Philip Wollen was a vice president at Citibank when he walked away to fund causes he chose. Through the Kindness Trust he funds projects for children, animals, the environment, the terminally ill and aspiring youth. The Trust takes no grant requests and accepts no donations. He finds the need himself, and fixes it.
In May 2012 he stood up at the Wheeler Centre, alongside Peter Singer, in the Intelligence Squared debate on whether animals should be off the menu – and spoke for ten minutes. It brought tears to my eyes.
Strategy
His money was already working in dozens of countries. His voice had been heard in one room.
That ten minutes was the best case his causes would ever have, held by the one man who would never promote it – the work was the giving, and he had no interest in the limelight. I said to him: we can take this to the world.
Winning his agreement was the strategy. Everything else was making sure that when he said yes, the speech could travel – shareable under the Trust’s name, subtitled across languages, and surrounded by enough that ten minutes of attention led somewhere.
Action
I hounded him until he agreed.
The Trust had no YouTube or Facebook presence, so I set up both from scratch. I sourced the debate footage from the Wheeler Centre, cut the speech as its own ten-minute piece – “Animals Should Be Off The Menu” – and had it subtitled into eighteen languages so it could be shared in each of them.
Then I built the channel around it. An at-home interview series, answering the questions he was asked most. The presentation of the Trust’s Kindness Medal to Sir David Attenborough at the Regent Theatre, and an interview with the two of them. A piece filmed aboard Sea Shepherd’s Steve Irwin – his call for other donors to join him.
Every piece went out under the Trust’s name, so the speech led people to the rest.
Outcome
The speech has been seen some thirty million times, in eighteen languages. Six years after it was given, a single Facebook re-post was watched fifteen million times in three weeks.
Word came back that it helped set off the vegan movement in Israel, and he was later invited to address the Knesset.
The Kindness Trust has now contributed to 850 projects in 77 countries.
If you’re quietly funding change and you want to bring the world along with you, I can help.
