Dear Friends of Open Society:
As partners and supporters of the work of the Open Society Foundations, you will be aware that this year we have been in the midst of a process of deep transformation, engaged in changing how we work in ways that are having a direct impact on many of you.
Earlier in 2021, I shared some of our thinking about why we have embarked on this work—primarily to respond with more focus, scale, and integration to global challenges with a structure that is locally informed, but globally coordinated.
As we approach the end of the first year of this two-year transformation, I wanted to take the opportunity to share more details of what we have achieved so far. This is a challenging process for any organization. I am proud of what our leadership and staff have accomplished so far.
Focus
We began the transformation with some 40 separate program units, strategies, and budgets, which together, produced a total of 1,977 goal statements. All this certainly reflected the richness and variety of our programmatic work around the world, but it was simply not as focused as we needed it to be.
In contrast, we are now moving to a single integrated strategic direction where just seven strategies—one for our new Global Programs, and one each for our six regions—are aligned, while respecting and reflecting differing regional and national contexts. This will help end the overlapping efforts and duplication of work that previously existed when we had regional programs as well as a dozen thematic programs working globally.
One of our transformation goals is to be more proximate to local challenges, so we are now shifting budget and agency to the regions in ways that will also have positive implications for a more globally diverse staff and leadership.
This is not something new for Open Society. George Soros has always valued local knowledge and the recognition that national and regional work is best led by staff from the region, based in the region.
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A woman receives a shot during a COVID-19 vaccination drive organized by Open Society grantee Redes da Maré in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 29, 2021. © Bruno Pardo/AP
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Scale
The consolidation of our global and regional program strategies and budgets now provides us with the capacity to go bigger on the key issues that we believe are the most important.
This work is already underway. We have stepped up as a leading voice for the cause of vaccine justice. We pledged significant additional resources to grantees working on the issues and formed a new alliance with other leading philanthropic funders in a way that hasn’t been done before that strengthens our collective voice on this pressing issue. We kept up our support of the longer-term objective of developing manufacturing capacity for vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics in the Global South. Our impact investment arm, the Soros Economic Development Fund, led a group of philanthropic partners and funds in taking over a UK-based manufacturer of low-cost, lateral-flow diagnostics, Mologic, to support its plans for globally distributed production.
At the same time, our Debt and Just Recovery campaign has taken our grant-giving and advocacy into new areas of development financing and economic justice. And our Latin America Program has been advancing our new Climate Justice engagement, supporting green recovery efforts in Brazil’s Amazon region.
Looking more broadly, we pledged $100 million over five years to strengthen a range of feminist-led movements at the Gender Equality Summit in Paris in June. In the United States, we gave $20 million to grass-roots advocacy groups pushing for the strongest possible economic jobs package from the Biden administration.
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Evacuees from Afghanistan disembark from a plane at Tirana Airport in Albania, on August 27, 2021.
© Gent Shkullaku/AFP for the Open Society Foundations
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Integration
Historically, our work has largely been characterized by programs doing siloed activities, which prevented us from having an impact at a scale that is more than the sum of our parts. Our new approach will seek synergies, with greater coordination and integration of our strategic tools of advocacy, communications, strategic litigation, and impact investment.
In addition, we have built the capacity to work on time-bound efforts that will integrate different parts of the network as relevant. We have now hired a director of Initiatives who sits in Global Programs to help build these network-wide efforts. We have also hired a director of Global Advocacy to build alignment in the network around our campaign work. A new chief strategy officer will help put into place a renewed strategy and evaluation approach that will further align and improve the way we work as we seek to drive meaningful change around the world.
All these internal developments have of course taken place against the background of the pandemic. So, I also want to take a moment to commend all of you as members of our wider community and the remarkable work of our staff not just in keeping work moving ahead, but in responding to a series of crises. Those include the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan and the aftermath of February’s military coup in Myanmar, both of which demanded a remarkable effort to get endangered staff, grantees, and partners to safety. The nail-biting evacuation of staff and partners from Kabul to both Albania and North Macedonia was made possible by the incredible commitment and work of our teams and partners, underpinned by a $10 million emergency fund launched at breakneck speed.
Our Africa and Middle East North Africa regions were also deeply engaged in moves to protect partners caught up in conflicts and political instability in Sudan, Ethiopia, Tunisia, Lebanon, and elsewhere. Similarly, when southern Haiti was struck by an earthquake in August, our Latin America and Caribbean regional colleagues helped mobilize a $2.5 million emergency response fund.
These efforts made me deeply grateful for this remarkable thing called the Open Society Foundations that our founder George Soros made possible. They also make me all the more determined to step up and fight back against the waves of conspiratorial disinformation and lies that assail us and our allies around the world—fueled by the political opportunism of dishonest and autocratic populists. As a more focused, transformed Open Society, we can have greater impact and tell a clearer story about who we are and what we stand for.
All of us at Open Society are aware that change is difficult. Over recent months, we have said farewell to many talented colleagues who opted to leave as this transformation process advanced. We know that redirecting funding in this way means winding down some of our relationships, and we have had to make difficult choices to reduce or even end lines of work. I want to thank all our grantees for their patience and understanding during this process.
The next six months are bound to involve moments of confusion and frustration, as we start implementing and testing the new structures we have built. There will be plenty of challenges and opportunities in 2022 as we try to make things work the way we want.
I am confident that together we will continue to advance, in ways that make us better able to support and champion the vital work done by so many of our partners and allies round the world.
May you and yours have a peaceful and restful break over the holiday season.
Mark Malloch‐Brown
President, Open Society Foundations
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