“Oh, sure. Been doing it for years. It’s not a farm or nothing, just a few beds, but the kids seem to like it.”
“Principal Jenner didn’t mention it to us.”
“No disrespect, but Principal Jenner doesn’t have the best idea of what goes on around here. Anyway, it’s mostly the other kids who come out to help. The special kids.”
Elliot held out his arms as if to literally embrace this unforeseen development. “That’s great, Edgar. You could be like the Yoda of this whole thing. I say we join forces, move your plants up here, and learn from each other. John?”
“Chilies, tomatillo we can work with. Not much of a market for calabaza.” John’s cell rang—Iron Maiden, “Number of the Beast”—and he stepped to the edge of the roof.
Edgar said, “I doubt they’re going to let them special kids come all the way up here, to be honest with you. It’d be a lot for them to deal with—the kids and the teachers.”
I kneaded my jaw. “We can’t have a state-of-the-art rooftop farm for the charter school and a handicapped garden round back.”
John rejoined the rest of us. “Tommy can’t make it. He had to spend an extra day in Vegas hammering out a deal. Greta’s on her way up. She’ll check it out and report back.”
“We’re just kicking around a problem,” Elliot told him. “The special ed students can’t come up to the roof.”
A moment passed. I couldn’t tell if the information had pierced the air around him.
“That sucks,” he said after a while. “It would have been a cool thing for them.”
I wanted to tell him he didn’t appreciate the implication of the news, but I knew that would drag us off track. “There’s got to be a way to make it work. Small groups, extra adults, guardrails maybe. We’ll figure it out.”
John nodded vaguely. “Good.” He didn’t sound especially concerned one way or the other.
A head popped out of the open roof hatch. “Is this where the party’s at?”
Pink-blonde hair, eyebrow ring—it was the waitress from Rita’s, the tiny ukulele player. My frustration with John was mounting. Didn’t he know better than to invite his hangers-on to a business meeting?
“Hey, Greta,” Elliot said, lurching in for a hug.
She fist-bumped John even as she threw her other arm around Elliot. When she noticed me, she closed one eye and pointed. “Hey, I know you.”
“I thought you worked at Rita’s,” I said.
“I help out at night because John’s my dude. But running shit for Tommy is my official gig.”
Now that she mentioned it, she did seem to be dressed in a Williamsburg version of business attire: high-waisted slacks, formless blazer over a Public Image Ltd T-shirt.
Greta spun around on her heel. “So this is it, huh? The next outpost of the Rita’s empire.”
“We look at it as more of a community project,” I said.
“Right, the kids.” She held out her phone and continued swiveling around as she spoke, taking video. “Tommy’s foundation is going to be all about helping kids. But he’s not interested in what everyone’s already doing—book drives, mentoring, wishes. He’s looking for projects that fit his brand—bold, innovative…and fun. Fun is important to Tommy, for the kids and for him. Because if it’s not fun, then why bother, right?”
“Seems like a fun guy,” Elliot said.
Greta flashed her ring and index fingers: devil’s horns. “Work hard, play hard.”
Elliot mirrored the gesture, getting into the Tommy Brutti spirit. “At a school like Begin to Win, so much of what the students do all day is test prep, drill and kill,” he said. “Our program is going to help the teachers do their job, but at the same time, it’s going to make the kids excited to show up in the morning. Like, ‘we get to grow the tomatoes that go on our pizza? How cool is that?’”
Greta pulled her face free from her phone, a glint in her eyes. “So the kids get to eat the food?”
Elliot gave John a careful look. I decided to cut in. “A portion of it, sure. Eating is a part of the learning experience. We’re talking to the principal about incorporating some of the fresh ingredients into the lunch menu. That’s the nutrition piece of the puzzle.”
I made a mental note to send the principal an email broaching the subject as soon as we were back on the ground.
“John, what do you think of Francisco doing a cooking demo with the kids at harvest time?” I asked.
John forced the breath out of his nose like a bull. “It’s doable.”
Edgar had been standing silently with his hands behind his back like a secret service agent trained not to listen to what doesn’t concern him.
“Edgar, what do you do with the vegetables from your garden?” Elliot asked him.
“Mostly just give them away to parents, my neighbors. I tried giving them to the cafeteria for the kids’ lunch, but they said it was against regulation. They got to use the stuff they buy from the district, all that frozen crap, because it’s been approved by the inspectors.”
“I think we can handle a little red tape,” I said. “Right, Elliot?”
“We eat red tape for breakfast.”
“Once things are really up and running and we’re getting the yield we want, the next step is a farmers market,” I pressed on. “That’s how we bring in the parents and the neighbors.”
“And we get to add an economics piece to the curriculum,” Elliot added. “Entrepreneurship, what it takes to run a business.”
Greta gave the screen of her phone a series of spirited jabs. “Innovative. See, that’s why this is a perfect project for Tommy. You’ve got the Rita’s connection, and John, you know Tommy loves you guys. Then you’ve got the kids, growing the food, learning the science, eating it, selling it. And it’s all happening in this reclaimed space nobody uses. I mean, think about how many rooftops there are. Just the schools alone…”
“We’re thinking of this as a pilot,” I said. “The idea is to design the program so it can be scaled up to schools all over the city.”
Finally, I’d said something that met with John’s approval.
“Every restaurant in the city could get their produce within walking distance,” he said. “Fuck the supply chain.” The way he was staring past us, it was as if he were laying claim to the virgin rooftops of all New York’s 1,700 schools.
“Word.” Greta’s eyes were glued to her phone. “So I sent some video to Tommy while we were talking. He’s in. I mean, not officially till he’s back in town and we can get it all on paper. But he’s giving this the green light.”
Headrush. This “yes” was even more improbable in its swiftness than Gollick’s. He, at least, had to be persuaded in person. I was used to budget negotiations at the council; the haggling over a single line item could drag on for months. So this was how the other half lived.
Greta forged ahead. “Listen, I know this is probably going to be disappointing, but the foundation isn’t exactly flush at the moment. Tommy’s got a big fundraiser coming up at South Beach Food & Wine, but that isn’t until next winter. For now, the ceiling on grants is fifty thousand. And since Tommy’s new at this, he’s only doing matching gifts. He doesn’t want to throw money into something unless there’s at least one other big commitment.”
Elliot was smiling so hard, it looked like it hurt. “We understand completely. We’ve already got a big anchor donor, so we can just match Tommy’s gift against that.”
I heard myself say, “No.”
Elliot’s smile froze. “No?”
I had the group’s undivided attention. “That would be a waste,” I said. “What we need to do is make a big announcement—‘Tommy Brutti Pledges $50,000 Matching Gift’—and use that as leverage to bring in more.”
Elliot remained still for a beat. Then, like someone had pressed “un-pause,” he clamped down on my shoulder.
His eyes bounced from Greta to John. “What have I been telling you? We’ve got the master strategizer right here.�
�� He gave me a little shake.
“Tommy’s all for big announcements,” Greta said. “I think he’s going to enjoy doing business with you gentlemen.”
She said she’d be in touch when Tommy was ready for us to sign the agreement. And with that, she raised a fist still adorned with last night’s club stamp, drawled, “Viva la revolucion!” and disappeared down the hatch from whence she came. I thought I heard Edgar say something in Spanish under his breath, but when I looked at him he didn’t look back.
* * *
We called Vivienne to tell her the good news. She said to call back on her iPhone so my contact info would be stored. I did as instructed, and Kat answered.
“Oh, yeah, the farm boys.”
“You couldn’t get them to transfer her contacts?”
“I did. She just doesn’t know how to find them. Hang on. I think she’s on her Blackberry.”
We muddled through this little comedy of errors for another minute or two before we were able to commandeer Vivienne’s attention and ask her who to hit up for the match money. She sighed, a woman wearied by the burden of so much wisdom.
“You’re not going to like this, but I think it’s time.”
She was talking about the Prometheus Foundation, the 800-pound gorilla of the nonprofit sector. The name referred to the myth of the Titan who stole the secret of fire from the gods and gave it to mankind, a grave personal sacrifice that allowed civilization to advance and prosper. In other words, the first philanthropic grant. Laying claim to the capital—intellectual and actual—of society’s powerful ruling class and using it to make life better for the less fortunate: that was the foundation’s mission, and counterintuitively, it seemed to go over well with its intended victims.
Prometheus had become the go-to tax write-off for New York’s upper crust, best known for its star-studded annual gala. “Turning guilt into gelt” was the catchphrase coined by last year’s host, a political comedian widely beloved by coastal elites. Every major anti-poverty initiative in the city had Prometheus money flowing through it.
So what made Vivienne think we wouldn’t want to target them for our next big ask? Well, as sterling as Prometheus’s reputation with the gentry was, it was less so among the beneficiaries of its largess, the food banks and clinics and tutoring centers that received the grants. For years, there’d been horror stories going around about the infamous “Prometheus trial by fire,” their insistence on micromanaging every aspect of the work they funded. Most of the nonprofit leaders I’d met just wanted someone to pay the ConEd bill so they could get on with the endless work of triaging their clients’ needs—food, shelter, medical care, counseling—but that wasn’t the deal with Prometheus. I’d heard that, in one extreme case, a modest after school arts program gratefully accepted the foundation’s offer to pay off their mounting debt; within two years, it had been transformed into “a pilot initiative to align enrichment instruction with the STEM curriculum.” There may have been interpretive dance involved. Could be an urban legend, but still…gives a whole new meaning to doing the robot.
To me, it was inevitable that Prometheus would want to get all up in its grantees’ business. After all, its board of directors was made up of captains of industry, corporate titans—as opposed to the original Greek variety. Their worldview, as I understood it, was that every problem up to and including child hunger and adult illiteracy was a symptom of poor management. Handouts were easy, but what the kind-hearted schlubs ladling out the soup and flashing the flash cards really needed was someone to show them how to maximize efficiency, create economies of scale, use metrics to drive continuous performance improvement—you know, the important stuff.
“Can’t we just go to another one of your friends?” Elliot couldn’t keep the whine out of his voice.
“We can,” Vivienne said, “but we don’t want all our eggs in one basket. We’ve already got a big-time private donor and a famous name. What we need is credibility. Right now, this is still just a cute little project. If Prometheus gives us their seal of approval, that makes it real.”
“Do you think they’ll go for it?” I asked.
“Martin and this Chef Tommy of yours will be enough to get us a meeting. Beyond that, I don’t know. But one thing I’ve learned, boys, there’s no shame in asking. At least, I’ve never felt any.”
Elliot got a kick out of that. “Ain’t too proud to beg, Viv?”
“Excuse me?”
We talked it over and decided she was right. The Prometheus imprimatur had value far beyond the $50,000 we were seeking. And we figured a couple of savvy political operatives such as ourselves had to be better equipped to deal with the dreaded trial by fire than your typical frazzled community nonprofit director. Besides, maybe they’d have some useful ideas for us. They did have more than two dozen PhDs on staff. In any case, Vivienne, having come up with the suggestion, was likely to set up the meeting whether we assented or not.
That settled, there was something else on my mind. I told Elliot I didn’t want to invite John. My argument was that this wasn’t his crowd. There was no denying his maverick capitalist shtick had done the trick with Martin Gollick, and Tommy Brutti was his contact from the get-go, but Prometheus was a different animal, a haven for policy wonks and “mission-driven change agents.” If John were to murk up the waters again, raising questions about our collective intent and even our nonprofit status, we’d blow it for sure. To my surprise, Elliot didn’t object. I wondered if he’d been secretly hoping I’d make the case for excluding John, if, like me, he was concerned we were becoming a subsidiary of John Cardini, Inc.
The Prometheus offices were sleek and silent. A screen behind the front desk advertised various activities taking place that day—a “Social Innovation Laboratory” in the Fire Room, a live-streaming TED Talk in the Clay Room (a reference, I took it, to the story of Prometheus molding the first humans out of clay). We were led to a curvaceous, glass-walled conference room and provided bottles of spring water. The back wall was decked out top-to-bottom with jittery crayon drawings on construction paper, an incongruous gallery of children’s art, from Lascaux-like pets to abstract expressionist splatters.
I’d seen similar stuff on display before, but always in the offices of organizations that worked directly with children. The longer we waited for our hosts to join us, the more questions came to mind: How did all that art find its way here? Was it part of the grant agreements that Prometheus owned a percentage of all creative work produced with its support? Were bags full of glitter-and-macaroni collages arriving by courier on a daily basis? Did Prometheus display whatever it got, or did it skim the best stuff off the top, and if so, had it developed an assessment tool to measure the artistic quality of the work? Was there a discreet storage room (the Tartarus Room?) piled high with pieces that didn’t make the cut?
The Prometheus team that eventually joined us was six-strong: there were program officers representing its food security and educational opportunity divisions, as well as a communications officer and a lawyer—at least, I thought he was a lawyer; he just said his name and “Legal” by way of introduction. They were a remarkably diverse bunch for such a toney outfit, about an equal mix of men and women, white, black, and Asian: (East and South). Men and women alike were in suits, distinguished only by a whimsical fluorescent sock, chunky fashion glasses, or, in one case, a gold lapel pin with the Prometheus logo: a single flame. At each of our previous meetings, I’d felt overdressed in chinos, shirt and tie. Now, I felt underdressed, although I doubt anyone noticed since I was sitting next to Elliot, who, as usual, hadn’t ironed his shirt or worn a belt.
They were all about the same height (too short for professional basketball but maybe not lacrosse) and young, younger than me and Elliot, by the looks of it. Maybe that meant our proposal had only risen to the level of the B team. If so, fine with me. They were still the most impressive group I’d ever faced across a conference table.
Brad, the senior officer for food securi
ty, took the lead. “Whenever we meet new folks, we like to start with a little explanation of how we work.”
His colleagues looked on with unwavering attention.
“Our grantees, when they come to us, most of them are already doing great work, but they’re serving small numbers. Or they have a cool idea, but they don’t know how to operationalize it. Our value add—well, it’s the money, of course it’s the money…”
Brad paused to allow for a soft chuckle from the group. “But we like to think it’s more than that. Because the problems we’re facing are huge, so huge that throwing money at them, even Prometheus money, barely makes a dent. And frankly, we’re not interested in dents. We want to demolish those problems.”
Another pause to let the words assume their full weight. Maybe this is the TED Talk, I thought. There could be a camera installed in that wall of children’s art, hidden behind the lion with the paper plate face, microphone secreted between its triangle teeth.
“We don’t have the satisfaction of helping jobseekers with their resumes or reading to kids on a daily basis. What gets us excited to come to work every morning is the opportunity to meet with folks like you, take a good look at what you’re doing, really get under the hood, and figure out if what’s working for a few dozen people in need can work for millions. How does that sound?”
All three of us—me, Elliot, Vivienne, and me —were slow to realize the question was meant to be answered.
Brad jumped into the silence before it got too awkward. “I know, it’s a lot, right? Kind of like asking the centipede which leg he moves first…”
Reassuring nods from the team. Thank god they weren’t the winking type.
“Being so intentional can be difficult for some organizations. Sometimes the fit just isn’t there. But if it is, we’ll be with you through the whole strategy development process, helping you build the muscle.”
Brad checked his watch. “So I see I’ve taken up way too much time talking about us. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about what you’re doing and how you think we can help each other.”
In the Weeds Page 6
