Hedging Your Bets: Rajiv Shah, and the Limits of Large-Scale Changemaking

I work with social justice organizations for a living, and I spend a lot of time thinking about the idea of impact in our field — what it is, and how we would know it when we see it. I read what others have to say on the topic, especially grantmakers, since they probably have the widest view of social change advocacy and its trajectories. And I am often puzzled.

Soon after the dawn of our digitally focused new century, “strategic philanthropy” came on the scene, extolling the power of theories of change and offering the promise that data could help us solve the big problems that vex society.

Strategic philanthropy begat many approaches to philanthropy, from “effective altruism” to the “big bets” approach of making huge investments in proposed solutions to deep social problems.

But social change occurs not in broad daylight or experimentally optimal conditions; it happens glacially, quietly, under the surface. All the way back to David Hume in the 18^th Century, it has been recognized that we cannot see causality.

And so, I am left to wonder: Strategic philanthropists, big bettors, and effective altruists all lionize the ability to measure problem-solving strategies. But what exactly do they think they are observing when they diagnose a problem? What gives them the confidence to pursue the root cause they think they see? Why privilege one strategy when there are many others at hand?

This was on my mind as I read “Big Bets: How Large-Scale Change Really Happens” by Rajiv Shah, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation. “Big Bets” is one part memoir and one part user’s manual for anyone seeking to tackle certain kinds of trenchant social problems. Shah lays out some basic principles for building an ambitious project to address problems in the world, in a friendly, optimistic style. He is a man you would want to have a beer with, and to change the world with.

At the Gates Foundation, as head of USAID, and finally at Rockefeller, Shah has had remarkable successes that have transformed problems like access to childhood vaccinations and the safest way to handle a deadly epidemic.

He was a leader in dealing with energy poverty: Around the world, billions of people have limited access to electricity, making studying, much less surgery, a dicey proposition.

At the dawn of modern alternative energy, Shah’s efforts faced daunting odds. But Rockefeller’s Smart Power program connected local entrepreneurs eager to power their neighborhoods with emerging technologies that make local mini-grids possible.

While the industrialized world dithered and politicized green tech, enterprising community businesses on the Ganges quietly got things done.

Data and its Limits

Shah is a data guy; he brings analytical talent to problems whose intractability can be cut through with a sharp pivot table. The ability to see mathematical and statistical relationships, patterns that are easily lost in the chaos of a complex world, can be a powerful ally to those who would take on the deep problems that cause so much suffering across such large swaths of human existence.

But there are problems and there are problems. Shah writes about problems that are dire, but in a sense, logistical — at a higher level of abstraction, they are problems of scarcity. Children go unvaccinated because there are not enough doses, and we lack infrastructure to produce and deliver them. Problems of scarcity can be overcome, at least some of the time, by applying a combination of resources and ingenuity, as Shah has repeatedly done.

But there is a second kind of problem that we confront — call these problems of justice. Problems of this kind occur not because of logistical barriers, but because prejudice and power block efforts to improve the human condition. Applying Shah’s methods may not work here. Problems of justice also require large-scale change, but when it happens, it looks very different.

Problems of justice are typically if not inherently a matter of culture: There are ingrained beliefs or attitudes that justify letting problems of scarcity fester, or modes of social organization that serve entrenched interests and make solving inequities appear impossible.

Perhaps there has been no “Operation Warp Speed” for malaria because it kills the poorest citizens of the poorest countries, and those who could act, or demand action, simply do not care. Or perhaps it is because profit drives pharmaceutical research, and the balance sheet for malaria research always loses.

Probably, it is a little bit of both, with many other factors intertwined. Justice problems rarely have a single source.

Root Causes: Not a One-Size-Fits-All Solution

Like many of us, Shah approaches social problems by looking for root causes that, if we fix them, can set things right. The ability to do so served him well in carrying out ambitious and remarkably effective work in public health and poverty alleviation.

But when what needs to happen is cultural change, causes are difficult to discern and are typically political and highly contested.

I have worked for many organizations with overlapping missions, but few agree on the specific underlying causes when we get into the details — indeed, within any organization, there are typically differences, sometimes heated, over the nature of the problems we address.

Shah developed a solid theory of change around vaccinations by asking the right questions to a wide array of actors, from politicians to the captains of the pharmaceutical industry to the colleagues he needed to bring on board.

But let’s take a different problem: Anti-immigrant hate. There are a lot of plausible explanations for how nativism has surged in democracies around the world, but while gathering more opinions on vaccinations eventually led to a unifying explanation for the problem, I strongly suspect that asking more people about the demonization of migrants will lead not to a unified picture, but a dizzyingly incoherent one.

Even where consistent data can be found, it can lead you astray. Frequently, the root causes we identify are neither necessary nor sufficient to produce the problems of justice we see.

Experimentation is unlikely to clarify the water, for as we test an intervention, myriad other things are happening that also have an impact. Society evolves, and a moving target makes for poor experimental conditions. Faith in data to demonstrate progress can blind us to the full scope and complexity of the problem, lead us to think the achievable and the successful are one. We may effectively address the root cause we identified, only to watch the problem lumber on unfazed.

Often, in philanthropic discussions of theories of change, data-driven solutions and big bets, problems of scarcity and problems of justice are conflated. This makes it seem as though all social problems may be solved if we just drill down to the root causes, invest our resources in the right strategy, and use data to guide us through the process. But problems of justice require different strategies, even if the tactics Shah recommends are valuable here, too.

Shah circles around to problems of justice in the conclusion of “Big Bets,” where he writes about ponying up $600,000 from Rockefeller to help Mayor Mitch Landrieu remove Confederate statues in New Orleans, a step that led many other places, and the U.S. military, to take similar steps.

“As Mitch’s story makes clear,” Shah writes, “a big bet can feel small in scope and still lead to large-scale change.”

But this example itself shows the inapplicability of the One Big Bet approach to problems of justice.

Purging civic spaces of the ghosts of slavery is noble, and it fostered important discussions that are ongoing. But this step alone would not accomplish much. It is because the question of Confederate statues is embedded in a wider set of discussions and activism around equality and justice that Landrieu’s project is significant.

Hedging Your Bets

The big bet here — one whose ante was first upped by the Ford Foundation in the 1950s — is the wider, broader investment in racial justice advocacy in all its forms.

The big bets that Shah’s Rockefeller Foundation pursues are a stack of chips on a single number on the roulette table: His approach identifies a grantee with a strategy and goes all in on the pursuit of it.

That can work when problems of scarcity are the game. But problems of justice are best addressed — as successful roulette players might agree — through hedged bets.

The way to effect changes in culture is to place your chips on a spread of numbers, invest in a broad swath of different strategies and theories of change. Supporting an array of even incompatible strategies that approach problems like racism from many angles can chip away at the excruciatingly complex root causes.

Ultimately, the only way to change a culture is to be the culture. Philanthropy can empower an array of new voices and bring them more fully into determining the mores and priorities of society.

This hedged approach is flying blind, from the point of view of Shah’s tested, data-driven big bets. When the best you can do is nourish the ecosystem in hopes of a change that no one grantee may achieve as they intended, one that comes possibly in the distant future, it is hard to ever feel confident that the investment is well made.

Here, we must add another virtue to the many that infuse Shah’s book: A faith that, with work, the arc of the moral universe will indeed bend our way, in time.

Shah is an optimist (an infectious one, if I may). And so am I.

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