Craig Newmark on philanthropy

You're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast with Rodri Davis. Hello, you're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast. This is the podcast where we try to put philanthropy in context. I'm your host, Rodri Davis and I am very excited this week to say that my guest is Craig Newmark. Now, Craig is the founder of the Internet classified site Craigslist. He's also a well known philanthropist. He founded Craig Newmark Philanthropies in 2015 and has been giving a significant level for a number of years now. As you'll hear during the podcast, he also signed up to the Giving Pledge as of last year. So he's the first Giving Pledge signatory that we've had as a guest on the podcast, hopefully the first of many more to come. And I sat down with Craig very recently to have a conversation about the Giving Pledge, what it was that motivates his philanthropy, his approach that he takes to philanthropy, some of the areas that he's focused on over the last few years, and how he thinks about the importance of giving.

0:12

So yeah, we talked about the Giving

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Pledge, why he decided to sign up last year, what his ambitions for that were, how much he thought about it as a way of encouraging other wealthy people to give. We also talked about what it was that originally kind of led him to believe in the importance of giving as he was growing up and what had kind of shaped his thinking there. We also talked about the way that he's mentioned that sort of patriotism and a desire to defend the country are an important common thread between lots of his different areas of philanthropy and what that means in terms of those different areas. We talked about his approach to philanthropy and his idea that what he likes to do is to find people who are addressing needs effectively and know how to get the job done and to build networks of them and support them to carry on doing the work and what that means to him, how he finds those people, why he thinks it's so important for him as a philanthropist to get out of the way and also how you go about building networks between people, whether that's something that happens automatically or whether it kind of takes additional work. We also talked about his particular interest in work around cybersecurity and fighting online scams, why that was important to him and what some of the kind of wider societal cost of that is. One of the examples is the Take 9 initiative, which we talked a little bit about and also about why this was such a fast moving area, particularly with the impact of Generative AI and

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what we need to do about that.

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We also talked about his support for military families and for veterans and how that had come about and sort of how he goes about working with partner organizations in that area. We also talked about his funding for journalism, which has been a big part of his philanthropy over the years, why that had changed a little bit recently and what had kind of led to that, but why he still felt that

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there was an enormous need for factual

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information and means of kind of preserving that on the Internet. And then we also talked a little bit about his interest in pigeon rescue and how that fits into his wider philanthropy.

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So.

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So without further ado, let's go into the conversation. I will be back at the end for the usual bit of housekeeping. But for now, here is the conversation with Craig.

3:48

Okay, great.

4:06

Well, I'm absolutely delighted to say that

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I'm here with Craig Newmark.

4:09

Hi there, Craig.

4:11

Hey. I'm glad to be here.

4:12

Oh, it's absolutely great to have you on the podcast. Real pleasure. So as people will know. Well, they'll know anyway, but certainly from the, the intro that they've just listened to, you are a well known philanthropist. You were the original founder of the Craigslist service and you've been doing giving for a long time. So there's a huge amount I'd really love to talk to you about today. I guess where I wanted to start was one of the things that caught my eye last year was the announcement that you had signed the Giving Pledge. I was slightly surprised only because I hadn't realized you hadn't up to that point. It sort of seemed like you were the kind of person who might have already done that. And I was really interested what it was that particularly made you decide to sign the Giving Pledge at that moment in time, given that you'd been doing philanthropy for such a long time Anyway,

4:13

as a nerd, I'm a pretty literal guy. And the Giving Pledge, its branding as something for billionaires to do. As it turns out, I've never been a billionaire. Maybe my investments over 10 or 20 years may well might have gotten me there. But my deal is that I decided I should sign the Giving Pledge 1 because I thought it was funny for me to do so, at least for me to do so. But also I wanted to make very public a commitment I had made to give away pretty much all my money. And sometimes you just want to put a stake in the ground for yourself and for the world with that kind of commitment. I thought I might also influence other people who have a lot of disposable cash, that maybe they don't need everything. And I figured also it just felt to be around the same time I had started giving away in earnest about 10 years ago. And about a few years ago, I put all my Craigslist equity, my shares into a US 501C4, which is a kind of foundation where you can just put everything in there. All the proceeds have to be given to charity. Um, so that, that was the right timing for me.

4:56

Yeah, absolutely. And, and you said there, and you've said before that I think the quote you, you said was one of your aims in signing the Giving Pledge was to inspire really rich people to pony up some dough. Which sounds terrible in a British accent, I'm aware. But the sentiment I think is, is, is an important one.

6:23

Is that something. Is your thinking really that you're just

6:39

trying to do that by example and that you hope that other people will see what you're doing and follow suit?

6:41

Or is it something that you also

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think about doing in, in other ways? Is it something you kind other wealthy people about and try to encourage them to think about philanthropy as well?

6:47

I'm attempting, I guess, leadership by example. I would like to be a top down leader, as we usually think about leadership, but that requires social skills and I'm calling back to the, to the nerd thing.

6:55

So, yeah, just do your own thing and hope that other people pick up on it.

7:12

Yeah, yeah.

7:16

And you sort of said, you know,

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there about, obviously the reason for giving in the first place is not the Giving Pledge. That's just a kind of vehicle through which that you can, can kind of amplify it more. You've talked a number of times that I've seen about what it is that kind of fundamentally drives your giving. And two things that struck me you mentioned quite a lot of times, a couple of your Sunday school teachers and also the musician Leonard Cohen, which I was really interested in. Maybe you could say a bit about what it was about what you learned from those two sources and how that shaped your thinking about giving and philanthropy.

7:18

It's a long story, but the Elevens in Sunday school and they were Holocaust survivors, so they had a lot to say. They basically taught me that in effect, the Bible says, know when enough is enough. And sometimes you need to be your brother's keeper, your sister's keeper. I tend towards wanting to take that very literally and I shouldn't. But it did mean that I should help out, I guess, to the extent my resources allow me to. Now, in the late 80s, Leonard Cohen started to influence me tremendously. He's my rabbi, and he and his music. Tell me to look at another rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth. And he said something about giving away all my possessions and feeding the poor. Again, I don't know how literally to take that, but I decided that all this means is that I should give away a lot of what I don't really need, the limits of which are subject only to the veto of Mrs. Newmark.

7:51

An important veto, I would imagine.

9:01

Yeah. Yes.

9:03

And in terms of what you've ended up focusing on, as well as sort

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of where it's come from, one of the things that you've suggested is a common thread to all your philanthropy is. Is a desire to. You talked about defending the country and the importance of that.

9:09

What maybe you could say a bit

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about what that means to you and why it's so important as a. As a kind of guiding principle for what you do.

9:22

I grew up in the 50s with World War II era parents. My dad fought in the Pacific, I think behind a desk. My mom, to the best of my knowledge, learned bookkeeping so she could replace the company accountant who I guess picked up a rifle and went overseas. So from their point of view, patriotism was an expectation. But also, I grew up in a town, Morristown, New Jersey, where Washington and the Continental army spent a couple of hard winners. And so reminders of patriotism were around me kind of all the time. My teen years were spent in a development right across the street from Washington's headquarters. So my environment and my parents kind of helped me understand that patriotism was an exception. The Vietnam War was troubling in this regards. But nowadays I'm just following through with what I learned long ago and didn't think about much much until relatively recently.

9:28

And it's really interesting that you mentioned

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there the idea of patriotism as a virtue. And it's clear that that's something that's really important to you.

10:39

And I just wonder, do you think

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there is a challenge sometimes, particularly today, in trying to extol the virtue of patriotism without it tipping over into being seen as sort of nationalism or getting dragged into partisanship?

10:48

And in the way that you talk

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about patriotism, is it important to you to model a version of that that is essentially the good version of being proud of your country?

11:01

You're completely right about that, and I'm working on that. So far, I've gotten no negative pushback, and I just have to keep plugging away for the people who defend the country and Also, it helps to support efforts which fight scams and cybersecurity. I really do need to do more to support military families, not only in the US But I have an affinity for the UK I do understand that UK military families and vets face some of the same challenges, perhaps the same challenges as in the US And I need to do more about that, but I can't prematurely announce anything.

11:08

Noel, that's very interesting. I'm sure there's some people listening whose ears will have pricked up at that mention. And I'd say I'd love to talk more in a moment about some of the particular areas that you fund. And you mentioned their support for veterans and also around cybersecurity.

11:48

I just wanted to ask a little

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bit about your approach to philanthropy, which I think is interesting. So one of the things, again, I noticed in your giving pledge letter you said, I'm just going to quote this because I think it's useful. You said, my most effective approach to addressing a manageable number of needs is to build a network of networks of people who know how to get the job done. On stuff I care about. I find the group, fund them, nudge them to work together and get out of the way. Now, there's a lot in there I think to unpick.

12:03

I'd be really interested in that bit

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about finding the people who know how to get the job done. How do you go about doing that? How do you find those people that you think know how to get the job done?

12:32

Well, I started off by recognizing that in philanthropy I don't really know what I'm doing. My limited skills horrify professional fundraisers, which is just as well. And, well, that's ironic because I'll be talking to one at NYU in a couple of hours there about starting up a cybersecurity clinic. But the deal is that as I started to consider that I needed to do more About 10 years ago, people in different groups who are good at what they do started approaching me. I started getting educated in different issues and as it turns out, among them were some people who are really good at running nonprofits who were doing something that I believed in. And over time, they help me locate other people who are good in the areas that I'm interested in. And I've rebuilt networks that way of different organizations supporting nonprofits. And in some cases, these folks were good at building their own networks of either the people they need to support or other nonprofits who are good at the job. I am finding that it's unusual for A nonprofit to be really good at their job. For example, the Bob Woodruff foundation, people run a network called Got yout 6, which is nonprofits in the US who support vets. They're running a network of about 400 of them, and that number is growing. Blue Star Families is running a network of chapter houses and out and outposts who support military families in the U.S. the big problem is that military families get moved around the country a lot of. And outside as well. And when you're moved, the spouse needs to get a job very quickly, needs to find childcare very quickly. And those are very difficult because while you're looking for a job, you need childcare, but you can't afford child care until you have a job.

12:41

Yeah, absolutely. Absolute sort of classic catch 22 there.

14:44

And I wonder, you've made it clear

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there that the importance of developing networks among the organizations that you fund, and it sounds like sometimes that happens naturally or is already being done by the nonprofits. Are there also cases you found where you think it would be good for those networks to exist, but it needs a bit more work? And do you, as a funder, then kind of do some of that yourself, or do you bring other people in to help you build those networks?

14:51

All of the above is true. The deal is that some people are good at network building, some need help with it, but close to everyone needs help with communications. People often need help articulating their mission. People need help getting the word out, and they need that help getting the word out on a continuous basis. I understand the need to do that, but I lack the skills to lead in those efforts. So we do get professional help. That's a big deal right there. I had to learn over years, over decades, the need to communicate far better. But I've also learned that I will always need help in these regards because being a truth teller requires skills that a nerd lacks. Particularly, I had to learn that being a truth teller isn't effective if you're confronted with someone who, well, who lies for a living. I'll never be a match for that. And getting help to deal with that is really, really difficult and requires professionals who are hard to find and very, very expensive.

15:15

Yeah, that's really interesting.

16:30

And you've, you've said a number of

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times I've been struck about, you know, things that you're not good at. I think, you know, you seem very kind of humble about those things and very sort of open about the things you can't do. In your view, then, as a, you know, a self Procl professed nerd.

16:33

What. What would you view as the skills

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you do bring to your philanthropy? So what is it that you're bringing rather than just getting out of the way?

16:47

I. I'm good at getting to the point I'm not tactful enough about expressing it and I'll face that challenge in a couple of hours or so. I've already faced it a few times earlier this morning and I have good technology skills, but those skills become less and less important as I face major challenges. For example, I've gotten good at identifying the biggest problem that AI chat systems have, an AI search. But I'm not good at articulating the problems in tactful and constructive ways.

16:52

Interesting. And I would love to come on to that in a second because I want to talk more about your work, particularly around sort of cybersecurity.

17:30

I guess just following on from what

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you've said there about tactics.

17:38

One thing I wanted to ask you

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because it's clear from a lot of things that you've written and said over the years that you, you think it's important to have a sense of humor about things.

17:41

I wondered whether you think philanthropy is

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sometimes guilty of being too serious.

17:51

You know, it's often a world in

17:53

which it's quite difficult. I certainly find when you are somebody whose kind of natural response to things is, you know, self deprecating remarks or a bit of humour, it doesn't always

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go over that well.

18:05

Do you find when you're doing your philanthropy work that actually it can be sometimes a bit tricky to use humor in ways that are effective?

18:06

My sense of humor is very dry, very understated and very absurd and that's helped me deal with a lot of things on an emotional basis. It does help communicate more effectively normally. But I always do have to deal with folks who have no sense of humor and, or who may be. Well, they don't understand me and no matter what I do, I can't quite break through. Not everyone's sense of humor is the same and that's, I guess, illustrated by the difference between Benny Hill and Monty Python. But the greatest challenge I've had in the UK is chatting with folks at the BBC who, oh, as I talk with about my sense of appreciation for British TV and fiction, I couldn't quite make myself understood.

18:13

That's interesting.

19:08

I'd love to come on and ask

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you a bit about your work around cybersecurity because I know it's something that's really important and I'd just be interested

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to know why cybersecurity, and particularly fighting

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online scams has become such a big area of focus for you, and I'm really interested in how you view the kind of, the wider costs for society, these issues, beyond the sort of individual

19:20

harms that they do regarding cybersecurity. That's part of my commitment to help protecting the country and helping protect their families and homes. Regarding fighting scams, that just felt like the right thing to do. When I observed a problem at Craigslist, probably in the late 90s, and I figured if I was committed to what I was doing, even if it was just myself, I needed to follow through and to do what I can to seriously fight crime online. And I started getting educated, although very slowly, by talking to people committed to civil liberties and talking to cops. And I gradually learned more and did more, and then learned more and did more fairly successfully. The biggest problem we've had are people who tend to magnify the presence of crime both online and on the streets, because there are people who will magnify the problem to get attention as clickbait frequently or sometimes to run scams. We have found that there are people who are nonprofit. Of people running nonprofits allegedly about fighting crime or supporting the victims of crime, most are legitimate, some do a great job. And then there are folks who are just using the perception of crime to run scams.

19:31

That's really interesting.

21:00

So people using and using sort of ostensible nonprofit structures as a way of having legitimacy to talk about these things, but actually the motivation is to perpetrate further kind of scams.

21:01

Yeah. And I'm referring to financial scams, although I've observed big problems with politicians who accentuate crime in order to get similar attention. In the US Crime has been going down for a long time and in fact started dropping precipitously sometime in 2023. There's some debate as to the. What's happening there. I don't know. I don't know the situation in the uk and my perception is distorted by reading too much crime fiction in the uk. For example, I'm. I fear going to Oxford because as far as I could tell, people are getting murdered all the time there.

21:12

Yeah, there's.

21:56

It's. Similarly, there's a.

21:57

There's a famous TV program called Midsummer Murders here, which is set in a small rural village. But the joke is that actually if it had anything like the murder rate that it does on the television, it would be one of the crime hotspots of the country.

21:58

But I, I understand that Inspector Morse has passed. And we're not certain if Inspector Lewis is up to the job.

22:09

Yeah, absolutely.

22:17

I wanted to ask you one of

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the particular things that you've been involved in launching within the sort of cyber security and fighting online scams is an initiative called Take 9.

22:19

I'd just be interested to hear a

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bit more about how that came about, what the idea behind it is, and who it's targeting in particular.

22:30

Well, the audience for the effort is everyone. And by that I mean everyone. The theme is that when you're approached online, sometimes you should take a little bit of time before responding, before considering what you might do about that. The problem is that scammers in particular rely often on a person feeling rushed to respond to something. And if you take a little bit of time and carefully look at what you're being approached about, that can help prevent problems. And so that's the theme of the. Of Take nine. Speaking literally. Beyond that, it's about simple measures that regular people can take to stop scams before they can victimize you. And the same measures often are good for keeping yourself safe from other forms of crime online. Things like strong authentication, multi factor authentication, making sure you keep your systems updated. Those can go far in terms of protecting yourself. It's a really big deal for everyone every day. Once I fell for a scam, not a big one because I responded too quickly. More recently, I've been approached for fake event or party invites and I couldn't. They were real. But I tested them a little bit and when they were asking for my oh, for my email login information, then I knew it was bad. That's a new scam. It's been fairly broad and I've told some people about it and that's helped get the word out. But also that scam has disappeared from my point of view as quickly as it appeared. It could be because Gmail has gotten good at detecting it, or could be that the scammers gave up on it because it was too obvious.

22:35

And it seems to me one of

24:27

the challenges in this area is, is that it is so sort of fast evolving. And as you say, new scams pop up all the time and they're increasingly sophisticated. So it's definitely not the case that you have to be somebody who is clueless in any way about the Internet to fall for these things these days.

24:28

But I wondered also if if some

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of the emerging tools, particularly around things like generative AI, are having potentially even a bigger impact and whether that's an area that you're thinking about as well,

24:44

I'm thinking about, well, the threats of AI as well as the good things a lot, because one thing about AI is that it can be used to automate attacks in large numbers. And sometimes our adversaries can look for obvious things that people running a site have forgotten to do. For example, sometimes people leave default passwords for tools which are available directly on the net. Sometimes people forget to update systems, and that can usually be due to people who run things like water supplies or hospitals. Sometimes they don't have the staffing to protect themselves. Or sometimes even professionals sometimes get careless. But previous to AI, an adversary could try to try to penetrate one system, then another, then another. But that's relatively expensive in terms of time consumed. But if you use an AI tool to automate that, they can launch, let's say, 100,000 attacks. And if they succeed 1% of the time, or even a tenth of a percent of the time, that's very cost effective. Another problem with generative AI is that they can be used to build fake identities on places like Facebook or LinkedIn. And those identities, those profiles, can look very real. And so if an adversary uses a fake LinkedIn or Facebook profile to approach a potential victim, it may be very difficult for the person to notice that the profile may be fake. So those are some of the things I worry about. Also, for a long time, search engine optimization has enabled people, good actors and bad actors, to inject, well, misinformation into search. And as AI systems get trained, they're getting trained on the same misinformation, which means AI search will give you bad results, they may help you get scammed. Or if they're propagating misinformation about someone, that could become a safety issue.

24:54

I'm interested.

27:17

Do you still feel like an outlier as a philanthropist in kind of working in these areas around things like cyber security? Or are there other funders doing this stuff as well? And would you like to see more of them, given how important clearly you feel these issues are?

27:18

Well, we need to find a lot more donors, a lot more philanthropists everywhere. The folks from Eulit foundation, the folks from Bloomberg Philanthropies are doing a good job, but we need more help. There is something called Common Good Cyber Fund, which is relatively new, and I'm helping out with that. So is the Canadian Foreign Office. So are the Whitehall mandarins at the Foreign Office who are helping out, and that's already getting results. For example, the common Good folks are helping fund Shadow Server, which is a global effort with doing work in the us, UK and Europe in general. And when I'm in London in early May, maybe I'll actually get to Whitehall and meet actual Mandarins. I am working with people also in Oxford, but again, I fear for my safety in Oxford.

27:34

I'm sure you could arrange security to travel around safely, but it's a lovely place, Oxford.

28:38

I wanted to just move on and ask a bit about.

28:43

We talked about it a couple of times about your support for veterans and for military families, and you said already that you sort of. The work you do there is primarily through two partner organisations, the Bob Woodruff foundation and Blue Star Families.

28:46

When you started looking at this area,

28:59

how did those partnerships come about and when did you know that you would be happy to sort of almost outsource a lot of your work in this area to them? When did you feel kind of confident in that relationship?

29:01

It's a long story, but basically I started getting involved in support for vets more and more. It's been about 15 years, I'm guessing, starting with the Iraq and Afghanistan Vets of America. And I met people at different meetings, different conferences. Sometimes people approached me because I'm pretty easy to find online. I guess I just started learning from them and then asking around more and more. And then from experience, I learned who I can rely on, who is good at communicating, who is good at making things happen. And about five years ago, I started being heavily committed to Blue Star families and the Bob Woodruff Foundation. I saw that I could basically rely on them to all the work I wanted to happen for families and vets and, you know, with a big focus on active service families. And that's why I'm. I've committed publicly to funding each group for 25 million US over five years, but I've also committed overall to a 200 million for vets and families. I want to be careful in that I've already caused too much confusion because I've committed a separate 200 million to fighting scams and cyber. Those are two different pots of money. But these groups have proven themselves over a period of years and things look pretty good. I do bug them and everyone else to be better and better at communicating and to be careful, because when a good group gets a big enough profile, they will attract bad actors and they need to be able to defend themselves in a number of ways, particularly reputational, because while they're growing from noticeable to being very big, they're vulnerable to a reputational attacks. Something I've learned the hard way.

29:13

Interesting. And is this something you kind of Counsel the non profits that you work on, given your experience, because I guess it's. It is something, as you say, that does tend to inevitably happen at a certain point in becoming well known.

31:08

I tell them how much they need to prepare to protect themselves and I tell them about the nature of the threats, usually misinformation attacks. But I don't have any good ideas in terms of defense and I work with people to try to build that kind of thing and so far haven't thought of much else. That's, that's pretty good. The deal is that I'll be speaking about that in London on, on May 6 with a panel of folks because the problem is again, truth tellers, since they rely on fact checking at evidence and that's hard to do, they're always vulnerable to people who want to attack, who don't mind making up false information. And that's a big problem everywhere. And I don't have good ideas for defense. I just know that defense needs to happen.

31:22

Yeah, well, I suppose recognizing the problem and then engaging other people is, is kind of an important first step. And yeah, really interesting that you're going to be here in the UK talking about that.

32:16

I'm not good at it. Last week I posted something about my politics begging for help because I was pointing out that pretty much everything about me online, about my politics is false. And I def what I'm about and why. A lot of it has to do with Mr. And Mrs. Levin in Sunday school, plus Leonard Cohen. And so I started pushing that. Basically I adhere to the philosophy of the founders of the US Adding Lincoln into that. The only term I can find that applies to me, which I really don't use, is that I'm an American system Whig, different than the British Whigs, but when I refer to that party, no

32:25

one knows what I'm talking about. Yeah, that's the challenge, isn't it? If you do find a term that works but doesn't have common currency, you have to do so much more explaining you mentioned there.

33:10

It's just interesting actually.

33:20

You sort of talked about some of the challenges in the fact that some of this is about kind of getting truthful information and fact checking.

33:20

And one of the other things that

33:29

you've been known for over the years is support in that field and around journalism as well.

33:30

I was just interested in what it

33:35

was that kind of drove your interest in that area. And I know you're still involved in supporting the City University of New York journalism program and kind of what it is particularly about that program that you kind of think is important and you find that keeps you funding that.

33:37

Well, my politics and my view on the press were pretty much formulated in a US high school around 1970. I was in a really good class for US history and civics. And my way of articulating that is that I say a trustworthy press is the immune system of democracy. And to that end we need journalism, which is all about getting the right information out there based on actual evidence and actual facts. I did support a number of organizations dedicated to that. None of them proved to be very successful. And they were really good at understanding the problem, but really bad at defending themselves. The exceptions? Well, there's the journalism school at the City University of New York. I think it was originally King's College. And the deal there is that they're very good at training trustworthy journalists. They're also really good at providing opportunities for people who may never get a chance. And they're very good at getting people placed in good journalism jobs. They have a very high placement rate. They're very good at helping people graduate with little or no student debt. So that's pretty good. Maybe more importantly, I'm supporting significantly the global organization which does the best job of providing a place for trustworthy information. That's Wikipedia. I'd like to say that Wikipedia is where facts go to live. They have evolved systems which can enlist large numbers of people to put up articles which are reasonably fact checked, reasonably trustworthy. And when things go wrong, typically Wikipedia heals itself. More work needs to be done. But right now Wikipedia does the best job of anywhere I know about getting things right and then fixing things when something goes wrong. A lot of newspapers do try to get things right the first time, but they're not good at fixing things that go wrong. They're not good at corrections.

33:52

Yes, and I noticed the Wikipedia penance actually behind you as we're having this call. So I was going to ask about your support for Wikipedia and you said kind of why that is there?

36:03

Just be.

36:13

As a follow up, I'm really interested in if you feel that that model that Wikipedia has in particular is sort of powerful when it comes to combating misinformation and making sure there's sort of factually accurate information on the web.

36:13

Is there work to be done in

36:26

kind of getting that approach disseminated more widely across the information ecosystem so that it's not just contained within Wikipedia?

36:28

I think Wikipedia is broadly used already, for example in Google search. The problem is Google, rather Wikipedia needs more and more editors In Wikipedia parlance, an editor is someone who edits an article or someone who writes it. And the deal is that Wikipedia needs a lot more and Wikipedia needs editors from everywhere. Wikipedia needs better representation from every place, every group in the world, and they need to do a better job of getting that out. I'm trying to help, but again, that requires communication skills. So I may not really be the right guy to, to do that, but I keep, I keep trying and I'm committed to that. I keep contracting. Wikipedia and Craigslist both are places on the web for decades that are being about helping out regular people and resisting what Cory Doctorow calls enshitification. And I need to do whatever I can to support Wikipedia and wherever it happens to help prevent the problem. I am not the right guy to do it because again, fighting this fight requires communication skills. I lack. But I can draw attention to the problem and then try to find people who are good at fighting it. I'm still finding people who are good at it. That's an ongoing challenge and I'm very focused on that kind of thing and on supporting again, the people who help defend the country. I do have my self indulgences involving my sense of humor usually, or my love of birds. And this week I did visit the Wild Bird Fund, which is a sanctuary in New York which does nurse a lot of birds, particularly pigeons, back to health. I've observed that you have a pigeon or two yourself in your backyard.

36:36

I do. The big problem we have actually, weirdly, is parakeets. They're a big invasive species in the UK and they're lovely, but they're very dominant. So they're actually out competing pigeons and all the other birds at the moment.

38:37

I have very mixed feelings about that because I love seeing, for example, the wild parrots in San Francisco. I'm just shocked to see the pigeons in your backyard because I didn't know there were pigeons in the uk.

38:49

Yeah, we have, we have plenty of pigeons.

39:05

I would, I would like to say that I think I might be taking the piss.

39:07

No, and it's, it's interesting that you mentioned that because, I mean, again, I'm a.

39:13

We both. I have a bird feeder, as you can see out the back there. But I'm a keen, a keen bird and myself.

39:17

But in. I'm interested sort of in.

39:21

When you talk about your philanthropy, you quite often come around to mentioning your, your interest in pigeons and pigeon rescue.

39:23

Is that because it often gets picked up on.

39:30

And I suppose you know that it will because it's Sort of unusual. Do you talk about it deliberately because you sort of want to make the point that, you know, within philanthropy, actually there are elements of it that are just things that you happen to care about and want to support and that, you know that's fine and you're sort of putting it out there almost to kind of make that point. Or do you just want to talk about pigeons?

39:33

You're being smarter than I am. There are three reasons. Three reasons I talk about this and follow through. Funny. Also, I love birds. Also funny.

39:53

Yeah. Well, those are three good reasons, I would say, Craig.

40:06

So I'm aware I'm going to be

40:09

in danger of taking up too much of your time, so I want to kind of wrap things up. And before I let you go, I

40:11

just wanted to ask kind of almost

40:16

as a final question, through the work that you've done over the years in

40:18

philanthropy and the work you're doing now,

40:23

what would you say is the most important lesson you've learned about philanthropy and kind of how to do it?

40:24

Well, I'm still learning. The only definite lesson is that philanthropists and non profits need to communicate far better and they need to be prepared to defend themselves because if they do a good job in some areas, there will be bad actors who will attack them on their strengths in ways that basically hurt everyone. Personally, I've learned some lessons again, as to my own limitations. There's that social skill thing that I mentioned, and I've come to realize that, well, I need to fake social skills better, but I do let people know that I'm aware that I'm only simulating those skills and I only have the patience to do so for no more than 90 minutes.

40:31

Well, that's. And I think in a way that's, you know, being clear about that and setting expectations is a large part of the battle, isn't it, that if everybody kind of knows what the. The parameters are, then then that goes a long way.

41:17

Every. Everyone is aware one way or the other that I am a nerd.

41:29

Well, yeah, great note on which to leave it. I'm just remains to say thank you

41:34

ever so much, Greg, for finding time to come talk to me. It's been really, really, really fascinating.

41:37

I'll put links in the show, notes

41:42

to places where people and find out more about lots of the things that you've mentioned and wish you all the best in the future.

41:44

Thanks, I appreciate it.

41:50

Okay, great. Well, my thanks again to Craig for coming on the podcast. I have to say, when the email popped into my inbox suggesting that I might want to speak to Craig Newmark.

42:00

I was.

42:09

I mean, I initially thought it was an online scam, but when I realized it wasn't, I was very keen to do so and it was great to have a chance to talk to him. As I say, you know, if any other Giving Pledge signatories out there similarly want to come and have a chat about philanthropy on the podcast, I'd be delighted to host you, so do get in touch. I'll put links in the show notes to places where you can find information on some of the things that Craig mentioned during the conversation. I'll also put links to some things I've written that might be of interest. If you're interested in more broadly and issues around philanthropy and civil society, do check out the website why philanthropymatters.com you can find all the back episodes of this podcast.

42:10

Lots of articles, guides, long reads and newsletters, that kind of thing.

42:48

All sorts of thoughts and information about philanthropy for you to dig into. If you've got ideas for people that I could talk to on the podcast in future, or topics that we could cover in other ways, do drop me a line. You can find my contact details on the website. If you want to follow me on social media, by all means do that. I'm mostly on LinkedIn these days, but I'm also a little bit on Bluesky. Other than that, it just remains to say, like, subscribe, share with people. If you know people that you think might enjoy the podcast or might benefit from it, do spread the good word. I think word of mouth goes a long way and other than that, I will see you next time.

42:53

Bye.

43:27