Daniel Lurie
Tipping Point Community

Aug 20 | archive | subscribe

A new foundation in San Francisco is trying to do the work for us. Tipping Point Community has taken a business approach to the charitable organization, treating donations and contributions as investments.

Daniel Lurie, 30, the founder and president of Tipping Point, tells WeeklyPhil that he based his nonprofit off of the Robin Hood Foundation in New York, an enormously successful group created by commodities trader Paul Tudor Jones II to enlist wealthy friends to raise money for programs that fight poverty.

“I started talking to people to see if this model is something that could work—could this fly in San Francisco? I talked to as many people as I could, and what I found was that people really didn’t know where to go. There [were] a lot of young people that wanted to give back but they didn’t know where to start—and they didn’t know how to get engaged in the process.”

Together with a newly formed board, they founded an aggressive 100 percent policy. Daniel Lurie explains, “Our founding board - Ronnie Lot, Chris James, Katie Schwab and I, thought this 100 percent policy would entice people to get engaged. The four board members cover all of the overhead, so when we go out and fundraise, people know that all of their money is going out the door. And there’s no endowment, so that means 100 percent goes out the door within 12 months.”

Some of their grantees such as EARN, Rubicon, First Place Fund for Youth and the Homeless Prenatal Program—helping women and their children find housing, helping them find jobs so they can care for their children. tippoint.org