Where tech, politics and giving collide: CEO Nicole Taylor considers Silicon Valley’s busy intersection

THALIA BEATY, Associated Press

12 minutes ago

Nicole Taylor, president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, at her office in Mountain View, Calif., Monday, June 24, 2024. Taylor has a vantage point on philanthropic trends from her seat as president and CEO of Silicon Valley. Community Foundation. (AP Photo/Nic Coury)

Nicole Taylor has an insider perspective on philanthropic trends from her position as president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Based in Mountain View, California, the community foundation’s donors contributed nearly $4.6 billion in 2023, a significant increase from the $2.6 billion awarded the previous year.

That increase, Taylor said, was due to some big donors “really doubling down on some of the things they cared about.”

She said it was difficult to predict what will happen this year: “Will there be more wars? We have an important election coming up. We expected donors to be active. Will it be $4 billion again? Hard to say. »

The foundation does not comment on donors or specific donations, but its grants reveal that its clients include some of the richest and most powerful people in Silicon Valley. That includes Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, other Facebook alumni, and those whose wealth comes from the booming artificial intelligence sector.

Taylor, who was the first Black woman to lead the foundation when she joined in December 2018, spoke with The Associated Press about the role of philanthropy in democracy, threats to racial justice advocacy and the growth of donor-advised funds. The interview has been condensed.

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Q: A large and growing portion of charitable giving goes to donor-advised funds. How does SVCF get donors to move those dollars to charity?

A: Donor-advised funds have allowed a huge number of people to get into the game, as I like to say. Get off the bench, get into the game and actually be able to make an impact in a way that wasn’t possible for them before. You don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to create your own private foundation, and it allows you to accumulate certain resources and withdraw or withdraw them immediately.

In fact, we don’t have to do much to encourage our donors to distribute it. …We’ve set up thematic funds so that if they’re not sure what they want to give to, they can give to our housing fund or our immigration fund or we have a civic engagement fund , a fund for journalism. …And then we have an inactive fund policy. After two years, if you don’t provide any grant, we take that amount and put it into our community fund.

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Q: Some fear that donations to DAFs will go unused, and this is where the concern about inequality in our society arises.

A: It’s weird, because the questions should be about private foundations. And I say it all the time to my colleagues at private foundations. I tell them, “You’re all sitting on your assets. » We are not sitting on our assets. They get by. … There’s a billion dollars sitting around in private foundations, and they only have to give a fraction of that each year. I will emphasize this, because this is where the concern should be. Why can they get away with this? And people are worried about a $25,000 DAF handing out $5,000 grants every year. Because that’s the size of DAFs we’re talking about. And if you wanted to talk about the biggest ones we’ve had, they are the most active of all our donors, and they are the ones who release significant resources every year. Hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

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Q: Last year’s Supreme Court ruling that ended affirmative action in colleges is impacting philanthropic institutions. What are the real risks for nonprofits pursuing racial justice?

A: There is great anxiety about this, even though the decisions have been very restrictive and concerned admissions to higher education. The anxiety and some of the trials that have already happened, it’s real, it’s palpable. People are worried. …Now is not the time to back down. This is not the time to walk away from communities of color and communities that have faced systemic inequality for decades, hundreds of years. What we’ve started to do is figure out how to prepare organizations to know what they can do, know what they can say, where inviting legal attacks might occur, and what kind of legal training they have. need and preparation for this. So we started a fund through the California Black Freedom Fund, which we’re in the process of creating. It’s a legal education and advocacy fund, so LEAD, and it’s specifically focused on racial justice issues and organizations that work in that area. There are funding resources, legal experts and advocacy experts are coming to the table, and they’re training nonprofit leaders in the state of California on this.

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Q: How are you mobilizing your donors ahead of the November election?

A: In Silicon Valley, we like to joke that we are the ATM for both political parties. There is a lot of activity in our area right now with the elections. And it’s not just the presidential election. There are congressional races, there are local races. Many people are very active during election season and are very interested in civic participation.

As for donor events, we will be hosting a few in June. One about civic engagement and the other about the role of local journalism and democracy and where people get their news. And if English is not your first language, where do you get information about voting, about registering, about how to get involved and get involved? And again, not just at the national level. You can have a say by voting on who gets elected to your child’s school board.

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Q: Silicon Valley is also home to social media platforms and technology companies that have contributed to the deterioration of our information ecosystem. Are your donors thinking about it?

A: We’re sitting at this very interesting intersection here in the Valley. Our donors are very aware of the impact of technology in terms of information and civic engagement, both positive and negative. They’re very, very aware of that and want to make sure that they can help move positive things forward, in terms of civic engagement and fighting misinformation.

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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support from AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.