. Can I just hop in here really quickly? Because I am deeply concerned about the ability of school kids to go to bed, you know, with something in their belly. I mean, 48% of Oklahoma public school children would qualify for free and reduced lunch. That's almost half of half of my state's public school population. I mean this is a very big issue and I, and I want to say that you must take this posture of, of we have to keep going because kids still need to eat regardless of what's happening. And we're going to have to stand in the gaps when these times of chaos. And it's not just nonprofit professionals. I think it's everybody.
- [22:41]
Alex Amorel
Yeah. And in the, at a, at a national level, it's one in five children who live in food insecure households. I don't know the, the numbers specifically for Oklahoma, but I suspect for the free lunch. What you just created absolutely is not surprising, unfortunately. And child food insecurity was already going up, is already getting worse because of the expiration of pandemic error benefits. So one of the biggest progress as we saw, maybe one of the only silver linings from the pandemic was that if you gave cash to low income families, they bought food for their kids. And when the schools were closed, they figured they did figure out that kids would go hungry by not receiving breakfast and lunch at school. And so they made they, they a lot of the states arrange for treat that schools could still provide lunch and breakfast for kids. Those pandemic benefits expired. And so the child food insecurity or child hunger numbers shot right back up, unfortunately. So that was already happening. But there is promising momentum, notably at the state level for. So New York for example, just voted into, I'm not sure if they've put into the budget. I'm not sure if it's fully voted now. It might actually have been in the last few days for free lunch and free breakfast for all kids in New York. That would be, I think it was 3 million kids that would have access to that. There's posington movements in one of your neighboring states, Arkansas as well for example on some of this. There are some other states who have already voted this in Minnesota, New Mexico, Montana. So certainly there is some progress, but that the trends overall unfortunately are getting worse. So you know, we, but we have to keep every fighting every battle basically. And that's a lot of the work that Food court does, that frac does that in New York. We work with community food advocates in Connecticut and hunger Connecticut. So they're really trying to pass either city or state levels these legislations which would allow kids to who come to school and receive at least two free meals.
- [25:06]
John
Well, thank you for sharing that. And we need to link up the episode we had with Frack on the podcast.
- [25:11]
Alex Amorel
Oh great.
- [25:12]
Becky
Yeah.
- [25:12]
John
Well Alex, I mean we celebrate philanthropy the way that it's changed all of us and our journeys. I'd love to kick it to you to share maybe a story where you saw a moment of kindness or philanthropy happen that stuck with you over the years.
- [25:26]
Alex Amorel
I'll make I think a broader comment which goes back a little bit to this idea of philanthropy not just being the purview of the very big high net worth individuals or companies or things like that. But I certainly when I was at the Clinton Global Initiative back in the day, I was the director of program, I was responsible for all the speakers all the heads of state and government that came to the meeting and that graced the stage. And really I think the people who, you know, there was everybody, anybody was, I can't even.
- [26:05]
Becky
Was there stories you could tell truly.
- [26:08]
Alex Amorel
At some point and unfortunately is not the day for lerose these stories get revealed. But you know, there was a lot of, you know, celebrities, heads of state, foundation heads, CEOs, etc. Etc. In the green room. But I think the bits that really gave me the most goosebumps is when people would come to a panel to see Bill Gates or see Bono or whoever that was because they were on the program and they were the famous person there. And then they came out of the panel talking about a young social entrepreneur from Pakistan or the African continent or someone that they had never heard of before. They went in the room and was like, wow, this person's incredible. I'm never going to forget their name. And one of these people that I'm sure you know of, but there are many. So I'm just, I'm just picking on him for good reason. But it is Kennedy Ode Day from Shining Hope for Communities and again in the world that comes full circle. The first grant Kennedy and Jessica got when they, when they started Shofko was from Newman's own foundation.
- [27:27]
John
Oh my gosh.
- [27:29]
Alex Amorel
And they gave the first $50,000 check. And, and, and Kennedy and Jessica talk about that in their book. And also in their book they say Paul Newman had already passed by then, but they, they kindly named a couple of latrines in Quebec, which I didn't know him, but everyone suspects he would have appreciated. So again, a full circle moment.
- [27:57]
Becky
There, there is a purpose to where we are being led in this work because it all comes back around in so many cool ways. Thank you for that story. Love hearing the story about Kennedy. If you're wanting to follow him. He's got a really incredible movement going in Kenya and we know we have several friends that in Kenya who would like to know about that. So we'll drop that in the links as well. But as we're wrapping up Alex, we end all of our conversations with a one good thing. And we're wondering what your one good thing would be that you'd live leave with the audience. It could be a life hack or a quote or something that you live by. What's your one good thing?
- [28:35]
Alex Amorel
I was having a, a long chat with a good friend, Carla Garcia Terrell, who's a social impact coach, who's wonderful lady and we were in LA where she lives and we went for a walk in Echo park and rented a swan pedalo. You know, one of these swans.
- [28:57]
Becky
Yes, I can visually see it right now.
- [28:59]
Alex Amorel
So we were, we were pedaling the swan around, around Echo Park Lake, if, if you can call it a lake. Talking about life, love, the pursuit of happiness, etc, etc, and then I made her go right into the fountain area and she's like, why are we going to get wet? Why are we going to the fountain area? But we had just been talking about the symbolism of rainbows. And I said, carla, in life you have to go create your own rainbow. So we're going into the fountain to like, find some rainbows. So I, I think that some of this life and talking, it's. How can you go out and create your own rainbows?
- [29:43]
John
Oh, my gosh, we're obsessed with this conversation. We love what you're doing, the work that y' all pour into. How can our listeners get connected with your work and with you? Where do you show up online?
- [29:54]
Alex Amorel
Newmanzone.org LinkedIn and then 100 for purpose.org 100 for purpose.org for those who are interested in following in Newman's own footsteps and either creating or converting their companies to 100% per impact. But newmanzone.org and LinkedIn, otherwise, I mean.
- [30:20]
Becky
Can I put in a plug also for Alex's recent TED talk that just went live called Can Salad Dressing Transform Capitalism? And so please go check that out. Yes.
- [30:32]
Alex Amorel
Yeah, I didn't. The TED people choose the titles and they a b test it. Yeah, yeah, it goes into a real, like they have a real science around titles, but I thought they did very well indeed.
- [30:44]
Becky
It worked because I was very, very excited about that. And I just think we want, you said, there's only a few of you now in this 100% for purpose movement and we want thousands of people in that movement. Can you imagine what the world would look like? And gosh, one good thing, Please go buy some of the corn and black bean relish. It is fantastic. You guys keep rocking the great work that you're doing and we're here to amplify it for you.
- [31:14]
Alex Amorel
Thank you, thank you, thank you so much.