Billionaire Jeff Green Relies on Data to Give Back—and Sometimes Emotion, Too

“I try not to be political, but I don’t believe this is a political issue, I believe this is a human rights issue—this is about equality,” Green says. 

Green points to the rapidly shifting social acceptance of the greater queer rights movement over his lifetime. He says this was starkly evident in the evolution of the official stance of the Obama presidency, which began firmly against LGBTQ+ marriages in its first term, only to completely change its position in its second, reflecting broader sentiments of the nation at large.

“The world has changed,” Green adds, saying that to be an effective leader in his community, it was important to leave the church he had been a part of for the first half of his life.

In many ways, it was a much more emotional decision to support gay rights than his other charitable work. “Dataphilanthropy” is the giving arm of his family foundation and it centers on using a data-driven approach to harness capital to solve some of society’s biggest problems. 

For instance, Green examined disparities in outcomes between those with or without access to college to determine his approach to educational philanthropy. The Jeff T. Green Family Foundation Scholarship offers 250 scholarship awards each year to first-time freshman students at California State University Channel Islands, granting US$20,000 to each recipient over the course of four years. 

Green says data like “this essentially provides A/B testing,” giving a clear, objective birds-eye look at how these investments can tangibly improve students’ lives. 

Where is this desire to give back rooted? Green has long been open about an experience he had at 17 that changed his life—he spent hours with a homeless man in Five Points, Denver, Colo., learning from his story of hardships and wrong turns that all led him to that moment in time. Green referenced that experience of walking in someone else’s shoes in his letter joining the Giving Pledge—the initiative from Warren Buffett, Melinda French Gates, and Bill Gates to spur some of the world’s wealthiest to donate the majority of their fortunes to philanthropy.

He wants his philanthropy to reach far and wide. Among his many projects, his foundation announced in June that it will partner with Team Dayā to completely fund the construction of a new primary school in Nicaragua this fall. 

PENTA: I was curious to learn more about this idea of ‘data philanthropy’—what is it and why is this an effective method for carrying out this philanthropic work?

Jeff Green: No matter what we are talking about—homelessness, racial equality, gay rights, anything—it’s emotional and complicated, and so in that environment, what if we brought data to the equation? A nonprofit I’ve spent time with is the Center for Policing Equity. What if we gave police departments data that suggested they can lower the use of force by better screening 911 calls? What if we sent social workers instead of cops? Let’s look at the data. See what happens? We can agree on that, we don’t have to sit down and agree on whether police are good or bad, or “defund the police,” let’s look at the data, it seems like that might be a place where we can have a conversation. Data philanthropy is “let’s bring reason and rational thought to very emotional issues.” It feels like that is the only way we can give most of the amount of good.

So much of your philanthropy is engineered around education. Why, out of all the areas, was that specifically one you wanted to focus on? 

One thing we get the paradigm wrong [about] in the United States with education is we are all fighting each other to get our kids into the best schools so they can have the best future, ‘oh, it’s a zero-sum game, we just want our kid to win.’ Well, the kid next door, he’s going to vote some day, and I want him to understand economics, too. I want him to be thoughtful and educated. If we want an effective, mentally stable society, we have to educate all of it, not just our kids. And given the effect on happiness, if I go back and look at all of the indicators, I personally believe the data suggests parenting and home life is the single biggest indicator. I don’t know how to make people divorce less and parent better, but the second biggest indicator is education. That I can affect. 

What has it been like for you to observe some of the results of your commitment to Cal State Channel Islands?

I see so many nonprofits and philanthropic efforts where they are trying so hard to believe that they’ve made a difference. How do you know you’ve actually made a difference? With a lot of causes, it’s super hard. With this one, we just have this amazing benefit, we can show in the data we did it, we’ve positively impacted thousands of lives. It’s in the results, the same results because they leave with a college degree, that makes it likely that they—statistically speaking—will have a better chance of being on the right side of the bell curve. 

It creates a domino effect. In the next couple decades or so that could be the person who will be signing the Giving Pledge or something similar, right? That’s the goal?

Exactly, and when I meet some of the kids as they are graduating and I see that hope of ‘I came from where I did to where I am now, I can do anything,’ it does seem like the second half of their journey is easy on a relative basis. I do feel that, I do.

When it comes to your work with LGBTQ+ causes and issues and leaving the Mormon Church, religion is such a personal, central thing for so many. What inspired that and, from there, what inspired you to include LGBTQ issues in your philanthropy? 

In a lot of ways this one starts more personally than it does data-driven. I grew up Mormon, I understand their history very well. For the first 20 years of my life, I was all in on Mormonism, I was fully exposed to all of it, I understood its history very well, including that for 100 years, they had their own atypical marriage in that they were polygamous. If you listen to their rhetoric in the 1800s—“the world may not understand our marriage, but I’m not asking you to do it, just leave us alone and let us do it our way.” Well, to me, it felt like exactly the same rhetoric that they were fighting against in Prop 8, and as I listened carefully to their rhetoric, I just felt like it was so harmful and so marginalizing and so damaging and just morally wrong. Watching it closely and watching the amount of money, especially behind the scenes, go into fighting marriage equality, I believe there was an opportunity for me to make a huge impact because I was arguably the wealthiest Mormon ever and because the Mormon Church was so rich to just loudly say in the language that they understand: “My money will not support this, my voice will stand against it.” 

Do you have a call to action or words of wisdom for others?

There are so many opportunities for us to affect change. Part of the reason why the world is looking at CEOs and tech and asking them to solve problems is because that is where they have hope. The reason they aren’t screaming at government like they should—because they have the money—is because they don’t think they can [do it]. We’ve been doing it a long time, so I know there are a lot of people that struggle to believe they can make a difference, but part of the reason society is looking to us to affect change is because they believe we can. I would like to encourage those who are in a position to make change to invest the time and to try again to make change.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.