Radical by Michelle Rhee Page B

been an executive in the textile industry. He was short, wiry, and condescending. His tiny bow tie was knotted high on his neck, like a nut and bolt with wings.
    â€œWhere’s your stuff?” he demanded gruffly.
    I pulled out my draft plan and handed it to him. He flipped through the pages.
    â€œYoung lady,” he said, “I have no idea what it is that you are trying to do here.”
    I said, “I’m trying to start a new company. A nonprofit organization that helps school districts and state departments of education hire new teachers.”
    â€œWho are the shareholders?” he asked.
    â€œThere are no shareholders. It’s a nonprofit organization.”
    â€œYou have to have shareholders. If not, you have no equity.”
    â€œWe don’t need equity; we are a nonprofit organization.”
    â€œYou don’t want to make a profit?” he asked, shaking his head and looking at me like I was a moron.
    â€œNo. This is a nonprofit !”
    We were fifteen minutes into what was scheduled to be a forty-five-minute session.
    â€œYoung lady,” he said, “you are wasting my time. You can’t sell a business plan that has no profits attached to it. No one is going to invest in that. I don’t know why you’re here, but come back when you have a real plan.”
    I am not a violent person, but I wanted to punch the guy. I’m also not a crier, but at the same time, the exchange almost brought me to tears.
    â€œReally?” I thought. “Is it that hard to understand?”
    He stood up, shook his head, shook my hand, and said, “Good luck.”
    As it turns out, my concept was hard to understand, but I knew in my core that it made sense. I was trying to start a nonprofit organization, but I didn’t want to do it in the traditional way. I hate asking people for money, and I didn’t want to spend all of my time fund-raising. So I decided that the organization should be a revenue-generating, nonprofit organization.
    I’d been around education long enough to see a huge number of nonprofits whose leaders spent inordinate amounts of time explaining how their do-gooding was doing someone some good. If it was that hard a sell, I thought, then you had a problem. My idea was to start a business where we would sign contracts with school districts that needed our services. They would pay us to provide great teachers. Our model would charge the district only for the amount it cost to do the work, no profit added. If we were providing valuable services for the district, it would be willing to pay for them. If we weren’t, then we didn’t need to be in business, and we would fail.
    People didn’t get it, but it seemed crystal clear to me. And since it made sense in my head, I pursued it. The first order of business was to lay my hands on some start-up capital.
    D ON F ISHER, LEGENDARY FOUNDER of the Gap, was beginning to invest in a major way in education reform. He was a big supporter of Wendy and Teach For America as well as the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) charter schools, and Wendy thought he was the ideal candidate to become our angel donor.
    I continued working on the business plan, made it as good as it was going to get in my hands, and went to meet with Scott Hamilton, the head of Fisher’s foundation.
    Scott was a jerk to me. He was skeptical, dismissive, and condescending—a younger version of the elderly fellow with the bow tie. During the course of several meetings he poked holes in all of my assumptions and berated the plan. He was arrogant and a pain in the butt, but he had my money, so I suffered through it.
    My idea was definitely unconventional. Wendy had established TFA based on the goodwill and good faith of rich donors. They operated in a world where everything was done by grants. Philanthropists gave money based on compelling ideas they felt would help the world become a better place. The nonprofits would do the