research paper

World Development 112 (2018) 180–192

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World Development

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Micro(soft) managing a ‘green revolution’ for Africa: The new donor culture and international agricultural development

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.08.003 0305-750X/� 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

E-mail address: [email protected]

1 This is the dominant perspective on the Gates Foundation; it is fr expressed at international agricultural development conferences, worksh other fora. It was also a common refrain in the author’s interviews with inte agricultural experts.

Rachel Schurman Department of Sociology and Institute for Global Studies, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, 267 – 19th Ave. South, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history: Accepted 11 August 2018

Keywords: Gates Foundation Organizational culture Agricultural development African agriculture Philanthropy

a b s t r a c t

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has become an influential development actor, spending bil- lions of dollars on international health and agricultural development. While scholars commonly assert that the foundation is part of a new breed of ‘‘philanthrocapitalists” who apply business principles to their phi- lanthropic activities, little is known about what this really means or how the Gates Foundation works on the inside. This article seeks to deepen our understanding of this new development actor by examining its orga- nizational culture. I do this through a case study of the Gates Foundation’s Agricultural Development pro- gram. Using in-depth interviews, materials from the BMGF’s website, and a variety of other primary data sources, I explore the foundation’s quotidian practices, workplace norms, and interactions with grantees as it tries to improve the lives of smallholder farmers in Africa. I argue that the Gates Foundation’s heavy emphasis on strategic planning has produced an approach to agricultural development that abstracts away from smallholder farmers’ sociocultural worlds and relies on a generalizable set of development solutions. My analysis also reveals another significant consequence of the BMGF’s organizational culture: By immers- ing bright, high-achieving professionals in the competitive, intense environment that characterizes the foundation, staff have learned to ‘‘manage up” (toward Bill) rather than manage down (toward their intended beneficiaries). This insulates and distances foundation staff from the field, making it difficult for them to listen to smallholder farmers, even though many express a genuine desire to do so. As a result, farmers continue to be treated as passive objects of development rather than as complex social actors.

� 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

equently ops and

1. Introduction

I am sure I will make mistakes in over-applying some elements from my previous experience and will need to adjust. For instance, the countries where Microsoft does business are far more stable and have a lot more infrastructure than most of the places where the foundation does its work, so I will need to better appreciate how dif- ficult it will be to execute our strategies. However, I am equally con- fident that our maniacal focus on drawing in the best talent and measuring results will make a difference. . . .The opportunity to gather smart, creative people into teams and give them resources and guidance as they tackle the challenges is very fulfilling.

– Bill Gates, Annual Letter, 2009

Since starting its Agricultural Development Program in 2006, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has become a major actor in the field of international agricultural development. To date, the Foundation has committed $4.9 billion to agricultural development, much of which has been targeted at what it sees as

the problems of African agriculture—the low productivity of small- holder farmers, poor soils and plant disease, and the dearth of for- mal markets. Although the BMGF was not the first to promote an ‘‘African green revolution” (Kofi Annan began calling for a uniquely African green revolution in 2000), the Foundation has become the key proponent of a Green Revolution for Africa on both a material and discursive level. Bill Gates has traveled the world touting the need for such a revolution, urging others to help lift African small- holders out of poverty.

The Gates Foundation’s foray into the field of international agri- cultural development has attracted considerable scholarly and practitioner attention. The Foundation’s supporters, many of whom work in international agriculture and benefit from its lar- gesse, applaud the BMGF’s commitment to a sector that is seen as ‘backward’ and unsexy to donors but is of critical importance to food security.1 They view Bill Gates as a generous humanitarian.

rnational

R. Schurman / World Development 112 (2018) 180–192 181

Critics take a less sanguine view. Some see the Gates Foundation as charting the same narrow science-and-technology course as did the Rockefeller Foundation, developing high cost inputs for farmers who cannot afford it (Bezner Kerr, 2012; Koopman, 2012; Patel, 2013) and searching for ‘silver bullet’ solutions to rural poverty (Brooks, Leach, Lucas, & Millstone, 2009). Others accuse it of nefariously seeking to spread capitalist agriculture across the globe and of working closely with multinational corporations in the process (Morvaridi, 2012; Thompson, 2014).

Yet despite the plethora of praise and criticism that has been heaped on the Gates Foundation, surprisingly little is known about what the foundation does in its Agriculture Development program or how the program operates. Furthermore, while development scholars commonly assert that the Gates Foundation is part of a new breed of ‘philanthrocapitalists’ who bring business principles and practices to bear on their philanthropic activities (McGoey, 2012, 2015; Thompson, 2014), we do not really know what this means in terms of the foundation’s quotidian practices, its interac- tion with grantees, or its internal decision-making processes. While a few scholars are beginning to shed light on these questions (Fejerskov, 2017a, 2018b; Tompkins-Stange, 2016), most of what happens inside the foundation remains shrouded in mystery.

In this article, I help to fill this lacuna by looking at the Gates Foundation’s organizational culture. With an asset base of $52 bil- lion in 2017, the Gates Foundation is currently the world’s largest global philanthropist (Gates Foundation, 2017). Indeed, between the size of its resources and its partnership-oriented approach, the BMGF is arguably the most influential of the ‘‘new actors in development” (see Richey and Ponte, 2014). By opening up the thick glass doors of the Gates Foundation and peering inside, we can learn a lot about what shapes its staff members’ thinking and behavior as well as how the foundation perceives the peoples and places it seeks to transform. Understanding how the BMGF operates – and how it projects its thinking and practices outside the foundation – can help us grasp some of the major shifts in development today.

In what follows, I examine the BMGF’s new philanthropic cul- ture in action, to see how it operates and what it delivers. Like many other ‘‘new philanthropists,” the BMGF describes itself as both an ‘‘outcome investor” (Gates Foundation, 2014) and a ‘‘strategic philanthropist” (Gates Foundation, 2011). But what does this actually look like when applied in a specific arena, in this case, international agricultural development? What norms and routines does the Foundation bring to its work, and what does this tell us about the development practices of one of the most powerful development actors in the world? While it is still premature to make strong claims about the Gates Foundation’s success in achieving its goals of reducing global poverty and improving food security, it is not too early to analyze its cultural dispositions in practice and to ask how they shape its modus operandi in the field.

My data come from several sources. Since 2011, I have been studying the Gates Foundation’s Agricultural Development Pro- gram through interviews and materials that have appeared in the media, on the web, and on the BMGF’s website. My interviewees include nine former and current officials from the agriculture pro- gram and approximately twenty individuals who have worked clo- sely with it as grantees and consultants.2 I have also sustained numerous conversations with people who do international agricul- tural development work and who have had close contact with the Gates Foundation. Additional data sources include 187 comments posted by current and former full-time BMGF employees on the employment website, Glassdoor. These posts respond to several prompts: whether an employee recommends employment at the

2 For reasons of confidentiality, I do not cite my interviewees by name.

Foundation (yes/no/neutral), the pros and cons of working at the BMGF, and employees’ ‘‘advice to management.” Although these comments are not specific to the Agricultural Development Program, they offer a revealing sense of employee perceptions of BMGF cul- ture and represent a useful complement to my interviews. The fact that these posts are split almost evenly as to whether or not they recommend employment at the Gates Foundation suggests there is no systematic bias toward critics.

My analysis reveals an organizational culture that, particularly during the early years, reflects important continuities with the cor- porate culture for which its parent company, Microsoft, was so well known (Eichenwald, 2012; Rivlin, 1999). From the start, the Foundation sought professional staff who possessed strong analyt- ical skills, were very smart in a ‘‘logical-mathematical” way,3 had business experience, and were highly motivated. By hiring people who represented the ‘‘best and the brightest” by these criteria and charging them with solving the perceived problems of African agri- culture, the Agricultural Development program became populated by individuals who applied their business thinking and analytical skills to ‘‘fixing” rural Africa and rural Africans. The foundation’s ori- entation toward strategic planning, which is a key aspect of this mindset, produced a decontextualized program that abstracted away from farmers’ real agricultural and sociocultural worlds and prof- fered a set of universal (and universalizing) solutions.

My analysis also highlights two other noteworthy features of the BMGF’s organizational culture. One is that by immersing bright, high-achieving professionals in an intense workplace run by a powerful and revered leader, the Gates Foundation taught staff to ‘‘manage up” (toward Bill Gates) rather than manage down (toward African farmers). This, together with the ‘‘culture of smart- ness” that pervades the Foundation, leads BMGF staff to privilege expert knowledge and professional credentials over other kinds of knowledge, including smallholder farmer knowledge, commu- nity familiarity, and experiential knowledge. Both of these phe- nomena serve to insulate and distance Gates staff from the field, making it difficult for them to listen and learn from those whose lives they seek to improve, even though many express a genuine desire to do so. As a result, the intended beneficiaries of the Foun- dation’s largesse are treated as passive objects of development rather than complex, knowledgeable social actors.

The other significant feature of the Gates Foundation’s organi- zational culture – and one that has important consequences for the way the BMGF ‘does development’ and influences other organi- zations – is the foundation’s obsession with having impact on a large scale. This manifests in two ways. First, it leads the founda- tion to privilege big, international organizations that can develop and manage megaprojects. Second, it manifests itself in the BMGF’s concern with making sure that its grants can be ‘‘scaled up,” that is, expanded into new social, biophysical and geographic domains. This often encourages grantees to expand their projects beyond their organizational capacities and into locales where they possess little knowledge and few local connections. At the same time, small, local organizations and individuals that are cognizant of community needs and could offer strong links at the local level, tend not to be supported.

2. Conceptualizing Foundation culture

In claiming that an examination of the BMGF’s organizational culture can provide unique insights into this important develop- ment actor, I draw inspiration from Alvesson (2012), Smircich

3 ‘Logical mathematical’ intelligence is one of nine intelligences identified by psychologist Howard Gardener in the 1980s. It is the type with which Bill Gates is also richly endowed.

182 R. Schurman / World Development 112 (2018) 180–192

(1983), and Schoenberger (1997). Although the focus of these orga- nizational theorists is corporations, many of their ideas also apply to foundations. These scholars suggest that culture is not a unique and separable sphere within a firm, as much of the management literature assumes (Alvesson, 2012), but infuses every element of the organization and its behavior. Rather than a corporation having a culture that reflects its values, as Smircich puts it, the firm is a culture. The same is true of foundations.

What is implied by the argument that organizations are cul- tures? First, it means that organizations are cultural milieus into which people enter. When individuals join an organization, they learn what is thinkable, doable, sayable, and actionable in that con- text. This process of socialization happens through immersion: once an individual becomes a member of an organization, s/he intuits its norms, learns them through experience, or is taught them explicitly. Of course, this does not mean that every member necessarily shares or conforms to organizational norms, values, and ways of doing things; rather, it means that those inside an organization feel the weight of these ideas, conventions, and rules, even if they define themselves as outliers or non-conformists. At the same time, the individuals who run and work in an organiza- tion collectively create organizational culture by virtue of what they bring with them. By this, I refer to people’s personal biogra- phies, life experiences, education, and disciplinary and professional training. Certain members are more powerful culture creators than others, usually because of their position in the hierarchy (or their relationship to other powerful people in that hierarchy). It is for this reason that Schoenberger (1997) refers to top management in a firm as ‘‘the dominant cultural producers.” The same can be said of the heads of foundations.

The second implication of the organization-as-culture perspec- tive is that culture mediates how an organization—and the people within it—perceive, interpret, and act on the world. Schoenberger (op. cit.) argues that corporate culture and corporate strategy are inextricably linked, and that what a firm and its managers see and do is profoundly influenced by organizational culture. She con- tends that culture is ‘‘inherently and deeply implicated in what we do and under what social and historical circumstances, in how we think about or understand what we do, and how we think about ourselves in that context. It embraces material practices, social rela- tions, and ways of thinking. Culture both produces these things and is a product of them. . .” (1997:120). Ways of thinking in this context ‘‘imply not only ideas and meanings, but the processes of interpre- tation and the construction of knowledge.” Schoenberger makes the simple but important points that ‘‘corporations are run by real peo- ple,” and that ‘‘to understand corporate strategies, we need to understand something about corporate strategists.” (ibid.)

This theorizing is relevant for the way we think about founda- tions. First, it suggests that if we want to understand why a foun- dation approaches its work in particular ways, it is important to understand the backgrounds, experiences, and socialization of the people who comprise it. It also suggests that those at the top of the foundation hierarchy will have a particularly strong imprint on foundation culture. This point seems obvious but has important implications for how a foundation functions. Third, it suggests that certain ways of thinking, doing things, and knowing in a founda- tion will come to be considered acceptable, appropriate, and rea- sonable, while others will be rendered unacceptable, unthinkable (or unspeakable), and non-sensical. These norms will enable and constrain staff in significant ways.

4 Author interview with former senior Gates official, August 2016. 5 Employee comment, Oct 19, 2015. 6 Author interview with Gates consultant, November 2011.

3. Agricultural development, Gates-Style

I now turn my attention to the Gates Foundation’s Agricultural Development program, which was established in 2006. Following

Schoenberger, I begin by analyzing who the foundation hired to staff the program, since the composition of professional staff pro- vides a crucial window into the organization’s culture.

At the helm of the Gates Foundation, of course, is Bill Gates him- self. By all accounts, Gates has a lion-size personality and presence within the foundation. Along with his wife, Melinda, and the vari- ous CEOs that have run the organization – the first two of whom (Patty Stonesifer and Jeff Raikes) came from Microsoft – Bill has been actively engaged in his foundation’s daily operation and activities since he officially left Microsoft in 2008. The reverence toward Bill Gates, and his remarkable brain and analytical capacity, is obvious inside the organization. ‘‘Bill’s knowledge and personal- ity dominates the foundation,” noted a former official. ‘‘Everybody knows that and it’s logical, the guy is super brilliant. It’s largely his money and his family that created it.”4

Because of the atmosphere that surrounds Bill Gates (and his legendary intelligence), no Foundation employee, even at the most senior level, wants to be wrong, or go up against Bill’s convictions and larger-than-life personality. ‘‘No one really challenges the founders and there is an aura of fear around ‘what would Bill say,’” reported a senior official on Glassdoor.5 ‘‘When you get in the room with Bill,” explained a consultant to the foundation, ‘‘He convinces you he’s right. He doesn’t say ‘By God, we’re going to do it my way,’ but he’s just articulate, smart, he can pull things from different places, and he can make his case. You get out of the room and two days later, you think, ‘no-o-o’.”6

Being smart and analytically-minded is highly valued at the foundation and is a desired quality in its professional hires. The BMGF’s attraction to ‘‘smartness” is a direct carryover from the Microsoft Corporation. Indeed, in his first Annual Letter, Bill Gates points to ‘‘building teams of smart people with different skill sets” as one of the ‘‘magical elements” that connect his work at Micro- soft with his work at the foundation (Gates Foundation, 2009:1). If there is one refrain I heard during my interviews, it is that ‘‘everyone at the Gates Foundation is very smart.” Virtually all the grantees and consultants I spoke with commented on the BMGF staff’s intelligence, describing them as ‘‘fast learners,” ‘‘really sharp,” and ‘‘vacuum cleaners of information.” When it came to comments about Gates himself, the accolades were even more effusive: all of my interviewees who interacted with Bill Gates per- sonally commented on his uber-intelligence and the astounding speed at which he absorbs information.

So who did the BMGF hire to develop and run its Agricultural Development Program? The senior officials who set the tone for the program typically hailed from corporations or had previously worked in management consulting, a field that arose in the 1960s and catalyzed what business journalist Kiechel (2010) dubbed the ‘‘strategy revolution.” This revolution involved the shift to an empirical, data-driven approach to the business world —what Kiechel characterized as a ‘‘muscular empiricism” tied to ‘‘a new strain of intellectual in business” (p. xiv). This intellectual was a numbers-oriented business analyst, who engages in intensive study of the ‘‘three C’s”: costs, customers (markets) and competi- tion (ibid., p. xii). This is much the sort of individual who is seen as attractive by the Foundation: one with a good business sense, who relies on hard evidence, and who does things ‘‘by the numbers.”

The Foundation’s attraction to analytically-minded, strategic thinkers with experience in the business world is clearly evidenced in its first round of Agricultural Development Program hires. The number of high-level program staff—that is, people holding titles of Program Director, Deputy Directory, or Senior Project

R. Schurman / World Development 112 (2018) 180–192 183

Officer—who came from management consulting and/or corporate backgrounds is striking. As seen in Table 1, eleven of the nineteen senior staff who joined the agricultural program between 2005 and 2008 and who collectively created its cultural milieu, were former management consultants, business school graduates, or corporate officials. Four had been consultants at McKinsey & Company, one of the world’s leading strategic management consulting firms. Syl- via Mathews Burwell, who headed the Global Development area from which the Agricultural Development Program sprung, had also worked at McKinsey, while Rajiv Shah, the program’s first director, had attended Wharton School of Business in addition to getting a medical degree at University of Pennsylvania. Senior Pro- gram Officer Khalid Bomba had spent a decade at JP Morgan.

Although few of these individuals possessed first-hand knowl- edge of smallholder agriculture, this was a group that was mentally agile and whose analytic skills were viewed – by themselves and others – as applicable to any sector. In fact, former Rockefeller Food Security program director, Robert Herdt, referred to the agriculture team at the Gates Foundation as ‘‘bright generalists” precisely for this reason (Herdt, 2012). Educated at top universities, the Agricul- tural Development group comprised a cadre of high-achieving, suc- cessful professionals. These were bright, talented, and in some cases, ‘type-A’ sorts of people, mainly but not exclusively men, who were used to working hard and excelling in their careers.7

Coming from such backgrounds imbued the program’s early leadership with a strong business orientation. As one informant described the initial team, ‘‘Raj [Shah] was a McKinsey consultant, so was Roy Steiner, so was Lutz Goedde, essentially the whole top team. The first scientist they brought in was Rob Horsch, who is fabulous, . . .and they are all very good, but these guys were McKin- sey consultants, so they were looking at the dashboards, at the monitoring tools, at the bottom line. And so . . . the whole structure of the operation was invented in this consultancy mentality and concern with ‘return on investment.’’8

3.1. Working for Bill

This emphasis on hiring smart, successful people who are com- mitted to the Foundation’s mission resulted in a group that was highly energetic, comfortable with taking charge, and character- ized by a strong dose of self-confidence. Once Bill became a full-time presence in 2008, however, these same individuals began trying to prove themselves to what one employee facetiously referred to as the ‘‘guy sitting in the corner office.” This behavior – which Gates officials refer to as managing up – came up several times during my interviews and in employee posts on Glassdoor. The following interview excerpt with a former BMGF official gives a sense of how these contradictory forces manifested themselves in the Agricultural Development Program. ‘‘In the Gates Foundation, and I loved working there. . ., the power dynamics are . . . further cemented by the nature of the organization itself,” my informant observed.

[The Foundation] represents big money, it represents a big name, and it makes it very clear that it only recruits and hires and retains the very best talent. So you end up with super smart people, all of whom are motivated to do the right thing—in my

7 Several employees posting on Glassdoor describe their Gates colleagues as ‘Type A’; there are also numerous comments about BMGF officials’ drive, intelligence, and oversized egos. Again, these comments do not refer specifically to the Agricultural Development program.

8 Interview with BMGF grantee and consultant, November 2011. This claim about Raj Shah appears to be erroneous. Yet the fact that this individual, who had worked closely with the Agriculture program during its inception, thought Shah was a McKinsey consultant indicates that he projected a business mentality. Recently, Shah became President of the Rockefeller Foundation.

whole time there I didn’t meet more than two people that I felt really didn’t have the best interests of the world at heart, right? But you’ve got the Gates name, the Gates money, around you, and in your microcosm, you’ve always been in the smartest kid in the class. And now you’re surrounded by people that no matter where you look, there’s someone smarter than you, who’s done something way more fantastic than your fantastic life. But you still have the need to show that you’re the smartest. . . So how do you display that? You display that by being very obnoxious, passive aggressive, by being critical of someone else’s project – always with the most intellectual of rea- sons – always having a goal of having the bigger project or the one that Bill and Melinda like more, always being told by your grantees and the world how smart and wonderful you are, because they want your money.9

In a Glassdoor post revealingly entitled ‘Where Smart People Go to Feel Stupid,’ another Senior Program Officer offered a different insight into the psychological dynamics at play: ‘‘They hire some of the best and the brightest, but then give them little power to act. . . Unrealistic faith that great strategic planning and technology alone can change the world. Too much value placed on ‘manag[ing] up’ – especially to Bill (that guy in the corner office),” s/he lamented.10

According to one former staff member, such workplace dynam- ics lead to ‘‘some very interesting sociological and psychological behavior, particularly for really competitive young people.”11 But more important than the behavior these dynamics elicit is that fact that they generate insularity among the foundation’s professional staff, who are already distanced from those whose lives they seek to improve by virtue of being highly educated elites living in the world’s wealthiest country. Aside from possessing little experiential knowledge of a smallholder farmer’s realities, the fact that these individuals feel compelled to impress the foundation’s leadership leads them to focus on what are acceptable ways of thinking in Seat- tle rather than in a Tanzanian village. This assessment is confirmed by a senior official who offered the following advice to management: ‘‘Spend less time internally and more time listening to—and sitting with—partners and beneficiaries. The more managers see their job as ‘telling Bill’ what he wants to hear, the less they hear what change agents in the field need.”12 Now let’s look at how this group of pro- fessionals shaped the Agricultural Development Program.

4. Doing Development, strategically

When the Rockefeller Foundation moved into agriculture in the 1940s, it certainly had a strategy (Cullather, 2010; Herdt, 2012). Interviews with Rockefeller officials suggest that the foundation’s long-term strategies were developed via an external review pro- cess, while more immediate strategies were developed internally. For long-term guidance, Rockefeller would hire a small team of outside experts to study a program and make recommendations to the Trustees. In 1982, for example, the Rockefeller Foundation commissioned the former World Bank President, Robert McNa- mara, and two university vice chancellors with agricultural back- grounds to review its Conquest of Hunger Program. The men spent months studying the program and subsequently, recom- mended that the foundation continue funding international agri- cultural research, that it seek to apply the new science of molecular biology to poor country crops, and that it build Africa’s

9 Author interview with senior Gates official, August 2016. 10 Senior Project Officer comment on Glassdoor, Nov 22, 2015. These comments are not atypical. 11 Author interview with senior Gates official, August 2016. 12 Senior BMGF Project Officer comment on Glassdoor, November 22, 2015.

Table 1 High-level agricultural development program staff hired between 2005 and 2008.

Name of official Hiring date Position at BMGF Credentials and education Previous work experience

Rajiv Shah 2000–2009 (moved to Ag Dev’t Program in 2005)

Director, Ag Development Program

BA, University of Michigan MD, University of Pennsylvania MBA, Wharton School of Business (Health Econ.)

Health care policy advisor for the Gore 2000 presidential campaign

Roy Steiner Aug. 2005–2014 Deputy Director, Farmer Productivity

BSc., MIT, Biology & Mech Engineering (1984) MSc., Cornell University, Ag & Biolog. Eng. (1987) PhD, Cornell University, Ag & Biolog. Eng. (2001)

Warren Weaver Fellow, Rockefeller Foundation (1991– 1993); Associate, McKinsey & Company (1993–1995); Strategy Director, CH2M HILL; Managing Director, Africa Online Holdings; Managing Director, Cyberplex Africa

Lutz Goedde 2006–Feb 2010 Deputy Director, Market Access

PhD, University of Bonn, Ag Econ (1994) MBA, Dartmouth, Tuck School of Business (1997)

Marketing manager for crop protection, Bayer (nd); Manager & Associate, Agriculture & Food Chains practice at McKinsey & Company (1997–2001); COO & President, Alta Genetics Inc. (2001–2004); Managing Director, Kincannon & Reed (2004–2006)

Robert Horsch Nov 2006– Senior Program Officer; then Deputy Director for Science and Technology

BA, Univ. of California-Riverside, biology (1974) PhD, Univ. of California-Riverside, genetics (1979) Post-doc, Univ. of Saskatchewan, plant physiology

Monsanto, various positions including senior scientist, VP for Technology Cooperation (1981– 2006)

Tjada McKenna Nov 2006–April 2010 Senior Program Officer BA, Harvard College, Government (1996) MBA, Harvard Business School (2002)

Business Analyst, McKinsey & Company (1996–1998); Africa Leader, Smallholder Programs, Monsanto Company (1998– 2000); Director, Global Strategic Partnerships, American Express (2002–2005); Vice President, Business Dev’t, GE Consumer Finance (2005–2006)

David Bergvinson March 2007–Dec 2014 Senior Program Officer, then Deputy Director, Digital Design

MSc., Simon Fraser Univ., pest management (1989) PhD, Univ. of Ottawa, biology (1993) Post-Doc, Ag and Agrifood Canada

Senior scientist, maize improvement, CIMMYT (1995– 2007)

Lawrence Kent March 2007– Senior Program Officer MA, Princeton University, Dev’t Economics Peace Corps (Mauritania); USAID (Egypt); CARE (Chad); Catholic Relief Services (Burkina Faso); Consultant, World Bank; Director of International Programs, Danforth Plant Science Center

Catherine Bertini June 2007–2009 Senior Fellow BA, SUNY-Albany, Political Science (1971) UN Under Secretary-General for Management (2003–2005); UN Security Coordinator (late 2003– 2005); Executive Director, UN World Food Program (1992– 2002)

Elvis Fraser Nov 2007–Dec 2017 Senior Program Officer, Evaluation

PhD, Ohio State University, International Dev’t (1992) BA, The Catholic University of America (1987) St. Mary’s College

Vice President and Director, Center for Applied Evaluation Research, The Academy for Educational Development (1997–2005)

Richard Rogers Aug 2007–early 2017 Senior Program Officer B.Sc., Univ. of Florida, Chem Engineering (1996) MBA, Univ. of Chicago, Int’l Business Strat (2002) Harvard Business School, Exec Education (2010)

Senior Engineer & Project Leader, Kraft Foods North America (1996–2002); Associate, McKinsey & Company (2002– 2004); Director, Kroll Associates (2004–2007)

Arlene Mitchell Feb 2008–Nov 2013 Deputy Director (Acting), Access & Markets

BA, Michigan State University (c 1975) Chief of School Feeding, UN World Food Programme (circa 1998–2007); Director of Development Resources Div, USDA Foreign Agricultural Service

184 R. Schurman / World Development 112 (2018) 180–192

Table 1 (continued)

Name of official Hiring date Position at BMGF Credentials and education Previous work experience

Mercy Karanja Feb 2008– Senior Program Officer BSc, Nairobi University, Agriculture; M.Sc Univ. of Reading, Extension & Rural Dev’t

Extension specialist at the Kenyan Ministry of Agriculture (circa 1983–1998); Kenya National Farmers Union (1998- ?); International Federation of Agricultural Producers (Paris) (200?-2008)

Katherine Kahn Early 2008– Senior Program Officer, Science and Technology

PhD, University of Missouri, Molecular Biology

AAAS Fellow in the Foreign Agricultural Service, Biotechnology Group, USDA (2004–2006)

Prem Warrior April 2008–July 2013 Senior Program Officer MS, University of Kerala, Zoology (1976) PhD, Indian Agriculture Research Institute, Plant Pathology (1981); MBA, Lake Forest Graduate School of Management (2002)

Head, Global Research, Agricultural business unit, Abbott Laboratories; Senior Director, Global Research, Valent BioSciences

Prabhu Pingali June 2008 – May 2013 Deputy Director, Policy and Statistics

MA, Birla Inst of Tech & Science, economics (1977) Ph. D., North Carolina State University, economics (1982)

World Bank economist; Program leader & ag economist, IRRI; Director of Economics program, CIMMYT; Director, Ag & Dev’t Division, FAO

Khalid Bomba June 2008 –Aug 2011 Senior Program Officer BA, Swarthmore College MSc, London School of Economics

Regional Director, Africa Global e-Schools and Communities Initiative (2005–2008); JP Morgan (10 years’ experience in corporate finance and debt)

Greg Traxler June 2008 – Dec 2014 Senior Program Officer BA, University of Portland, Economics (1977) MSc, Univ of Minnesota. Ag & Applied Economics (1987) PhD, Iowa State University, Ag Economics (1989)

Pre-doc Research Fellow, CIMMYT (1988–19900; Affiliate Scientist, Econ. Program, CIMMYT (1996–2003); Professor, Auburn University (1990–2008)

Chris Gingerich Sept 2008 – Oct 2014 Senior Program Officer BA, Grinnell College, Economics (1988– 1992) MS, Iowa State University, Econ & Stats (1993–1995) PhD, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Health Economics and Applied Econ and Mgmt (1995–1999)

Consultant and Co-Founder, Health System Analytics (1996– 1999); Director of Strategy & Product Dev’t, Business.com (1999–2002); President, CG Applied Economic Analysis (2003–2008)

Don S. Doering October 2006–July 2011 Business/Strategy Officer (originally hired as Program Officer for Ag Program in 2006; promoted to Senior Strategy Officer in 2010)

BA, Johns Hopkins University, Biophysics (1982–1985) PhD, Massachusetts Inst of Technology, Biology (1986–1992)

Associate, Calvert Social Venture Partners (1992–1993); Vice President, AquaPharm Technologies Corp (1993–1997); Wharton School, Univ of Pennsylvania Senior Fellow (1997–1998); Senior Associate, World Resources Institute (2000–2003); Senior Associate, Winrock Int’l (2003–2005); Senior Scientist, IFPRI (2006)

Sources: Staff were identified through repeated perusal of the Gates Foundation’s website (including blogposts), media sources, published and author interviews, and various Internet searches carried out over a five-year period. Given this data collection method, it is likely that a few Agricultural Development Program staff are missing.

R. Schurman / World Development 112 (2018) 180–192 185

agricultural research capacity (Smith, 2009). They did not offer a concrete action plan or tell the Foundation how it should imple- ment these recommendations; that was left up to senior staff. When it came to the foundation’s shorter-term strategies, most emerged from consultations with its scientists in the field. ‘‘A lot of the grant making we eight [staff members] in New York did was informed by the forty people in the field,” explained a long- time Rockefeller official. ‘‘So Bob Chandler out at IRRI would say, ‘the brown plant hoppers are going nuts, we need some strategy to deal with this insect pest.’ And that’s how we got into integrated pest management!” he chuckled.13

By contrast, the norm at the Gates Foundation is to pour tremendous resources into strategic planning. ‘‘People spend a lot of time on strategy in the Foundation,” reported a high level Agricultural Development official. ‘‘In my five or six years there, I think we did three different strategic plans. It’s very heavy. . . on

13 Author interview with Rockefeller Foundation official, December 2011.

looking at goals and figuring out how you get to the goals. . . .[Y] ou’ve got a whole strategy section within the Global Development group [which includes agriculture] whose only job is to do strat- egy.”14 In 2013, Foundation CEO Jeff Raikes claimed that he had over 30 different teams working on strategy (Raikes, 2013). Of course, in adopting a strategic management approach to its philanthropic investments—and thinking of them as such—the Gates Foundation is doing what is now common in the field of philanthropy (Bishop & Green, 2008; Brest & Harvey, 2008). Yet the BMGF’s reliance on strategic planning is extreme by any measure. This leads to a top- down approach to development that gives the Foundation a high degree of decision-making power and control while minimizing the importance of local context and participation.

A revealing artifact of the Gates Foundation’s culture of strate- gic management is its 34 page, graphics-filled document entitled The Strategy Lifecycle: A Guide (hereafter, the Guide). The Guide

14 Author interview, March 2014.

186 R. Schurman / World Development 112 (2018) 180–192

notes that the Foundation engages in catalytic philanthropy, the keystone of which is the development of ‘‘robust and flexible strategies.” It continues: ‘‘These are strategies that articulate the causal pathway to impact; outline the investments and program- matic activities aligned with that pathway; measure the results of these investments and activities over time; and can be adjusted based on results, experience, and lessons learned.” (Gates Foundation, 2011)

Both the choice of strategy and plan of execution are closely tied to programmatic goals set by the Foundation. Goals are crucial and represent what the BMGF seeks to achieve with strategic planning; without them, the Foundation believes, it is impossible to know whether a strategy is working. As Bill Gates explains:

Unlike business, where profit is the ‘bottom line,’ foundations and government programs pick their own goals. . . . Given a goal, you decide on what key variable you need to change to achieve it—the same way a business picks objectives . . . like customer satisfaction—and develop a plan for change and a way of mea- suring the change.15

The Guide details how the Presidents of each program are to design, annually review, and regularly ‘‘refresh” their strategies to account for new information, the results of which are then presented to the foundation’s co-chairs for review and discussion (Gates Foundation, 2011).

Several observations can be made about the BMGF’s strategic planning process. First, strategy is developed at Foundation head- quarters in Seattle, rather than at the local or national level where these strategies are to be applied. Many people involved in the planning process are North American or European and came to the Foundation with business rather than agricultural back- grounds, as already noted. Few are African or have extensive expe- rience in rural Africa.16 No African farmers are at the table.

Second, the BMGF goes about planning its interventions with a remarkable sense of purpose and top-down guidance. Program by program, grant by grant, BMGF staff identify goals (e.g., ‘‘to reach 400,000 farmers”17) and spell out a plan to achieve them. They ‘‘scope” problems by carefully defining, dissecting, and analyzing them. They identify strategies for addressing the problem, paying attention to the Foundation’s technology orientation. They use their grant portfolios to execute strategies and develop partnerships that will help them ‘‘achieve impact.” The whole effort resembles a com- plex military operation in which the mission and goals are specified by the military’s top brass, while the targets of these interventions live thousands of miles away.

Third, an important dimension of the BMGF’s strategic planning culture involves thinking in terms of the ‘‘scalability” of projects and technologies. This emphasis on scaling up is a clear carryover from Bill Gates’ experience in the software industry and one that enabled him to become the world’s software giant. It represents an overarching concern in all BMGF programs and pervades the foundation’s organizational culture.18 It comes up in the founda- tion’s strategy discussions, conversations with grantees, and staff meetings. ‘‘I’m a big believer in scalable,” one Gates official told me. ‘‘Because I can give you thousands of tiny examples that worked and aren’t replicable. . . They are so labor intensive that you can’t [do

15 2013 Annual Letter from Bill Gates, p. 3. 16 Over the years, the program has hired some individuals with experiential knowledge of village life, but the number is small. 17 Seeking to reaching 400,000 farmers may seem ambitious, but it is typical. The original proposal for the BMGF’s Soil Health Program grant given to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa aimed to reached 41 million farmers within the first five years. (AGRA, 2007), p. 2. 18 See, for instance, Quinn et al. (2014) on scalability in the BMGF’s education programs.

them]. . . So if you really want to change things . . ., you can’t have five thousand little dots on the map when you need five million.”

Yet focusing on a project’s ‘‘scalability” rather than figuring out what works in a particular circumstance leads to an overgeneral- ized—and ill-chosen— approach in many situations. Some grantees are urged or incentivized to do things that they are not adequately prepared to do, just to please the foundation. For example, a gran- tee in Nairobi, Kenya noted his discomfort with being asked to expand his organization’s project into Tanzania, a place he had never worked before and had few connections.19 Pushing grantees to scale up can also be counterproductive in other ways, as this agri- cultural scientist explained: ‘‘I see these guys scaling-up stuff and I’m like, ‘Really?’ I went to visit a bunch of fields where a couple of [Gates-funded] projects are, and their stuff is just getting hammered by pests and diseases.” In this scientist’s view, the Foundation takes an overly mechanical approach to scale, which influences the behav- ior of its grantees. ‘‘Actually a lot of grantees have that kind of men- tality—‘Test something on station and we’ll see what seems to work best and then tell everybody to do that.’ That’s a terribly bad idea, agriculturally,” she observed. Subsequently, she elaborated, ‘‘If you disconnect the intimate realities of decision-making that are totally context-dependent, and just start multiplying something by a large number. . .it’s completely wrong-headed.”20

A final consequence of this top-down, strategic planning orien- tation is that place-based approaches and bottom-up initiatives that could move the Gates Foundation toward its goal of rural pov- erty alleviation get ignored because they are too limited in scope, distant, or context-specific to make it onto the Foundation’s radar screen or attract its interest. These observations collectively reveal some of the downsides of the new strategic philanthropy, the BMGF’s ‘‘high impact” orientation, and of grantmaking-at-a- distance.

5. The strategic planning product: Agricultural development program design

The original program strategy to which the strategic planning process gave rise had four grantmaking areas that were designed to work together.21 ‘‘Farmer Productivity” focused on breeding improved seeds and improving the quality of soils, mainly with fer- tilizer. ‘‘Science and Technology” aimed to address crop diseases, pests, and changing climatic conditions. ‘‘Markets” sought to link smallholder farmers to new input and output markets. And ‘‘Policy and Statistics” would promote policies to create a better business environment and support data collection. Although these grantmak- ing areas have changed designations several times since 2006, they, along with livestock (added in 2011), remain the central foci of the program. Between 2006 and mid-2018, the Gates Foundation awarded 945 Agricultural Development grants worth just under $4.9 billion to 427 organizations.22

From the start, the Agricultural Development Program strategy was designed to be comprehensive. In the words of an official who helped design the strategy,

[A]griculture is a system and if you’re really going to have an impact, you need to make sure you’re investing all along the key points in that system. That’s how the value chain approach emerged – we’re going to [invest] in research and development because there are neglected areas there, but we have to improve

19 Author interview, October 2013. 20 Author interview, December 2011. 21 Agricultural Development Strategy Overview, Gates Foundation, December 2009. 22 These figures pertain to the period January 2006-June 2018. Calculated from the BMGF’s grants data base available on the Foundation’s website. Note that these figures refer to grant commitments, not expenditures. Thanks to Matt Gunther for his help with these data.

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the productivity of smallholders, so what are all of the things around improving soil management and ensuring women are included, . . . that happen at the farm level? And then, how do we ensure that that product gets . . . into the market and actu- ally creates a sustainable loop? [That] became our Market Access program. And obviously, policy influences all of that. So that’s how the four groups got developed. It was a way to address the agricultural system and identify high return-on- investment opportunities in all of those areas.23

Although the plan was certainly comprehensive, the system it privileged was an abstract market system based on individual crops rather than on an actual farming system, which rests on a complex mix of economic activities, sociocultural norms, and eco- logical conditions. This tendency to abstract away from the local and specific reflects the commonsense thinking of staff who are trained in analytical abstraction and who generally had little expe- rience of African rural life.24 Yet, as extensive research on African farming systems has shown, there is a complex interrelationship among the activities in which farmers engage, including the plant- ing, tending, harvesting, and uses of different crops (Aune & Bationo, 2008; Pretty, Toulmin, & Williams, 2011). These interdepen- dencies are further complicated by the cultural norms and social relations that translate into distinct labor demands for different household members for each crop—social relations that vary by community, ethnic group, and local history and that represent a crit- ical form of social insurance (Berry, 1993). Rights and responsibili- ties associated with consumption also vary across ethnic groups, as well as by gender, age, and role in the family (Gengenbach, 2017; Guyer, 1984; Mandala, 2005). All of this suggests that context is cru- cial for shaping the consequences of agricultural development inter- ventions and there is no singular farming system to which a crop- or market-based intervention uniformly applies. Hence, even though the Foundation pays lip service to agroecological and social diversity, the fact that it takes a crop- instead of place-based approach ignores this critical variation in context. It is, however, consistent with its attraction to technological fixes and the ‘‘scalability” of its investments.

Once they devised a strategy, Program officials put their plan into action by searching for organizations that could help them achieve their goals. A top priority was to find an organization that could carry out work in Africa, since the Gates Foundation did not want to put staff in the field.25 After determining that no existing organization met its needs, the Gates Foundation partnered with the Rockefeller Foundation to create one, based on Rockefeller’s existing African agriculture program. The institution the two founda- tions established with an initial grant of $146 million was the Alli- ance for a Green Revolution in Africa, or AGRA.26

Another dimension of the Gates Foundation’s initial strategy involved funding work in the four areas noted above. Generally speaking, the agriculture program focused on organizations that were well-established, could bring projects to scale, and could absorb big money.27 In the Markets area, the Gates team went to a few large and long-standing international NGOs – Technoserve, Heifer, and two German organizations – awarding them grants rang- ing from $24 million to $47 million to integrate smallholder farmers into coffee, cocoa, cashew and cotton value chains.28 It gave $66 mil-

23 Phone interview with senior Gates Agriculture official, July 2012. 24 This has changed somewhat over time, as the Foundation has hired more people with this sort of experience. 25 In 2014, the Foundation decided to open small offices in Ethiopia, Nigeria, and South Africa to support its programs. 26 This represented $96 million from Gates and $50 million from Rockefeller. These figures come from the foundations’ grants data bases available on the web. 27 Author interview with senior Gates Agriculture official, July 2012. 28 BMGF, Agricultural Development Strategy Overview, December 2009.

lion to the UN World Food Programme’s new Purchase for Progress (P4P) program, so it could buy regionally rather than importing U. S. food surpluses. It directed Science and Technology grants to a few costly R&D projects that it hoped would become game- changing investments: a wheat rust resistance project at Cornell, and two large collaborative projects on drought resistant maize. Finally, the Foundation channeled early policy-related grants to sev- eral African policy institutes to build local capacity, and to the Inter- national Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington D.C. and Michigan State University, to carry out applied economic stud- ies. This became the scaffolding on which the BMGF’s agricultural program was built.

6. The BMGF’s ‘Reboot’ culture

An important aspect of strategic planning at the BMGF involves the frequent revisiting and realignment of program strategies. Once an initial plan is developed, programs review their strategies annually. Such reviews are seen as an opportunity to keep the co- chairs up-to-date on program strategies and their execution. Every three to five years, programs undertake a more comprehensive review known as a strategy refresh. This allows the Foundation to make course corrections if a program is not performing as desired (Gates Foundation, 2011).

The practice of reviewing and adjusting a plan on a regular basis is laudable, since it does not make sense to follow a plan that is not working. Yet, at the same time, the BMGF’s reboot culture has problematic consequences, inside and outside the foundation. Fre- quent course corrections sometimes lead the foundation to lurch from one strategy to another, as projects do not perform as well as hoped and strategic plans get reformulated. Strategy refreshes can also trigger significant reorganizations, making it difficult to get things done.29

Recurring strategy shifts can also have unsettling effects on grantees and those who depend on them. The 2011 program strat- egy refresh led the foundation to narrow its focus from over two dozen African countries to seven ‘‘priority” countries. Another course correction led the program to limit its focus to staple crops. Subsequently, the Agricultural Development team decided to focus on a subset of staple crops.30 It also added livestock as a funding area. One Gates grant recipient noted that when the decision to pri- oritize a small number of countries was made, she had to figure out what to do with a project she had that spread across three countries, two of which were dropped from the Foundation’s portfolio. She was frustrated because the decision threatened relationships she had developed with these farming communities over many years.31

While one can read the BMGF’s reboot culture as a form of agi- lity and as a positive reflection of ‘‘program learning” (a touted attribute of the Gates Foundation’s modus operandi), it can be anxiety-producing for those who depend on Foundation funding. The inevitable disruption that such churning creates also raises important questions about the veracity of claims about strategic philanthropy’s superior rationality and efficiency (Brest & Harvey, 2008), particularly given the short time frames increasingly favored by donors looking for strong evidence of program results (Edwards, 2010). At the rhetorical level, the Gates Foundation acknowledges that change takes time, yet at a practical level, this recognition stands in tension with the foundation’s organizational culture.

Finally, shifting gears on a regular basis because the numbers do not look good does not necessarily lead to sound decision-making.

29 Not all reorganizations are related to strategic course corrections; some are prompted by other concerns. 30 Author interviews with Gates agriculture officials, July 2012 and March 2014. 31 Author fieldnotes on conversation with Gates grantee, August 2012.

188 R. Schurman / World Development 112 (2018) 180–192

For one thing, it assumes that one has meaningful numbers—a questionable assumption in a world in which grantees’ future funding depends on their ability to show a successful performance (in the case of NGO implementers) or to evaluate a project in a timely fashion and within budget (in the case of project evaluators) (Springer, 2017). One former official told me that the Foundation abandoned a large project that s/he thought was working well because the team had chosen to collect data on a problematic mea- sure and then based their evaluation on it. As this example sug- gests, questions of data reliability and validity abound and can lead to poor decision-making. Second, as an in-house Gates consul- tant observed, the foundation’s reliance on quantitative indicators leads to an overly mechanical approach that ignores the human element.32 Taken alone, numbers cannot adequately capture what is going on, as the feminist literature has argued (Jayaratne & Stewart, 1991; Moser, 2007).

7. Working at the Foundation

Gates officials are expected to devote long hours to the job, tra- vel extensively, and put their personal lives on hold. Bill Gates’ own energy level is remarkable and the pace at which he works sets a standard that permeates the Foundation. Contributing to the intense work pace is a feeling among staff of being on a world- changing mission. This sense of ‘‘missionness” is created by the foundation’s leadership and is deeply felt by employees. It is fre- quently expressed by the Foundation’s co-chairs, who travel around the world, speaking about their cause and inviting others to support it. It is evident in BMGF job advertisements (‘‘We are looking for people who enjoy. . . collaboratively creating solutions that have the potential for transformational change in the lives of smallholder farmers”) and on the Foundation’s website (‘‘All lives have equal value. We are impatient optimists working to reduce inequity.”33) Staff are inspired by these messages and many choose to work at the Foundation because they want to do meaningful work. Employees describe the organization’s mission as ‘‘admirable,” ‘‘wonderful,” and ‘‘inspiring,” and indicate that ‘‘the cause” is one of the most positive aspects of working there.34 All of this con- tributes to the high energy level that is part of the organization’s cul- ture. As one interviewee observed about the BMGF, ‘‘the level of enthusiasm to make the world a better place is extraordinarily high.”35

Yet the extreme dedication and personal commitment one needs to survive at the Foundation also leads to staff burnout and high turnover. Comments on Glassdoor reveal the toll that workplace stress takes on employees’ personal lives. The average professional career at the Foundation lasts three to seven years. Of the nineteen senior officials hired to staff the Agricultural Devel- opment Program between 2006 and 2008, only five were still there a decade later. This is different than the employment patterns in the old foundation world, where staff often stayed on for their entire careers. While admittedly an extreme case, Gary Toennies- son, the former director of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Food Secu- rity program, worked at Rockefeller for thirty years and became a walking repository of institutional experience, knowledge, and his- torical memory.

Another explanation for high staff turnover seems to lie in the Foundation’s penchant for fresh thinking and new ideas. The Gates

32 Personal correspondence with Agricultural Development Program advisor, November 2017. 33 BMGF website, http://www.gatesfoundation.org/, accessed December 29, 2016. 34 Of the 187 comments I reviewed on Glassdoor, 102 mentioned the mission as a ‘pro’ of working at the organization. These are terms they used. 35 Author interview with BMGF consultant, March 2012.

Foundation values newness and innovation, including among its own professional staff. Indeed, part of the Foundation’s reboot cul- ture is reflected in its employment norms, which are similar to the IT world. ‘‘[T]he Foundation has, from the very beginning, had a mindset that ‘we don’t see ourselves as lifetime employers’ and ‘we see the Foundation as a way of people coming in, spending a few years, bringing in new knowledge and then going off to do something else’,” reported one senior program official.36 While fresh thinking can be useful, it also reflects the view (and historical practice) that it is fine to treat the global South as a ‘‘living labora- tory,” ripe for experimentation (see Tilley, 2011; Fejerskov, 2017b).

High staff turnover rates adversely affect the functioning of BMGF programs, since new employees must be brought up to speed when they come on board. But more importantly, high turn- over represents a significant loss of experience and knowledge. When staff leave, they take their knowledge with them. Frequent turnover also negatively impacts those who work with the Founda- tion. As one former Gates official explains:

What’s hard on staff is that it takes over a year to really figure out how to operate in that environment. . . .And the grantees! The poor grantees are left hanging with constant change of pri- orities and strategies. [T]hey’ve been given a grant for several million dollars to work for five years on a project and all of a sudden, they find out that the new people don’t even like it, or it’s not going to get refunded. . . It eats away at the momentum.37

It is difficult to be efficient or effective, much less build good grantor-grantee relationships, with continual staff turmoil.

8. Engineering control

Like many contemporary foundations, the BMGF is goal ori- ented, and directs its funding toward organizations it believes can help it achieve those goals. To identify such organizations, the foundation typically seeks advice from its extensive network of experts, starting with its own senior staff and radiating outward. It then invites these organizations to submit concept papers and, if the interest continues, full proposals.

The BMGF’s formal and informal grantmaking norms have a number of significant consequences for grantee selection, most of which push in the same direction—i.e., toward large organizations and big grant awards. First, key litmus tests for choosing grantees include (a) whether an organization can absorb and manage resources effectively, and (b) whether it can meet the Foundation’s strict financial accountability criteria. This works against small organizations in the global South, which typically cannot meet US financial accounting and other requirements, and for large and established organizations – many of which are international and/or based in advanced industrialized countries. Second, because using resources efficiently is a trope at the Foundation, project offi- cers prefer to work with large organizations and to give them a few large grants rather than administering dozens of small grants to small organizations, which is considered more costly.38 Third, once the BMGF starts working with an organization, it will often continue to fund it if the work goes well, since there is an economy of trust associated with working with a familiar entity. This serves to con- centrate funds among a limited number of grantees.

These observations are supported by the data in Table 2, which provides various measures of the BMGF’s agricultural grantmaking.

36 Author interview with BMGF official, March 2014. 37 Author interview with former Senior Project Officer, August 2016. 38 Author interviews with BMGF officials.

Table 2 Gates foundation agriculture-related grants and grantees (Jan. 1, 2006-June 30, 2018).

(a) Top 15 Gates agricultural development grantees

Organization Award total ($ millions)

# of grants Headquarters

1 Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) $625.8 17 Kenya 2 Centro Int’l de Mejoramiento de Maiz y Trigo (CIMMYT) $260.7 22 Mexico 3 Cornell University $199.1 24 US 4 International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) $195.4 30 US 5 International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) $160.6 14 Philippines 6 World Bank $156.4 18 US 7 African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) $143.1 11 Kenya 8 Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicines $140.9 7 UK 9 Int’l Crops Research Inst. for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) $120.4 12 India 10 International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) $118.5 21 Nigeria 11 TechnoServe, Inc. $98.3 14 US 12 United Nations World Food Programme (UN WFP) $95.4 10 Italy 13 International Potato Center (CIP) $76.3 11 Peru 14 Heifer Project International $75.0 2 US 15 UN Food & Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) $68.9 15 Italy

Subtotal $2,534.7 All others $2,345.1

Total $4,879.8

(b) Bottom 15 Gates agricultural development grantees

Organization Award total # of grants Headquarter location

Society for International Development $3,000 1 US Trust for Advancement of Agricultural Sciences $10,000 1 India Congressional Hunger Center $24,581 1 US Dakota Wesleyan University $25,000 1 US International Fertilizer Development Center $25,000 1 US Stellenbosch University $25,000 1 South Africa South Carolina Research Foundation $31,680 1 US The Corporate Council on Africa (CCA) $35,000 1 US Vrutti $35,968 1 India University of California $36,757 1 US Hellenic Agricultural Organization – Demeter $38,379 1 Greece Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics $50,000 1 Brazil Foundation International One Health Congress $56,825 1 Canada M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation $61,493 1 India Columbia University $75,000 2 US

(c) Distribution of Ag development grants by award size

Grant size (in $) (a) # of individual grants (b) % of total grants (n = 945)

(c) Total value of grants (in $ millions)

(d) % of total (column (c) / $4,879.8)

Over $20 million 59 6.2 $2,122.7 43.5 $10-$19.9 million 82 8.7 $1,139.7 23.3 $5-$9.9 million 115 12.2 $804.2 16.5 $1-$4.9 million 265 28.0 $680.0 13.9 Under $1 million 424 44.9 $133.2 2.7 Total 945 100% $4,879.8 99.9%

Summary statistics: a) Total number of agricultural development grantees: 427. b) Total number of agricultural development grants: 945. c) Total agricultural development-related awards over period: $4.9 billion. d) Number of grantees receiving less than $1 million: 194. e) Top 15 grantees received 52% of all funding awarded ($2.5 billion). Source: BMGF grants data base, as of June 30, 2018.

39 To be fair, some of the grant-giving is done by AGRA, which was set up to be the BMGF’s and Rockefeller’s representative in the field. Like its benefactors, however, AGRA generally runs large programs that it manages and directs, e.g., its seed breeding, agro-dealer and training programs. It is not a major supporter of local, community-based organizations.

R. Schurman / World Development 112 (2018) 180–192 189

The top fifteen grant recipients collectively garnered $2.5 billion, or just over half of all agricultural development grants awarded. About 20% (over a billion dollars) of the program budget goes to the large, international organizations comprising the ‘‘CGIAR” international agriculture research system. At the other end of the spectrum, the Agriculture Program has given 424 small grants (i.e., grants under $1 million) to 194 different organizations over the twelve and half years of its operation. This amounts to an aver- age of only 34 small grants per year (2.2 per grantee) – not a very

large number for such a major funder, especially since most of these small grants are for conferences, not for organizations work- ing in the field.39

190 R. Schurman / World Development 112 (2018) 180–192

8.1. Directive grantmaking

The organizational culture at the Foundation is for project offi- cers to be actively involved and highly directive with their gran- tees, at least in the formulation stage when project officers have the most control. The BMGF’s culture of planning profoundly shapes the grant writing process, and through that, the work a grantee will do. ‘‘. . .[T]hey have an extremely hands-on. . . culture,” reported one grant recipient, from a US-based NGO. ‘‘They were in constant contact with us when we were working on the grant, going through it on a very detailed basis with track changes and saying, ‘would this improve it, would that reduce it?’” Through the questions project officers ask and the suggestions they make, BMGF project officers actively involve themselves in project for- mulation. This includes helping to determine what a grantee will (and will not) do, since some of a group’s ideas will inevitably not coincide with the Foundation’s interests. Such grantee micro- management plainly reflects the growth of donor control noted by literature on the new philanthropy (Eisenberg, 2013; Ostrander, 2007). It contrasts sharply with the old-style philan- thropy in which foundations provided long-term operating support to groups thought to be doing good work in an area (Tompkins- Stange, 2016).

A Gates official with decades of international agriculture expe- rience elucidated just how closely the foundation works with its grantees—and influences their work. As he explains,

The model that the Rockefeller Foundation followed . . . was, you have these program officers. . .—essentially grant-making groups who build long-term relationships with the regions and with the partners—and they funded activities. And they had a certain vision of what they wanted, like the rice biotech- nology program. . . . But they were grantmakers. . . .They would monitor it once in a while, . . . but you were the person doing the work and they gave you the money. The Gates Foundation has a very different approach. [It] has this internal tension between grantmaking and implementing projects. So con- stantly you have program officers who are much more comfort- able going in and rolling up their sleeves and doing the work.40

This leads some grantees to feel – and behave – more like con- tractors than autonomous organizations. According to my infor- mant, this is what happened with international agricultural research centers when the BMGF, which is now a major funder of these ‘‘CGIAR” institutions, adopted a restrictive funding form of grant giving.41 While they are grateful for the money, these once publicly funded institutions sometimes operate like private, scien- tific research arms of the Foundation.

Another way the foundation shapes grantee behavior is through the practice of target setting. BMGF grants are replete with pre- cisely defined targets that grantees are expected to achieve. Typi- cally, these take a numerical form: number of farmers reached with improved seeds, number of women’s groups formed, number of farmer videos screened. While specifying targets is now com- mon among foundations (Edwards, 2010) and within the develop- ment world more broadly (Eyben, 2013; Wallace, 2007), the BMGF has a reputation for its excessive fixation on numerical targets (Bosworth, 2011). ‘‘There [is] a real focus on bottom line impact and . . . a lot of bean counting,” observed one agriculture program consultant. In his experience with several early projects, BMGF program officers and grantees became so focused on meeting the targets that ‘‘the projects got hardwired in terms of what activities were done and there was little potential for either adaptation . . .or

40 Author interview, March 2014. 41 ibid.

for learning and experimentation.”42 The irony is that this is pre- cisely what the Gates Foundation hopes to avoid in its quest for flex- ibility and learning.

After a grant is awarded, grantees can and do stray from the planned course of action, since the Foundation cannot fully control what happens once grant money is disbursed (Fejerskov, 2018a). But the Foundation’s culture of accountability and ‘‘outcome-inve sting” seeks to prevent this from happening. The Foundation’s focus on setting, measuring and achieving specific outcomes has been honed into a virtual science, as can be seen in its Powerpoint on ‘‘outcome investing” (OI).43 Indeed, the ‘‘scientization” of devel- opment through positivist empirical modeling and testing is one of the hallmarks – and central effects – of the BMGF’s entry into the field.

In closing, let me underscore that I am not arguing that the BMGF controls its grant recipients by telling them what to think or do. In fact, several of my informants greatly appreciated the Foundation’s willingness to listen as they developed their propos- als and worked together over the years. A few spoke positively of the BMGF’s desire for objectivity when it came to how consultants evaluated a proposal or what they wrote about ongoing projects. I am arguing that the Gates Foundation’s culture of ‘‘hands on” grantmaking represents a form of top-down donor control that leads or pushes grantees in certain directions. It does so by making suggestions about what grantees should do and how they should do it, requiring them to meet stringent and often, overly optimistic numerical targets, and hiring them to carry out specific projects. In the process, it creates a system in which plans and ideas flow in a downward direction far more readily than they flow upward. As a result, the voices and perspectives of the foundation’s intended beneficiaries quickly disappear from the picture.

9. Conclusion

Through an analysis of the Gates Foundation’s Agricultural Development Program, this article has sought to deepen our under- standing of one of the most important new actors in development today. While other scholars have analyzed the Gates Foundation’s role in agricultural development, few have examined the organiza- tion from a sociological and cultural perspective. Taking such an approach offers a host of new insights into this powerful organiza- tion. By focusing on who is at the helm, we can see how these indi- viduals’ educational backgrounds, professional training, and work experiences shape them as development actors. Studying organiza- tional culture also gives us purchase on what makes ‘‘common sense” within an organization and how particular cultural disposi- tions are linked to behaviors and norms that then get projected into the development field.

As shown here, the individuals who were given the task of cre- ating the BMGF’s Agricultural Development Program came largely from the corporate and strategic management worlds and had a strong business orientation. Given the foundation’s proclivity to hire ‘‘smart generalists” who excelled in their careers, it ended up with a group that was adept at abstract problem-solving, assembling resources, and developing strategic plans, but had little familiarity with African farming systems and village life, and the wide variety of languages, land tenure arrangements, and gender and kinship relations that exist on the continent. These individuals dug into their jobs with aplomb and applied their skills to solving what they defined as Africa’s agricultural problems. They came up with a model that looked notably similar to the one with which they were most familiar: a crop-based, commercial farming model

42 Interview with long-time Gates consultant, April 2012. 43 https://docs.gatesfoundation.org/Documents/OI%20Overview%20Deck_gf.pptx.

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in which every farmer is a business-oriented entrepreneur and each aspect of the system can be modernized and ‘‘brought to scale.”

As this article’s opening quotation indicates, Bill Gates and his foundation clearly expected to learn from experience and adapt themselves to the job. And over the years, the Gates Foundation has made some important changes, hiring more Africans, paying more attention to finding the right metrics, and recognizing (at least in the case of a small number of project officers) that qualita- tive data do have something to offer.44 But organizational cultures have a certain staying power, in part because newcomers become socialized into the prevailing culture, even while they may also act to change it. In other words, cultural change can and does occur, but it is path dependent. It is impossible to start wholly anew.

Bill Gates’s own impact on the Foundation, at least while he is heavily involved, will remain a key constraint on organizational change. The effect of having this particular boss in the corner office has been both inspiring and intimidating for Foundation employ- ees. Rather than seeking out and listening to their intended bene- ficiaries, the BMGF’s professional staff have learned to focus on the man they consider the smartest in the world and to look to him for approval. This feature of the foundation’s organizational culture inverts what should be the Gates Foundation’s primary source of affirmation and accountability: those whose lives they seek to improve. It also serves to insulate BMGF officials from the field.

One of the alleged attributes of the ‘‘new philanthropists” is that they engage more directly with their grantees than the old founda- tions. This is certainly the case with the Gates Foundation. Yet engaging with one’s hand-picked grantees when they comprise large international research organizations or mammoth interna- tional development contractors is distinctly different than engag- ing actively with smallholder farmers, poor HIV/AIDs carriers, or Indian slumdwellers – all of whom the Gates Foundation sees as its central beneficiaries. A serious engagement with the latter would mean putting many more of its own people on the ground so they could develop a richer understanding of people’s lives in specific places and learn firsthand what kinds of support they desire. It would mean working with organizations that are deeply embedded in specific communities rather than hiring large (and often foreign) development organizations to carry out the Founda- tion’s strategic plans. And it would mean supporting numerous, small-scale, local initiatives rather than focusing on one-size-fits- all interventions.

Stepping back, it is important to ask what sort of broader impacts the Gates Foundation and its organizational culture are having on the development arena. Its most direct and obvious influence is through the enormous market power it wields; in choosing what sorts of organizations and projects it wants to spend its billions on, it plays a major role in determining what early 21st century ‘‘Development” looks like. Less obvious forms of influence include the Gates Foundation’s power to get organizations to behave in ways they otherwise would not have. Through its norms, interactions with grantees, and grant-making demands, the BMGF shapes these dependent organizations’ priorities, internal resource-allocation decisions, hiring practices (and hence, organi- zational capacities) and daily practices. Some of this change is superficial, but some will be long-lasting. Through processes of institutional isomorphism (Powell & DiMaggio, 1991), the Founda- tion thus becomes an important trend setter, as other organiza- tions are motivated or incentivized to follow its lead.

Finally, while the Gates Foundation is not the first or the only development actor to move in this direction, its obsession with

44 Author interviews with Gates agriculture official (September 2016) and long-time BMGF grantee (October 2017).

having and measuring impact and its ‘‘hard data” orientation have further encouraged and legitimized the scientization of develop- ment, or what Li (2007) calls the ‘rendering technical’ of develop- ment, in the extreme. While conducting careful empirical analysis is crucially important, particularly at this political- historical moment, the social world is far too messy, varied, and complex to be understood only through positivist scientific meth- ods and based on the assumption that there are universal laws that can be discovered and will hold regardless of place, culture, and history.

Acknowledgements

Many people read versions of this article and gave me useful feedback. I am sorry I only have the space to single out a few: Ter- esa Gowan, Michael Goldman, William Munro and Tom Bassett. I also want to thank three of my graduate students for their ongoing research support and our many stimulating conversations: Matt Gunther (who also performed miracles with the grants data), Emily Springer and Aaron Eddens. And last but not least, two anonymous World Development reviewers pushed me to go the last yard, for which I am grateful.

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