@MissBigelow:
Tech-savvy Tipping Point’s new record.
When you corral a hall full of tech titans, as intrepid Tipping Point founder-CEO Daniel Lurie so expertly does, the minimum auction bid typically opens at $25K.
That’s why Lurie, his staff and deep-pocketed trustees raised a record $14.7 million in just one night at Pier 70, where they recently celebrated this poverty-fighting organization’s 10th anniversary benefit.
A lot of folks like to whisper that Lurie, still in his late 30s, should run for mayor. Or even president someday.
Considering that this mild-mannered EssEff native can also surprise his 1,300 gala guests with a stellar set starring Snoop Dogg (wisely tapping trustees such as Another Planet music impresario Gregg Perloff), that predication may not be too far-fetched. The event, co-chaired by Max and David Glynn, Nellie and Max Levchin, and Anna and Mason Morfit with Ayesha Thapar and Nikesh Arora, was set within the industrialchic, historic Dogpatch ship sheds that were transformed into a bright burst of yellow by designer Stanlee Gatti.
Which was curious as Tipping Point’s traditional hue is green. But Lurie’s spouse, Becca Prowda, wisely mused, “Yellow is a happy color, and everyone needs a little joy in their life.” And joyful it was, from the cocktail confab by Greg Lindgren and his Rye-On-the-Road crew and a divine, yet down-home Paula LeDuc fried-chicken dinner to super post-dinner sets by DJ Ruckus and Girl Talk.
Amid this bold-faced fete: numerous titans of tech (including Apple designer Sir Jony Ive, Jawbone CEO Hosain Rahman, Yahoo CEO
Marissa Mayer, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, One Kings Lane co-founder Alison Pincus); philanthropic families (including Mimi Haas, Doris Fisher and her family, Linda and Jon Gruber, Linnea Roberts); stalwart San Francitizens (including Carl Emil and Rich Silverstein, Jeremy Scherer and Sabrina Adriani, Roger and Sloan Barnett, Meridee Moore and Kevin King); and TP trustees (including Katie Schwab Paige, Chris James, David Lamond, Kate Harbin Clammer, Alec Perkins, David Zierk, Zachary Bogue and Pete Briger).
But the night’s biggest stars were members representing Tipping Point’s 47 grantees (including Year Up, Homeless Prenatal Program, Canal Alliance, College Track, the Bread Project, Compass Family Services), who joyfully weaved round the hall like Krewe members in a Mardi Gras parade.
It was also the kind of night where Christie’s auctioneer Lydia Fenet whipped dedicated donors into a frenzy, pitting GoPro President-TP trustee Tony Bates against Ive to win a day on the set at the new “Lego” film, which finally sold (to another titan) for $175K.
Guests who had already ponied up anywhere from $500 per ticket to $250K per table continued to give, with individual amounts ranging from 50 bucks to (gulp!) a cool million — via push-button pledges in tabletop electronic doodads.
In June, just a mere decade since its inception, Tipping Point will have raised $100 million — every penny of which has been sent out the door to fund carefully vetted Bay Area poverty-fighting organizations that have assisted almost
500,000 people.
“Like many of you, I’m in the venture business. And our model for Tipping Point is terrible one,” confessed TP board Chairman
Thomas Laffont. “Every year we start at zero. We raise two-thirds of our annual budget in one night. And our board covers all fundraising and operational costs.
“But we are not building an endowment for the future,” he said, “because we are built for impact today.”
Lurie, who credits his philanthropic leadership to both his family and early tenure at Robin Hood Foundation, recounted his first day heading to that job in New York. The date was Sept. 11, 2001.
Emerging from the subway, he saw people falling. Lurie was a block away when the second plane hit the World Trade Center — and he fled uptown as first responders sped toward the towers.
“You could argue that was their job. But in that moment, when we were truly tested,” admitted Lurie, “I failed.”
Yet every day, Lurie related, we experience tragedy in our own backyards.
Though he didn’t know what to do that day in New York, Lurie is confident that now, 10 years in at Tipping Point, he, his staff and board do know. They know what’s broken; they understand how to fuel organizations instead of starve them. They also know where to take risks, place long bets and when it’s time to walk away from an underperforming grantee.
“One in five people lives in poverty, many of them right before our eyes. Driving downtown, you see someone who’s mentally ill. Or a mother and child with a cardboard sign asking for money. In that moment, it’s hard not to feel a sense of hopelessness,” said Lurie. “In the Bay Area, we talk a lot about ‘changing the world’ and ‘solving big problems.’ Well, it doesn’t get any bigger than this. This is our test. And I will not run the other way.”