As I tossed and turned my phone rang and it was Taylor calling to tell me that I couldn’t make a gift directly to the United Nations. Just as an individual can’t get involved with issues relating to debts owed by nation-states, the U.N. also cannot accept direct donations from individuals. Part of me was relieved; I thought that maybe this was God’s way of telling me that I wasn’t supposed to give away all that money!
But I couldn’t shake the idea of a billion-dollar gift and when I’m faced with obstacles, I love thinking through ways to get around them. I came up with another approach. Why not create an independent foundation that doesn’t give money directly to the U.N. but gives financial support to their causes? This seemed like it might work and when I ran it by my lawyers and financial people, they agreed. We developed a plan in which I would provide the foundation with $100 million a year for ten years. Looking at this in terms of present net value, it was worth something less than a billion in ’97 dollars but it was still close and a lot of money. By the end of that next day we had worked out enough of the details that I could go ahead and make the announcement.
Kofi Annan had only been secretary-general since the beginning of that year and we’d already gotten to know each other. He was going to be in the audience that night and I didn’t want my announcement to surprise him, so I asked for a meeting in his office that afternoon. When I walked him through my plan, he thought I was kidding; but once he realized I was serious, he was thrilled. He had a tough job and it was a treat for him to get some good news.
My spirits were lifted by Kofi’s response and that evening wound up being one of the most exciting of my life. The dinner was a black-tie affair at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square and the place was packed. People assumed I’d give a standard acceptance speech, so when I instead announced that I’d be giving a billion dollars to U.N.-related causes the audience was stunned. The ovation was tremendous. It gave me an incredible amount of pride to be in a position to make this kind of gift, but I also made a point to thank all the employees at Turner Broadcasting and Time Warner because if it hadn’t been for all their hard work, the stock would never have performed so well.
There was a crush of press attention and immediately following the dinner—still wearing my tux—I went on CNN’s
Larry King Live
to talk some more about it. When they were getting the graphics ready before the show I looked at the monitor and it said “Breaking News.” I joked to Larry, who by then was an old friend, “Yeah, the ‘breaking news’ is that Ted Turner’s broke!”
But when the show began I made it clear that while the amount I was giving away was certainly a lot of money, I was going to be just fine and I was putting other rich people on notice that I would be calling on them to be more generous. Once I got to be wealthy and started to spend time with other people who were rich, I was amazed at how little some of them gave away. Many people had more money than they knew what to do with, and my point to them was—don’t give away the cash you know what to do with, just give all that extra money you
don’t
know what to do with. Being generous always made me feel great, and it seemed like every time I gave money away, I somehow made that much more. Now that I was pledging such a large amount, I could lead by example and decided it was time for me to get out in front of the parade.
By making my announcement so quickly there was no time to come up with a name for the new foundation. I later decided that the ideal one would be the most straightforward: the United Nations Foundation. When I ran this by Kofi Annan he said that they believed in us and would give us permission to use their prestigious name.
I knew that running a foundation like this would be a difficult, full-time job and I wanted to find someone who was not only a good leader but who also had strong political connections around the world. During the course of my many visits to Washington to testify on behalf of the SuperStation and various other issues, I had come to know Colorado congressman Tim Wirth. Serving as a member of both the House of Representatives and later, the Senate, Tim spent a lot of time on environmental, population growth, and climate change issues. After leaving the Senate he worked in the State Department as undersecretary for global affairs. He was the perfect guy for the job and I was thrilled when he accepted my offer.
Tim and his team have accomplished a great deal in the years since we created the United Nations Foundation. We’ve focused our efforts on children’s health, energy and the environment, peace, security, and human rights, technology, and women and population, and have supported U.N. projects in 115 countries. A big part of the UNF’s success has been its ability to partner with other organizations to tackle these big problems. For example, in trying to fight polio around the world we’ve joined forces with Rotary International, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and others to try to bring as many resources and as much coordination to the problem as we can. By partnering we can also spread the range of issues and broaden the number of territories we serve.
I’m particularly proud of the work we’ve done to fight malaria—a preventable and treatable disease that kills more than one million people every year (one person dies from malaria every thirty seconds). People can lower their risk of infection dramatically by sleeping under mosquito nets; and since a quality bed net costs about $10, this was a solution we could pursue effectively. Things really came together in 2006 when Rick Reilly of
Sports Illustrated
got behind this cause and wrote a column about it. We created a campaign called “Nothing But Nets.” Partnering with organizations like
Sports Illustrated,
the NBA, the Mark Gordon Foundation, the United Methodist Church, and the Lutherans, we’ve raised tremendous awareness and nearly $20 million to support this cause.
Getting back to the issue that first motivated me to consider offering financial support to the U.N., we’ve also helped convince the United States government to pay its dues. The U.N. itself doesn’t have a lobbying function so we created a foundation subsidiary called the Better World Fund to do that work on their behalf. We ran ads in local markets urging people to write their congressman or woman and tell them that great nations pay their debts. The campaign worked!
Thanks to Tim Wirth and his great team, the U.N. Foundation has done innovative work to make the world a better place and has helped strengthen the U.N. in the process. This gives me a lot of satisfaction, as have my efforts to influence other wealthy people to become more active in philanthropy. After announcing my billion-dollar grant I challenged my fellow billionaires to do more. I realized that many of them used their net worth as a way to keep score and they enjoyed seeing where they ranked on lists put out by magazines like
Fortune
and
Forbes
. Understanding how competitive most of these people are, I called on the media outlets to start publishing lists of these people who
gave away
the most. I figured that this would not only motivate people to try to get to the top of the philanthropy list, it could also shame some whose names didn’t show up. People aren’t born knowing how to give; we’re basically pretty selfish creatures and being generous is something we have to learn. In any event, Salon.com was the first to take up the list idea and other media outlets joined in later. While Bill Gates was already giving away a lot of money before we went public with our campaign, he has given me some credit for calling it to his attention, and it was particularly gratifying to see Warren Buffett make his massive pledge to the Gates Foundation in 2006.
A TED STORY
“What an Honor for Me”
—Muhammad Yunus
(WINNER OF THE 2006 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE, MUHAMMAD YUNUS IS THE FOUNDER OF THE GRAMEEN BANK OF BANGLADESH AND A MEMBER OF THE UNITED NATIONS FOUNDATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS.)
I was in Washington attending a meeting when I heard a news item that Ted Turner had donated $1 billion to the United Nations. About an hour later I gave an interview to a journalist, who, among other things, asked me, “What do you think of Ted Turner donating $1 billion to the U.N.?”
Immediately I said, “It’s a crazy idea. Why should he give $1 billion to the United Nations?”
And the journalist said, “Why not? What’s wrong with it?”
“This will all disappear in meeting the U.N.’s financial gap,” I said, “because they will probably pay their salaries with it or something like that. If he wants to get the best mileage out of it he should create a foundation and give the money to the foundation so the money is managed well. That’s the best way to do it.” So that was the first instantaneous remark I made, without knowing that Ted had already planned to do exactly that.
About six months later I was back in Bangladesh and got a call from him. After he explained that he wanted me to join the U.N. Foundation board I said, “This is unbelievable that you are tracking me down in Bangladesh. What an honor for me.” This was in 1998 and was my first contact with Ted Turner. When I first attended a board meeting and met Ted in person I had no idea what to expect. I knew he had lots of money, but when I talked to him he was a very regular kind of a guy—very friendly, warm, and casual.
But as I continued to know him I saw the depth of this person and through his foundation he has created a completely new window for a private initiative to work with the U.N. Although the United Nations Charter says, “We the people,” governments took it over and it became a governmental organization. Ted Turner made a difference in a big way by showing that the private sector can play a role in helping the United Nations really become the people’s organization.
I’ve also shared some lighter moments with Ted. I remember one time walking to a meeting with him on the streets of New York, and as we walked and talked he’d stop to pick up little pieces of trash. Along the way, any trash he found he picked it up and he always held on to it until he found a trash can to deposit it. He did this very meticulously and I thought it was very funny. There are so many people in New York City and so much trash, why should one person keep on picking it up? But later on I understood how committed he was in keeping the city clean and also his notion that if everyone did their small part like this, we wouldn’t have any litter piling up.
On another occasion we were attending a U.N. Foundation board meeting in Brazil. We were on a field visit visiting an organization that ran an innovative health program for the poor. The organization head was making an open-air presentation to us. It was a beautiful, warm day. Besides the U.N. Foundation board members, several distinguished guests were also in attendance. Of course, the presentations were carefully prepared and the atmosphere around was very serious. We were all listening very carefully and attentively when, suddenly, Ted looked at a tree nearby and became completely withdrawn from the discussions. He started drifting away from us and began playing with a monkey who was jumping on the tree. He even followed him as he moved from tree to tree! I’ll never forget that moment. We had all been so serious but when we saw Ted Turner—the chairman of the foundation—chasing that monkey around the trees, we all burst into laughter! Ted loves animals. He could not help it.
As I began to channel more of my energies and resources toward philanthropic causes I had an even greater desire to improve Time Warner’s performance and to drive up its stock. The better that Time Warner did, the more I’d be able to give away.
But in the final years of the 1990s, bigger, traditional media companies like Time Warner started to lose the spotlight to newer start-ups that were making their mark online. Having been a leader in the cable industry when it was new, I wasn’t sure if I had the energy to do it all over again with the Internet. I felt like I’d made my way all the way to California and before I caught my breath, they wanted me to build the Golden Gate Bridge!
Transitions
A
few months before my decision to create the United Nations Foundation, Jerry Levin’s son was murdered. Losing a child is difficult in any circumstances and this case was particularly tragic. Jonathan Levin was an English teacher at a Bronx high school and he was stabbed and shot by former students who broke into his Manhattan apartment to steal his ATM card for drug money. In keeping with Jewish custom, the funeral was held the day after his body was discovered (it turned out he’d been murdered three days earlier), and it was clear to everyone in the synagogue that Jerry was devastated.
Given the high-profile nature of the crime and since so many people saw Jerry in such rough shape at the funeral, some speculated that he would retire. They couldn’t imagine how he could recover from this kind of loss and continue to run a big public company like Time Warner—or if he’d even want to. I did what I could to be supportive and I knew from the aftermath of my father’s suicide that while there’s always the option to quit and run, working your way through a tragedy can sometimes be the best way to move forward.
Jerry chose to return. Within two weeks of his son’s funeral he was back in the office with a renewed desire to grow the company, but to do so in a way that would make a difference and leave a legacy that would have made his son proud. I respected him for this decision and later when I announced my billion-dollar pledge, Jerry described my philanthropy as being emblematic of the kind of company that he was trying to build.
Jerry Levin didn’t just want Time Warner to be big, he wanted it to be great, and in the late 1990s, it seemed like the great new businesses were being created on the Internet. I first started paying attention to the Internet when I heard references to “dot-coms” in sales reports from our cable networks. CNN and our entertainment channels were enjoying tremendous growth in ad sales during the mid- to late 1990s and an increasing percentage of that money came from dot-coms. Some of these new start-ups raised large amounts of capital at high valuations and then spent a lot of that money on traditional media outlets like television, radio, and print. As investors poured their resources into online companies they turned their noses up at the older conglomerates like Time Warner. It was a strange time. I’d had to work hard for years to build Turner Broadcasting into a company that investors would value, and now these online entrepreneurs were raising millions of dollars almost out of thin air. After years of blazing trails, it felt odd to find myself at a company that was considered to be “old media.”