Jeff Skoll looks at philanthropy through the lens of filmmaking.What do you do for an encore when you’re worth a billion dollars before turning 40? Canadian-born Jeff Skoll, the first president of eBay and the developer of the Internet giant’s hugely successful business plan, set out to realize his boyhood dreams of being a writer and changing the world.
In 1999, he created the Skoll Foundation, a philanthropic organization that tries to shift the imbalance between the “haves” and “have-nots” of the world and to encourage social entrepreneurs worldwide. BusinessWeek recognized Skoll as one of today’s most innovative philanthropists.
Always fascinated with the power of a story to effect change, Skoll set up Participant Productions in January 2004 as an independent production company whose goal is to deliver compelling entertainment that inspires people to get involved in social issues. Three of Participant’s projects—Syriana, North Country, and Good Night, and Good Luck.—won multiple Oscar and Golden Globe nominations this year; Syriana earned an Oscar for George Clooney as best supporting actor.
The studio’s most recent project was An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary released in May about global warming that features former Vice President Al Gore, a longtime advocate of environmental issues.
Hemispheres recently sat down with Skoll to talk about Participant Productions and the social-action initiatives integral to each of his movies.
Q: How did you get started in this business?
A: Being involved with the eBay Foundation, I began to meet people from different charitable foundations. I was so intrigued that I started the Skoll Foundation to back social entrepreneurs. They’re a lot like business entrepreneurs—they are strategic, passionate, creative, hardworking, and they see an opportunity to make change that can be valuable. A social entrepreneur sees a problem in society—AIDS orphans who have nowhere to go or refugees who are stranded—and has a better way to deal with these issues.
Q: What’s the foundation’s goal?
A: To find the social entrepreneurs who’ve done something which demonstrates that a new model can be effective. Then, we help them scale it and build it in much bigger ways so it can affect the whole system. We bring money, strategic help, connections. We created a Web site [socialedge.org] that is now the prime destination site for social entrepreneurs.
Q: What made you form Participant Productions?
A: My vision was to create a company that could make a difference in major world issues by using compelling entertainment as the means.
Q: Why do you think issue movies are being so well-received?
A: After September 11, there was a demand for material that was entertaining, could make sense of the world, and could provide some inspiration about what to do.
Q: Were you a fan of the political movies of the ’70s and ’80s?
A: I was influenced by All the President’s Men, The China Syndrome, Gandhi, and films like that. There’s enough of a history in Hollywood of doing movies that have a message—Erin Brockovich, Schindler’s List, Hotel Rwanda, movies like that. But I was shocked that nobody had created a company that was specifically focused on entertainment that could make a difference in the world, done in a systemic way.
Q: What’s been the social impact of your movies?
A: With each film, we create a social-action campaign where we partner with social-sector organizations. In Syriana, the issue is oil dependence and the dangers that implies, so we partnered with the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council. Even President Bush in his State of the Union address spoke about America’s addiction to oil, and it’s a line that’s repeated throughout the film.
Q: And North Country’s issue was violence against women? What did you do for that film?
A: We timed its release to October 2005, when the Violence Against Women Act was up for renewal in the House, and partnered with NOW and other groups to mobilize people to contact their representatives and remind them that the legislation was important. We also had a screening of North Country on Capitol Hill. Fortunately, the House passed the renewal of the act.
Q: And for An Inconvenient Truth?
A: Part of the campaign for the film was to work with Conservation International, the Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society, and the World Wildlife Fund and with groups like the United Auto Workers. And once people have seen the film, there’s a site, climatecrisis.net, where this tremendous coalition has come together to help people get involved. We think it’s going to blow people away just how urgent the issue is.
Q: What are your criteria for getting involved in a film project?
A: First, is the issue relevant to a large segment of society and is it actionable? Second, is it a good story, well told with the right people involved? Third, is it financially sustainable; will it make money? It’s a complicated equation because we’re willing to take risks on material that may be financially dicey, so long as the social good that comes from it is worth the effort. In the case of North Country, where we felt the film contributed to getting the Violence Against Women Act renewed, the social good that came from doing that film was well worth the effort.
Q: How can you gauge a film’s social success?
A: Measuring social return on investment is difficult. We measure what we can. For example, we track how many people have downloaded tips to encourage “oil change,” a campaign associated with Syriana’s release that’s intended to influence oil policy, and how many car owners have bought a TerraPass, which lets drivers offset the effect of their auto emissions by helping pay for clean-energy projects. The good news is that tens of thousands of people have downloaded these tips and bought these TerraPasses. But the bigger question—Has this project made a difference in the way people see oil policy?—that’s a little harder to measure.
Q: How tough is it to make these movies that aspire to effect change?
A: What occurred to me when I was going around town, trying to assess whether this idea for Participant Productions would fly, was why there weren’t more movies of this kind. It really came down to economics. The studio executives are kind of risk-averse, because if they make a superhero movie or an action film or a romantic comedy with big stars and it doesn’t do well, nobody’s going to take their job away. That’s what studios do. But if they make a movie about social action, like the Angelina Jolie film Beyond Borders [2003] and it doesn’t do well, then they could lose their jobs.
It struck me that everybody I talked to—writers, agents, lawyers, directors— wanted to make films that they could feel more proud of, but the system just wasn’t set up that way. The one major thing I could do was to bring financial resources to these risky projects so that it took away the financial risk from the studios.
Q: Where did you get your sense of giving back to the community?
A: As a kid, I read a lot of books like The Fountainhead, Brave New World, 1984—books that painted different pictures of what the world could be like if folks didn’t pay attention. When I was 14, my dad, who’d been a hard-working guy, announced that he had cancer. He survived it, but I remember him saying he didn’t feel so bad that he might die but that he hadn’t done the things he’d wanted to do. That inspired me to ask, “How can I make a difference in the world?”
Q: What projects are you particularly proud of?
A: There was a TV series we did last year called The New Heroes, which was hosted by Robert Redford and ran on PBS. It focused on social entrepreneurs, and it educated viewers about the fact that there were people doing great works, that there was hope, and also that there’s a noble calling in doing this kind of work yourself. And the series raised quite a few dollars for organizations.
Q: Where would you like your efforts to have impact?
A: First is the environment, then health, human rights, institutional responsibility, peace and tolerance, and social and economic equity. Under each of those, there are subheadings. For example, with the environment, there’s global warming, diversity of species, oceans, pollutants, and toxins. There are multiple other issues.
