Directionally, the opportunity at Direct Relief was familiar to the Peace Corps, because here’s an organization with a strong history started in a different era. So how do you retain the purpose, the spirit, the sense of service? But the risk is always looking backwards. It’s not 1948 and new opportunities exist, new tools exist.
Q: It was 2000, when much of the technology we rely on today was in its nascency. Yet you embraced innovation early on, why?
A: We’re trying to make a charitable site as efficient as if it were a commercial site. If you look in our distribution center, you can’t tell that this is all done free of charge, and that is by design.
The idea was to bring the best that we’re learning in the commercial sector to bear in something that is philanthropy. We were not necessarily the first, but a relatively early adopter for nonprofits using many of the techniques and systems that are common in the business setting.
Q: Corporate partnerships and philanthropy seem to have played a big role in Direct Relief’s success.
A: There’s no way forward without the involvement of the talent and the resources in the private sector. The one dimensional thing that corporations are bad and nonprofits are good … I never accepted that premise. Why not invite everyone? It’s their world too.