620. 100% For Purpose Model: The Legacy and Future of Newman’s Own Foundation (Alex Amouyel) | Otter.ai

620. 100% For Purpose Model: The Legacy and Future of Newman’s Own Foundation (Alex Amouyel)

Sabrina Li29min

Jonathan McCoy

00:00

Hey, Becky, what's happening?

Becky Endicott

00:01

I'm fan girling over here, but it's fine. Everything's fine. I cannot wait

Jonathan McCoy

00:06

to tell my kids who I got to talk to today. 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, it's just kind of a pinch me moment, because it is an honor to introduce you to Alex Amarillo. She's the president and CEO of Newman's own foundation. Go over to your pantry, friends. I've got you got some Newman zone 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 they're 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 solves 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.

Alex Amouyel

01:38

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. Oh my gosh,

Jonathan McCoy

01:50

it's like tastes good,

Becky Endicott

01:52

it feels good. Yes, I know.

Jonathan McCoy

01:55

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

Alex Amouyel

02:06

today? Absolutely So, as you can see from my T shirt, I grew up in Paris, France, and when I was a 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 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 Seoul and now Newman's Jon 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 Food Corps 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 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. I

Becky Endicott

03:52

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 films, but like 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've donated over half a billion dollars to support children in your work. 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 today. Absolutely

Alex Amouyel

04:42

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 on Washington in August 9. 1963 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 Jon with his good friend, a Hotchner, who went by HOTCH, 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 to 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 turn around 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.

Jonathan McCoy

06:39

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 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 and 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, absolutely

Alex Amouyel

07:20

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, such as Patagonia, most recently in September 2022 who converted to its slightly different model in the US, 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 straight out of Australia, but now also operating in the US and launching soon in the UK, which is called humanits. And they very much. Yeah,

Becky Endicott

09:22

six friends. Oh my god,

Alex Amouyel

09:24

Adam and Josh. Yeah, yes, there. 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 humanits. And there's also Cummings and Ecosia. And thank you. There 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.

Becky Endicott

10:43

I just think it's a beautiful model. And I want to talk a little bit more about just 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 one under purpose model.

Alex Amouyel

11:26

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 philanthropist. 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 is 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 be 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. They're really important, and they actually, I think, drive the movement, and I'm really keen of I think if Newman'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 I'm keen to find other ways that we can encourage participatory giving, where one of these things is we created this community fund on grapevine, which is a collective giving

Becky Endicott

13:24

circle platform. Grapevine, yeah, so

Alex Amouyel

13:27

we have a community fund, and we have about 1000 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 they 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 worlds.

Jonathan McCoy

14:50

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 changed. Changemakers is not just giving money. You know, 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 zone. 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.

Alex Amouyel

15:31

I mean, I don't know where people start from to begin with, 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 the problems we're seeking to solve, the better and that there are are various ways of doing that from from the very beginning, just even the food we 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 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.

Becky Endicott

17:05

I just 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 is 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?

Alex Amouyel

18:03

Keep calm and carry on. Probably what at the moment would be would be the motto we're definitely 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 that. In those two portfolios, they range from food court, FRAC 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 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 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, we're less affected indirectly, 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.

Jonathan McCoy

19:49

That's it. I think that keep calm could be a successful poster if we looked into putting

Becky Endicott

19:56

I'm sure it's not trademarked, right? Whatsoever. Keep Calm and. To 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, yeah,

Alex Amouyel

20:46

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 numbers specifically for Oklahoma, but I suspect for the free lunch what you just quoted absolutely is not surprising, unfortunately, and child food insecurity was already going up, was already getting worse because of the expiration of pandemic era benefits. So one of the biggest progresses 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 are. A lot of the states arranged for treat that schools could still provide lunch and breakfast for kids. Those pandemic benefit expired, and so the child food insecurity or childhood 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 pastime movements in one of your neighboring states, Arkansas as well, for example. And 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 Corps does that frack does that in New York. We work with community food advocates and Connecticut and hunger Connecticut, so they're really trying to pass either city or state levels, these legislations which would allow kids to come to school and receive at least two free meals. Well,

Jonathan McCoy

23:11

thank you for sharing that, and we need to link up the episode we had with frack on the podcast. Oh, great, yeah. 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.

Alex Amouyel

23:31

I'll, I'll make a, I think, a broader comment which 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

Becky Endicott

24:09

I, Kenny, was there, could tell

Alex Amouyel

24:12

at some point, and unfortunately, is not the day for Li, where these stories get revealed. But you know, there was a lot of the, 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 goose bumps 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 into 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 Oh day, 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 shop go was from Newman's own foundation. Oh my gosh. And they gave the first $50,000 check and and Kennedy and Jessica talk about that in their book, and also in their book, they say Paul Newman had already passed by them, 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, full circle moment there.

Becky Endicott

26:02

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 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?

Alex Amouyel

26:41

I was having a long chat with a good friend, Carl Garcia Terrell, who's a social impact coach, who's wonderful lady, and we, 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?

Becky Endicott

27:02

Yes, I can visually see it, right? So we were, we

Alex Amouyel

27:05

were peddling this one around, around Echo Park Lake, 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 We're 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 think that some of this life and talking, it's how, how can you go out and create your own rainbows? Oh

Jonathan McCoy

27:48

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,

Alex Amouyel

27:58

Newman zone.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, 700% per impact, but Newman zone.org, and LinkedIn, otherwise.

Becky Endicott

28:24

I mean, 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, yes, I didn't

Alex Amouyel

28:38

either the TED people choose the titles and they de test it, yeah, it goes into a real like they have a real science around titles. I thought they did very well.

Becky Endicott

28:49

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 1000s 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

Jonathan McCoy

29:19

for you. Thank you.

Alex Amouyel

29:20

Thank you. Thank you so much.

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