We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

620. 100% For Purpose Model: The Legacy and Future of Newman’s Own Foundation - Alex Amouyel

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Meet Alex, President and CEO of Newman’s Own Foundation. 🤝 100% of profits from Newman’s Own products go toward helping children facing adversity. With over $600 million donated to date, the Foundation continues Paul Newman’s bold vision of business as a force for good. Alex is also the author of The Answer Is You, a guide to living with impact.

In this episode, Alex shares how the 100% for Purpose model is reshaping philanthropy through community-led giving, tackling child food insecurity, and uplifting young changemakers.

Tune in to hear powerful stories of impact and learn how small actions can create real change. It’s a reminder that generosity starts wherever you are—and that we all have a part to play. 

Episode Highlights: 

  • The Legacy of Paul Newman and Newman’s Own (06:09)
  • The Business Model of Giving 100% Away (09:05)
  • The Future of Philanthropy and Community Engagement (11:50)
  • Child Nutrition and Food Justice Initiatives (14:54)
  • Decentralizing Philanthropy and Inclusive Giving (18:05)
  • Alex’s One Good Thing: Create your own rainbows (31:00)

Resources: 

Episode Shownotes: www.weareforgood.com/episode/620


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Speaker 1:

Hey, I'm John.

Speaker 2:

And I'm Becky.

Speaker 1:

And this is the we Are For Good podcast.

Speaker 2:

Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.

Speaker 1:

We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.

Speaker 2:

So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.

Speaker 1:

So let's get started. Hey Becky, what's happening?

Speaker 2:

I'm fangirling over here, but it's fine, everything's fine.

Speaker 1:

I cannot wait to tell my kids who I got to talk to today. Yes, but it's fine, everything's fine. I cannot wait to tell my kids who I got to talk to today. What an honor. I mean, we love philanthropy, we love telling mission stories around here, but to get to meet the people behind some of our favorite brands that are pouring into this, that are living their values out loud, it's just kind of a pinch me moment, because it is an honor to introduce you to Alex Amariel. She's the president and CEO of Newman's Own Foundation.

Speaker 1:

Go over to your pantry, friends, I've got you got some Newman's Own hanging out in there. Well, the power of that is that, if you didn't know, 100% of the profits from the sale of Newman's Own products go in service of their mission 100%. We're going to talk about that, about how that's evolved over the years and what it actually does. But Alex is the president and CEO of Newman's Own Foundation, which is a private, grant-making foundation. Their mission is to nourish and transform the lives of children who face adversity. But before there I mean Alex was slaying it. She was over at MIT Solve as the founding executive director with a mission.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, it's so good To drive innovation to solve the world's biggest challenges. She steered solves growth to support over 268 solver teams and indigenous community fellows, catalyzed over $60 million in commitments and brokered more than 600 transformational partnerships. My goodness Okay, that's a whole nother podcast episode, but Alex has cut her teeth everywhere, from the Clinton global initiative and she worked for save the children international and the Boston consulting Group. She's also the author of the Answer Is you a guidebook for creating a life full of impact? And, my friend, I can't help but notice that's exactly what you're doing. So honored to have you in our podcast today. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3:

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me and thank you for your having Newman's Own products in your fridge and pantry. That's a donation to our work. So thank you for being our donors.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, it's like the easiest donation ever.

Speaker 2:

Tastes good and feels, good yes. I know.

Speaker 1:

So, Alex I mean, the brand is bigger than life, and we'll talk about that for a second but we want to get to know you, the human behind this work. Would you take us into your story and tell us some of the formative moments that led you in to what you're doing today?

Speaker 3:

Absolutely so, as you can see from my t-shirt. I grew up in Paris, france, and when I was a kid bizarrely, I wanted to become a scientific researcher and rid the world of cancer. That didn't get me too far. I quit a PhD the day I turned 21. So I did something different after that Studied international relations. No one would pay me to do anything interesting in human rights, which is what I wanted to do. I joined the Boston Consulting Group because they would pay me and it seemed like the work would be interesting, did that for a couple of years and, luckily for me, they had a pro bono partnership with Save the Children. So I started my project and then did the thing you shouldn't do, but managed to get a full-time job and quit BCG from then on, and that really kick-started this career in social impact.

Speaker 3:

From there I joined the Clinton Global Initiative and then MIT, solve and now Newman's Own Foundation. Full circle, moment One. Our mission is nourishing and transforming the lives of children who face adversity. I'm sure we'll talk more about that. We support grantee partners such as Food Corps and FRAC and a number of indigenous food justice grantee partners such as food core and frack and a number of indigenous food justice grantee partners. But one of the anchor grantees we have is another organization founded by paul newman, the serious fun children, that children's network, which is a network of camp, summer camps and programs all around the world which which support kids with serious illnesses childhood cancer being one of them.

Speaker 2:

I mean you were meant to be in this work and it feels like you're in Paul's hearts, for wanting to help and care for kids is at a real epicenter of what brings you together. And I just love Paul Newman. I love his films but, like you just mentioned this camp, that is what I thought. A lot of what Newman's own poured into were these camps for children, but it's such a big legacy. You've donated over half a billion dollars to support children in your work. I can't even imagine what Paul thought that his impact would be, but for listeners who just aren't familiar with this, tell us a little bit about the original vision, why it was started and how it's evolved to today.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely Well. As you know, paul was an award-winning actor and also an incredible prize-winning race car driver. But from a very young age he was also an activist and a philanthropist. He was at the March in Washington in August 1963. He was named by President Carter around disarmament the United Nations. He campaigned for equal pay for his female actors that worked alongside him and many other causes, and at the young age of 57, created Newman's Own with his good friend AE Hotchner, who went by Hotch, and they invested $40,000 of their own funds to get Newman's Own started selling salad dressing. He was obsessed with salad dressing and when he would go to a restaurant he would insist on making his own salad dressing. So they started by giving it away to friends at Christmas around the Westport area and then decided to start selling it. And then decided to start selling it and once they started selling it the first year they made a profit of $300,000, which was quite good that's quite a good turnaround in just a year and he decided to give all the money away to Good Courses.

Speaker 3:

And the year after that, the year after that, and that's how it's been happening for the last 40 years, so in total, that's, in fact, exceeded $600 million given to good causes, which is pretty incredible. And now, as you can see, it's still a pretty rare. People don't believe us, I think, and when we say we give 100% of the profits away, because it's still such a rare occurrence as a as a business that is owned by a foundation, people still have trouble getting their head around that, but it's true. It was set up by that from the beginning.

Speaker 1:

I mean, holy heck, the generosity of spirit and I love I would say even I don't want to say naivety in like a bad way, but just this beauty of like I want to give it all away. But we all know as business owners, as entrepreneurs, as nonprofits, it's hard to follow through on something that generous. I got to understand the background of this has got to be so much more difficult to follow through on. So I just love to hear more about how does that model work and I'm sure it's had to evolve in some ways behind the scenes but it feels transformative in the others that you've inspired, looking at Patagonia and Bloomberg others. By that work I mean talk about the model and how it's been so central to this.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. One of the big transitions was when Paul died in 2008. He gifted the food company to the foundation, but that was actually a problem in the sense that it was sort of illegal. So when he was alive, he could just see how much profit the company had made at the end of the year and then write checks, and that was fairly easy. But technically in the US at the time, foundations owning more than small slivers of private businesses was very restrictive and it was around a tax loophole and we got an exemption from the IRS to be able to continue operating as we did. And then that in the end that we got support for the passage of the philanthropic enterprise act, um, which got passed in 2018 to in fact allow businesses like us to exist, as in foundations, to own 100 of for-profit businesses, providing they give all their profits away.

Speaker 3:

And we're still, I would say, a small club. There's 100% for purpose club, basically, but there are others, such as Patagonia most recently in September 2022, who converted to a slightly different model in the US, the perpetual purpose trust, which is slightly different in its legalese, as one would say, but certainly the sort of intent and the outcome is the same they give all the profits that they make to a trust, and then that trust gives it to a C4 and then gives it to a C3, and that's all focused on climate change. So there's a couple of ways of doing it in the US. And then the other people, which I think are really interesting. There's an event ticketing company out of Australia, but now also operating in the US and launching soon in the UK, which is called Humanitix. We know them, hi, humanitix friends.

Speaker 3:

Oh my gosh, adam and Josh. Yes, oh my gosh. Yes, I'm Adam and Josh. Yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely yes, I'm seeing them again soon. But with them we created you know, they also credit growing up with Paul Newman salad dressing in their refrigerator for some of the inspiration and wanting to do the same thing, but in the high growth tech industry, which I think makes a lot of sense. And so with them we created the 100% for Purpose Club, and definitely we'll make sure that you have the link for any of your listeners. But this is a network of companies that are interested, which are doing it already, such as Arsene, humanetics, and there's also Cummings and Ecosia and, thank you, some of our founding members, but then also people who are interested either in the sort of Patagonia model, maybe as a legacy sort of. You have a profitable business and you're wanting to convert it to 100% for purpose, or you're starting a business in the same way that Paul did back in the day and you want, from the beginning, to start it and give all your profits away.

Speaker 2:

So we just got started this year and we're talking about it and hosting coffee chats and other things like that I just think it's a beautiful model and I want to talk a little bit more about just the future of philanthropy and giving models because I think when people think about like gifts like this, when they think about Newman's Own making a very big donation into something it puts their heads squarely in corporate giving they think of how can someone of a more mom and pop organization or maybe an individual, how could they embrace this ethos of 100% purpose? What counsel would you give to them in being able to connect with the meaning in the way that you all have with this 100 purpose model?

Speaker 3:

I think you know this better than I do, but small donors in the US make up more collectively than large donors and sort of the biggest philanthropists. So I think part of the mission of you know Us in the philanthropy space is saying everybody can be and is a philanthropist, and these small donations matter in terms of the percentages and in terms of absolute value as well. Now, obviously, how you as one individual can make change, that's always a question, but I think there are ways. Through your giving, your investing, your purchasing decisions, your volunteering, what you choose to do as side gigs, what you choose to do for your career, all of those things can matter and you can do them at all the different levels. You can do it with your family and being generous with your family. You can do it at the community level, at the city, state, federal level, if you can.

Speaker 3:

We have all these stories of people who changed the laws in the United States and or even globally, and so all these little things add up and they're really important and they actually, I think, drive the movement and I'm really keen of. I think if Newman's own foundation's money doesn't come from it doesn't come from Paul Newman and it doesn't come from a large endowment. It comes from people like you which are purchasing the product, and any profit that is made is then going to the foundation in service of our mission, and I'm keen to find other ways that we can encourage participatory giving, and one of these things is we created this community fund on Grapevine, which is a collective giving circle platform.

Speaker 2:

Oh, we love Grapevine.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so we have a community fund and we have about 1,000 members in this community fund. You don't have to give money in this to participate. You can just sign up to vote for a nonprofit you like to nominate people to attend some of our events. But you can also give and many people have, so that allows us to pool sort of further donations from people. But there's lots of different ways that that can show up and get involved.

Speaker 3:

We also just hosted one of our uh grantee partners as mosaic film experience and they just hosted a youth film competition in honor of Paul Newman would have turned 100 this year, so we wanted to do something in film. But that really reflects our mission. So we asked youth under 18 to submit mobile videos of what food justice means for them and then there's a jury and the films are going to be picked. They'll win some money and also get to go to LA to tour the studios and many, many other things. But that's also sort of a vision of having young people, the people we serve participate and tell us how they would like to see food justice represented in their worlds.

Speaker 1:

I just think it's cool to see y'all embrace that narrative. It's something that Becky and I feel really passionate about. This platform that Changemakers is not just giving money. It's about using our voice, our storytelling, our different gifts, and I've seen you spoken about participatory and community-based giving and some of these examples you're just threading right now. I mean, at the end, you're making philanthropy more inclusive and more accessible through Newman's Own. Is there something else that lifts that? You would, I don't know, just want to share, and someone listening that's like how do I do this at my own mission? How did we evolve maybe the thinking of our board or our stakeholders to be like it is a bigger conversation than just money.

Speaker 3:

I mean, I don't know where people start from to begin with, but I definitely think the more we can decentralize and democratize and indeed open the doors of philanthropy and sort of have a bottom-up rather than top-down approach to, to, to the, the problems we're seeking to solve, uh the better, and that there are various ways of doing that from from the very beginning.

Speaker 3:

Just even the food. We hosted this food justice for kids prize last year and selected 12 organizations from across the United States. We recruited a jury of different I think in total there were 75 reviewers, but that's the point it was looking for. I didn't score a single application. It's not my decision, it's the decision of a diverse group of leaders, of people who had both expertise, lived experience. Community members really looking for that had a community choice award where people on through the grapevine platform got to vote and, you know, voted for which one would be some of their favorites so that they could get an additional ten thousand dollars. So again, thinking about the decision making of philanthropy being different than perhaps it's been done in the past I.

Speaker 2:

I just think that you look at the world in a different way, alex, and I love it so deeply because it's disruptive, it is inclusive, it asks bigger questions rather than better questions, and I'm just looking at the state of the world right now and, as you're aware, what it's done for philanthropy and people on the front lines of massive social issues, on climate issues, on human rights issues. I want to know where you, as the leader of this very influential nonprofit, where are you putting your focus this year? How are you keeping that posture of doing the most good for kids at the front and how are you meeting this moment with you, with your staff, with your board? Where's your focus right now?

Speaker 3:

Keep calm and carry on, yeah, right.

Speaker 2:

It's real.

Speaker 3:

keep calm and carry on probably, uh, what at the moment, uh would be would be the motto. We're definitely in in interesting times uh, especially if I sort of zoom in to one of our core issue areas, which is child nutrition and um, we have sort of two portfolios around that nutrition, education and school food, and indigenous food, justice, and there's a lot of. We have about 50 grantee partners in in that in those two portfolios, and they range from food court and frac national farm to school network to. You'll see, you'll meet sean sherman, who's just won the elevate prize, uh, recently, but this is the the. He runs an organization called natives which is about training the next generation of indigenous chefs, um, which is really fantastic.

Speaker 3:

And you know, all of them are directly or indirectly affected by the recent changes and potential changes and figuring out how to continue this work, how to best support people as we go along. Obviously, we're less affected indirectly, but the work of our grantee partners is very much affected. At the same time, there's still great, great work to be done at the community level, at the city level, at the state level, and a lot of what we do is about long-term community-based systemic change. So you have to continue. Basically, that's what we're doing, that's it.

Speaker 1:

I think that Keep Calm could be a successful poster if we looked into putting it out there.

Speaker 2:

I'm sure it's not trademarked whatsoever. Keep Calm and Nurture On, yes, but I mean this is a very important issue. Can I just hop in here really quickly Because I am deeply concerned about the ability of school kids to go to bed with something in their belly. I mean 48% of Oklahoma public school children would qualify for free and reduced lunch. That's almost half of my state's public school population. I mean this is a very big issue and I want to say that you must take this posture of we have to keep going because kids still need to eat regardless of what's happening, and we're going to have to stand in the gaps when these times of chaos, and it's not just nonprofit professionals going to have to stand in the gaps, when these times of chaos.

Speaker 3:

And it's not just nonprofit professionals, I think it's everybody, yeah, and in the at a, at a national level, it's one in five children who live in food insecure households. I don't know the number specifically for Oklahoma, but I suspect for the free lunch where you just quoted, absolute is not surprising, unfortunately. And childhood insecurity was already going up, was already getting worse because of the expiration of pandemic era benefits. So one of the biggest progresses we saw, maybe one of the only silver linings from the pandemic, was that if you gave cash to low-income families, they bought food for their kids, and when the schools were closed they did figure out that kids would go hungry by not receiving breakfast and lunch at school, and so a lot of the states arranged for free that schools could still provide lunch and breakfast for kids. Those pandemic benefits expired and so the child food insecurity or child hunger numbers shot right back up, unfortunately. So that was already happening.

Speaker 3:

But there is promising momentum, notably at the state level. So New York, for example, just voted into. I'm not sure if they put example, just voted into. I'm not sure if they've put into the budget, I'm not sure if it's fully voted now. It might actually have been in the last few days.

Speaker 3:

Um, for free lunch and free breakfast for all kids in new york, that would be. I think there was three million kids that would have access to that. Um, there's positive movements in one of your neighboring states, arkansas as well, for example, and some of this. There are some other states who have already voted this in Minnesota, new Mexico, montana. So certainly there is some progress, but the trends overall, unfortunately, are getting worse. So you know, but we have to keep every fighting, every battle, basically, and that's a lot of the work. That food court does, that frack does that. In new york, we work with community food advocates and connecticut and hunger connecticut. So they're really trying to pass, either city or state levels, these, these legislations which would allow kids to come to school and receive at least two free meals.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you for sharing that and we need to link up the episode we had with Frack on the podcast.

Speaker 3:

Oh, great yeah.

Speaker 1:

Well, alex, I mean we celebrate philanthropy, the way that it's changed all of us and our journeys. I'd love to kick it to you to share, maybe, a story where you saw a moment of kindness or philanthropy happen that stuck with you over the years.

Speaker 3:

I'll make, I think, a broader comment which goes back a little bit to this idea of philanthropy not just being the purview of the very big, high net worth individuals or companies or things like that. But I certainly, when I was at the Clinton Global Initiative back in the day, I was the director of program. I was responsible for all the speakers, all the heads of state and government that came to the meeting and that graced the stage and really, I think the people who you know there was, everybody who was, anybody was I can't even was there at some point and uh, unfortunately is not the day, uh, fully, where all of these stories get revealed. But you know, there was a lot of the you know celebrities, heads of state, foundation heads, ceos, etc. Etc. In the green room.

Speaker 3:

But I think the bits that really gave me the most goosebumps is when people would come to a panel to see bill gates or see bono or whoever that was, because they were on the program and they were the famous person there, and then they came out of the panel talking about a young social entrepreneur from Pakistan or the African continent or someone that they had never heard of before.

Speaker 3:

They went in the room and was like, wow, this person's incredible, I'm never going to forget their name and one of these people that I'm sure you know of, but there are many, so I'm just picking on him for good reason. But it is Kennedy O'Day-Day from Shining Hope for Communities and again in the world, that comes full circle. The first grant, uh, kennedy and jessica got when they, when they started shofco, was from newman's own foundation, oh my gosh. And they gave the first fifty thousand dollar check and and and kennedy and jessica talk about that in their book and also in their book, uh, they say paul new Newman had already passed by then, but they kindly named a couple of latrines in Cameroon which I didn't know him, but everyone suspects he would have appreciated. So again, a full circle moment there.

Speaker 2:

There is a purpose to where we are being led in this work, because it all comes back around in so many cool ways. Thank you for that story. Love hearing the story about Kennedy If you're wanting to follow him. He's got a really incredible movement going in Kenya and we know we have several friends in Kenya who would like to know about that, so we'll drop that in the links as well. But as we're wrapping up, alex, we end all of our conversations with a one good thing, and we're wondering what your one good thing would be that you'd leave with the audience. It could be a life hack or a quote or something that you live by. What's your one good thing?

Speaker 3:

I was having a long chat with a good friend, Garcia Terrell, who's a social impact coach, who's a wonderful lady, and we were in LA where she lives, and we went for a walk in Echo Park and rented a swan pedalo. You know one of these swans.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I can visually see it right now.

Speaker 3:

So we were pedaling the swan around Echo Park Lake if you can call it a lake talking about life, love, the pursuit of happiness, et cetera, et cetera. And then I made her go right into the fountain area and she's like why are we? We're going to get wet, why are we going to the fountain area. But we had just been talking about the symbolism of rainbows and I said, carla, in life you have to go create your own rainbow. So we're going into the fountain to like find some rainbows. So I I think that some of this life and talking, it's how I think that some of this life and talking it's how can you go out and create your own rainbows?

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, we're obsessed with this conversation. We love what you're doing, the work that y'all pour into. How can our listeners get connected with your work and with you? Where do you show up online?

Speaker 3:

Newmanzoneorg, linkedin, and then 100forpurposeorg, 100forpurposeorg 1-0-0-F-O-R-purposeorg, for those who are interested in following in Newman's own footsteps and either creating or converting their companies 100% per impact, but Newman's ownorg and LinkedIn otherwise dot org and linkedin otherwise.

Speaker 2:

I mean, can I put in a plug also for alex's recent ted talk that just went live called can salad dressing transform capitalism?

Speaker 3:

and so please go check that out yes, yeah I didn't.

Speaker 2:

I uh, the ted people choose the titles and they a, b, test it yeah yeah, it goes into a real like they have a real science around titles, but I thought they did very well it worked, because I was very, very excited about that and I just think we want you said there's only a few of you now in this 100% for purpose movement and we want thousands of people in that movement. Can you imagine what the world would look like? And gosh, one good thing please go buy some of the corn and black bean relish. It is fantastic. You guys keep rocking the great work that you're doing and we're here to amplify it. Grateful for you, thank you.

Speaker 3:

Thank you. Thank you so much.