The Founding of Pangea
By Allan Paulson June 4, 2023
At our 20th year anniversary celebration, Allan Paulson, a founding Pangea member, shared his recollection of the early days that formed our giving circle.
In November, 2001, I received an email out of the blue inviting me to come to a discussion about how we could promote better understanding across cultures and countries. This was a few months after the 9/11 attack. One of the disconcerting back stories that emerged focused how much dislike and hatred there was toward Americans, and America in many parts of the world. I decided to go, and found myself in a large conference room high up in the Columbia Tower with 40-50 other people.
The meeting was convened by Martin King, a successful, serial tech entrepreneur who had a deep passion for social justice. “There must be something we can do to promote international understanding and peace, other than bombing brown people,” he said, referring to the start of the war in Afghanistan. It was a very eclectic group of academics, NGO leaders, and philanthropists that Martin and his facilitator Peter Blomquist had scraped from their rolodexes. I learned later that my name came off the registration list of a conference on international giving that Martin and I had recently attended.
There was a lot of brainstorming, and floating of ideas. The group decided to meet again in two weeks, and then again, with people coming and going from meeting to meeting. One of the ideas was a giving circle, and those around the table who liked that idea began to notice each other, and someone suggested we meet briefly after the third group meeting ended. Some wise person suggested we get out of this intimidating conference room and get together over a meal. Sam Evans invited us to dinner at his house.
Six or seven of us gathered for dinner and tentatively shared experiences and interests. Most of us did not know each other, much less what we valued. I remember vividly someone asking, “If an (unnamed) religious group were barred from the country what would you do?” Someone said, “I would make a protest sign and go out to march in the streets.” Many heads nodded, and it seemed we were on the same page. We decided to work together to form a giving circle focused on rural community development.
The biggest issue in that first meeting was whether we should ‘go big’ and raise money to hire an executive director with the goal of developing a large non-profit, or whether we should see ourselves more like an investment club, and proceed as a small volunteer led group. We chose to move forward as volunteers. The most compelling idea for people is that we would do this ourselves, we would have a first-hand experience with people in other cultures and countries who were trying to improve their communities, and we would learn together how to be good philanthropists.
The next task was to design the circle and engage others. We thought that others would not be drawn toward an undefined intention. Rather, we needed to choose an issue and a geographic focus. So, we planned a second, very consequential meeting where we each said what we thought the issue and focus should be, and gave our reasons. Each of us had passion for the direction they thought the group should go, and ultimately, we voted. The most significant thing to me was that everyone accepted and embraced the outcome of the vote. These were all very accomplished, powerful people with significant resources. Any of them could have gotten up at that point and said, “Well, I am going to go my own way.” Instead, everyone embraced the decision of the group. The process of working together was more important than any single person having their way. This became an important guiding value of Pangea from that moment on.
The next step was to engage others, so we decided to host an education session on the need for potable water in Central America. We chose this because having potable water is a high leverage issue that affects health, education, and the empowerment of women and girls, who often spend hours a day fetching water, and are vulnerable to assault as they hike though remote areas to find clean water. The Seattle Foundation kindly lent us a space, and we engaged the director of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, a leading thing tank about water rights and resilience. At the end of that meeting 13 people signed up to join the giving circle, and we were ready to begin to plan our first grant cycle.
Initially we named ourselves World Venture Partners, after an already existing non-profit that was called Social Venture Partners. But the name felt clunky and wrong because we were not entrepreneurs, or global capitalists. So, Bob Siedensticker came to a meeting and said, “How about ‘Pangea’, the long-ago world when the continents were joined? After all, aren’t we trying to bring the world together again?” The reaction was an immediate yes, and Pangea was launched.