Ive taken the course four times, and its finally starting to stick. So i encourage you if you are suffering to look at the Purple Mountain institute. Thank you very much. Thank you. I just want to hey, a big hand for our two authors, david finkel and ann jones. [applause] yeah. The authors will be autographing their books at the sales and signing rare number one at the ua bookstore tent. Please dont ask them on the way out, because they have to get there. The festival would like for me to say to please join as a friend of the festival for your taxdeductible donation allows us to offer programming free of charge to the public and support literary programs in the community. You may learn more at the booth on the mall or online at the web site. Please you have to actually leave the venue because another group is coming in right away, is please leave the venue and speak to them at the book signing area. Thank you for your support. [inaudible conversations]. The first is the codirector of the robin hood foundation. He has a phd in mit economics. The director of the Greenberg Center on foreign relations. Probably the reason that i wanted to be a moderator here today was recently had a summit on the subject of how the private sector can help address the issue of poverty. The nobel prizewinning economist James Heckman introduced himself on the panel and is indicating the reason he was here with listen to michael weinstein. He knows more about this and all that. The author now, michael weinstein. Thank you. Our other panelists is former chief executive officer of the National Public radio, a former litigator in washington dc. He served as deputy general counsel or the clintongore administration in 1990 for the campaign. He has and the Senior Adviser to the director of the International Broadcasting bureau and in his eight and a half year tenure at npr, they were known to strengthen the stability in part from the 200 milliondollar gift and he is the reason author of charity for all. Why charities are failing in a better way to manage it. Okay, so let me get this started by indicating to you in about a year and a half ago tucson was in a study in the six poorest metropolitan areas in the United States. We are now eight and i would like to take credit for that. But im not sure that a couple other cities havent already done that. But the good thing about it is that the community has now begun to focus on how to best address the issue of poverty systematically. We live in a time when we know that government either cannot or will not do at all. In my experience, which is only been a couple of years, i would say is parsimonious atbats. As you know you are here in the state of arizona. So what happens is this issue of poverty falls to the localities of the cities and counties to deal with, as im sure you know, the cities around the country are just doing their best to try to continue maintaining their presence services. So i think the recognition from all the private sector has held, yet both of you, i know knew books you have concerned about how the best way is to make this happen. Gentlemen, we are here to listen and learn area. I am an economist. So dont hold me too much accountable. That one of the things that the economists preach and i think reach correctly is that issues of poverty, any issue of redistribution is best handled at the highest level of government and not the locality. So that a town would be in rough shape if the choice redistribute income from the wealthier members of that community to lesser members. They will read it if its tax structures and Government Policies that favor people above a income or tax people above the Median Income in favor people blow it. So these kinds of things should be happening at the national level. People are less likely to leave the United States and they are to weave leave a particular city or whatever. Having said that and being mindful of the constraints that you are thinking about, i think i would be satisfied today if i convince you to adopt one conversation and drop another. The conversation then i urge you to drop is the conversation that says that we are going to eliminate poverty. We are going to find a game changer. We are going to radically alter the circumstances of low income residents of arizona or of tucson. All of these large global promises and etc. To assume a different language and a different notion, which is a rate of return. A kind of corporate business with normal corporate rates of return. If the private sector is going to do something is going to be because of marshalls dollars, spending them in a way that does the maximum good if they are philanthropic. And so you want them to spend their dollars that have the biggest impact in raising the Living Standards of the poor citizens they are trying to help. That doesnt mean that they have to be the biggest in town. They dont have to have a wreck will project or a Silver Bullet and they dont have to be a game changer. But what they have to do is spend dollars smartly. And i will say a few words and i will not. What we have done at robin hood, its an organization that gives away about 150 million per year fighting poverty in new york city. To put that in context, the Rockefeller Foundation will give away about to 2. 5 times that. And they operate around the world. We operated in one city. The very different model of having an effect. In the way we set ourselves up as we promised our donors, we have put in sophisticated sense of accountability and we view that as a relentless application of benefit cost analysis as an undergraduate. Putting in a sophisticated system that we take account for as to how these dollars are used no matter what weve used them. Whether its a micro learning program or a Prekindergarten Program or an Afterschool Program and emergency food. Whatever we are doing, we measure the effect of that on the low income residents of new york city. To bring these together we wrestled the following thought. We spend 150 million per year. If you look at our website and the materials that we put out, i like to believe that we can convince you for every dollar that we spend on average we raise the Living Standards were between 10 and 12. That is what we can do. That is what private sector can do. And we can put people in a better situation than they were without us. That brings these two conversations together and we leave it for public policy. We leave it for the political entity to adopt the kinds of policies that can have heartwrenching, if you will, more sweeping and more citywide impacts and that is not what a private charity can do and that is not in our case what we attempt to do. Smith wanted to save the great pleasure to be here. I will start off with this from this morning. I was with my wife back in washington and she asked what i was going to do today and i said i would be on a panel about whether private dollars can alleviate poverty. Because she thinks about these issues. Like what you think i should say. And she says, to say that they havent yet been a microphone down and walked out. [laughter] and im tempted to do that at times because its actually a fairly good formulation of the situation we are facing today. And i think that the challenge that we face, mike was essentially alluding to it. The problem of poverty is not just of income or education. Its not just a problem of transportation or housing. It is all of the above. Those are problems that often higher fullscale solutions. I frequently write about charity and people often come to me and say that private solution, private giving is a better solution than government programs. I think that afflicts a lot because of peoples dissolution with government, often with good reason. But the scale and the challenges of this in this country is enormous. So if you think about the problem with education. Public spending on k12 spending each year is about 1. 32 in dollars. For whatever cause only about 250 billion. So if the gates foundation, the nations largest foundation decide by tomorrow to empty out its entire coffers, it went out of to this and dont quote me on the map, one 10th in this country. The scale of money that they currently put into alleviating poverty is really just a drop in the bucket compared to spending the government does. And i think that that helps us talk about the issue of redistribution. But it doesnt mean im really a guy that tells stories, it doesnt mean that Smart Investments can make a difference. Because in some ways they have an opportunity to make a difference and, i think, do things with flexibility and speed that is difficult for the government to do. And i will tell you a story of one guy. Not just any guy. But a very rich guy. But the story that despite his problems speaks to some of the if the story of a guy named tom cousins. Youve probably never heard of him. Hes a very rich guy now in his 80s. Back in his heyday he was one of the two developers responsible for downtown oil. In 1991 he wrote an article mcgurk times it was actually sort of an extraordinary article. And even to this day i find it hard to believe. The article said that 80 of the prisoners in the state of new york come from this neighborhood in newark city. And tom read that and send that cant possibly be true. So tom being the kind of person to find out if that is true and they than this to the New York Times can actually report as accurately. He said that is an amazing thing. I welcome if that is true. So because of the chief of police. The kind of guy that can do that and they read the this story in the New York Times. I can be true and he laughs and says of course it is true, everyone knows its true red poor neighborhoods that provide the bulk of this in the state of georgia. So all of these neighborhoods are terribly impoverished and oppressed neighborhoods and the worst is one called eastlake area tom actually help to old some of the properties here and it was a terrible neighborhood. Ive seen pictures. Not because of asian population but because it was a shooting gallery. The employment rate there was 13 . Monthly unemployment rate. But the employment rate. So Eastlake Woods replaced with where hope went to die. So tom and the Cousins Foundation made a commitment. They were like many donors and i think his previous giving characterized how he spread the money around. A lot of wellknown individuals in this state, they said we are going to change this. We are going to make this part of bullet investments and we are going to create a new model and that is sort of an extraordinary thing. Not a lot of money relative to a government has the time and place like this. So over 15 years he had to convince Shirley Franklin who now runs his foundation the department of housing and urban development to do something they have never done before. Will literally blow it up with the promise that only some could come back. He was able to persuade not only the powers that be that the residents themselves that this was the right thing to do for the community. Not through his own coffers but through leveraging and the relatively small dollars that would bring in the Job Training Services regarding this. They made a lot of mistakes along the way. But over a timeframe of 15 to 20 years, really reinventing the community and the city ended up closing down a poorly functioning Public School and replaced it with a charter school. So i went there last year and i promise i will come to a conclusion of this longwinded story soon. Visit eastlake. And so rightly so they are very proud of these and it is something that his daughter craved over the years. Because its not what we know of the pictures of eastlake, which are actually through wire, its a lovely neighborhood and still low income. And you cant walk through it without really being inspired. Largely with federal dollars and upon their private investments. Its a beautiful place. Kids are uniformed. I sat in a firstrate engineering class in the right amazing. Then they brought us back into things and for those of you who have read my book, i will tell you its a skeptical book about why stories dont really prove the case for charities and that you need a return on investment and you need measurements and proof. So i said to them, you know, this is evil. Thank you for your time. But how do we really know that this area is okay with the promise that you set out for them 23 years ago. So they went to the whiteboard and i opened it up and they show the test results there and i was there with a young woman and a colleague of mine who went to sarah smith elementary. Shes local from atlanta. None of you have probably heard of her. But you know her because it is an Elementary School with him middleclass area where all of the colleges bring their kids to the best schools. And the most extraordinary thing was that every grade on every test true outperformance of this. And it actually outperformed every school in the city of atlanta. So this would not have happened and its not because the more money in the federal government for the city government. They were able to buy incentives and by hint of persuasion and by leveraging on what they had to create something that was very different then before. Shirley franklin is actually the president of the foundation of what they called the communities and her job is actually to take the model of eastlake and evangelize it across the country. Because those are types of projects that i think actually show the potential of how these investments have held by them else. On im going to ask the same question. Opening up for anyone in the audience. Whoever wants to ask questions. But i think that we all have the fundamentals and that we can do more together than alone. The government by collecting taxes and using it appropriately does things like Environmental Services and transit and in our community we took by vote 18 per taxpayer and created 100 million to start to fix our roads. I dont have anyone in this community was going to fork over this money for a particular project or it given that that is the case and i think it was in your book that you said taking even the largest gifts, ms. Moss gives, people give approximately 2000 per year on average. How does a Community Like this in a group like this figure out what to do best and how to do it and how to measure it and michael, i know youve done a lot of work in this area. We do tens of millions of dollars of partnerships with the city of new york. One of the things that we can do in private philanthropy is to impose standards of the kind youre referring to sue in the city knows that they are doing a partnership they know two things or they know that we can take rest that many often cant. Because many claim they are paying with their own money. So we can take rest out of Public Authority that is generally reluctant to take. And we can also set standards a lot higher than government agent can. There is the famous comment that they needed mediocre just as it is because most of us are mediocre. And you know, you dont have to take that too seriously, but it is true that Public Authority has a lot of time setting a standard so high that most offices would fail them. So private philanthropy when partnering with a Government Agency can do things that neither can you buy them else. Let me give you an example. And ill Say Something very concrete about how we write poverty in new york. We were on, robin hood runs, 90 sites around the city. Running a program called to talk which brings to bear a free social worker and a tax preparer in bringing this team of people together and anyone who comes in we sit down and help them. One of the things that we do this to complete the tax forms of 60,000 low income, lowpaid new yorkers. And on their behalf we covered about 120 million in tax refunds almost entirely from the federal government. So my point about raising the is when he put 5000 in tax refunds on the table of lowpaid new york family. You have added something somewhere between half to a third of their incomes that they earned and added to that. And that is the amount of money that they need that now has cover their rent and now they can buy a close in books and schooling materials and anything that they need that they want for their kids. This has an enormous difference. He put it in the total amount of poverty contacts that exists in new york. Even the difference in how much income you must add over and above to bring him up to a nonlevel of income, that is small. To 110,000 new yorkers and the 60,000 that we help, these differences are huge. So again i urge you to change your focus from thinking that you have to be talking about one thing that solves the whole problem to something that takes whatever resources are going to be made available, private and public, and squeezes the most impact out of those dollars. For that you need sophisticated framework and i dont think that that is probably the interest of people sitting here. So there is actually a fair its an extraordinary fact that the average American Household gives about 2500 per year in Charitable Giving. It is by far and away the most giving her household in the world. And i think there is a question about that which i will sort of raise. Its so large because attack rates are much higher elsewhere and there is such a different respect to investments in public goods. But the u. S. , theres a lot of Charitable Giving and in a Community Like tucson, theres going to be hundreds of millions of dollars and are given every year that is going to be spread over tens of thousands of charities. 1. 1 million charities in the United States. Its an amazing number. So what i ha