Staff at George Soros's Foundation Just Voted to Join a Union. Is That a Good Thing?

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2016/7/21/staff-at-george-soross-foundation-just-voted-to-join-a-union.html

David Callahan

It’s been a bumpy ride at the Open Society Foundations over the past few years. When George Soros hired Chris Stone in 2012 to lead OSF, he asked him to bring more order and cohesion to a far-flung philanthropic operation known for its creative chaos.

Stone set to work. As he told me last year, his goal was to create a more professional foundation that is “working with a meaningful budget” designed to advance “a meaningful strategy that is clear and expressed,” which the board had “a meaningful role in shaping.”

Those may sound like pedestrian goals, but they were a big deal for a foundation that felt more like an archipelago than an island, with offices in 37 countries and famously fragmented lines of authority. Even consolidating OSF’s global spending—which is over $900 million a year—into a single budget was a daunting task.

As is often the case when organizations go through big changes, Stone’s reforms brought a fair degree of disruption and unhappiness, with some staff feeling jerked around by the process.

FULL story at link.


Christopher Stone, President of the Open Society Foundations