March 4, 2012 | Read Time: 6 minutes
The pop star known for thundering dance beats and outlandish outfits like the “meat dress” she wore to 2010’s Video Music Awards landed the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and other choice cuts from the academic and philanthropy worlds to help her foundation make its debut last week.
Lady Gaga, the 25-year-old singer from New York’s Upper West Side, unveiled her Born This Way Foundation on a stage at Harvard University where Winston Churchill and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once spoke. Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society is advising the star on her foundation,
Top officials from the MacArthur fund and the California Endowment, which are backing Lady Gaga’s foray into philanthropy, were on hand, as well as 18 youths from the California fund’s programs. So was Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Oprah Winfrey.
Lady Gaga (nee Stefani Germanotta) assembled that chorus of support from such a dissonant bunch of people in the name of building self-esteem among young people. The Born This Way Foundation will seek to fight bullying and “inspire bravery” among youths, online and off.
With a budget of more than $2.5-million—$1.2-million from Lady Gaga, $500,000 from MacArthur, and much of the rest from a deal with the Barneys New York retail chain—Born This Way and its supporters will share proposals on how schools and policy makers can keep young people safe, hold competitions for youths working in digital media, and engage community groups and teenagers in cities that Lady Gaga visits on her concert tour next year.
Intellectual Weight
For Lady Gaga’s foundation, the benefits of working with big-name nonprofits are many. Harvard and the foundations have helped connect Born This Way, which is led by the pop star’s mother, Cynthia Germanotta, to the latest research on youth civility. Their imprimatur also lends intellectual heft.
But how does the Lady Gaga brand help MacArthur and the California Endowment? Does it make sense for buttoned-down philanthropy to work so closely with a star who has such a flamboyant reputation?
Connie Yowell, who oversees MacArthur’s grants to digital-media projects, says Lady Gaga has solved the “scale” problem that bedevils many a foundation.
Ms. Yowell ticks off Lady Gaga’s social-media stats with the familiarity of someone who has probably made the “case for support” to her supervisors many times: 15 million Twitter followers, 40 million Facebook fans, 1.6 billion views on YouTube.
When the star first shared news of her foundation in December, more than 100,000 people signed up on its Web site to receive information.
“Born This Way adds something that we simply don’t have, and that is reach,” says Ms. Yowell. Not to mention a way to speak directly to young people, who are probably less familiar with the foundation’s work to create a “more just, verdant, and peaceful world” than the average public-radio listener, who hears that mission on frequent underwriting credits.
As Robert Ross, who leads the California foundation, puts it: Lady Gaga will energize the young people his fund supports in a way the “boring president of the California Endowment” cannot.
The California Endowment and MacArthur may be just the vanguard. Joe Voeller, a spokesman at the Ford Foundation, one of several other grant makers to whom Born This Way has reached out, says in an e-mail to The Chronicle: “We’ve been impressed with the seriousness, commitment, and rigor that Lady Gaga is bringing to the creation of her foundation.”
Taking Risks
Impressive or not, Lady Gaga and her brand do carry risks. The singer has built her success on shocking people. Her song “Judas” angered religious leaders. Some animal-rights activists decried her meat dress, which was made from slabs of steak.
Dr. Ross says questions about working with Lady Gaga are “legitimate” but that philanthropy is far too concerned about negative publicity.
“Institutional philanthropy has a great deal more reputation and brand capital than we care to spend,” he says.
Born on an Airplane
The Born This Way Foundation was conceived, according to Lady Gaga’s mother, on a plane ride home from a European tour last spring. Cynthia Germanotta says her daughter had been troubled by recent incidents of online hazing of gay youths. (This fall, she dedicated a live performance to a fan, Jamey Rodemeyer, who committed suicide after what his parents say were years of taunting because of his sexual orientation.)
Hunkered under an airline blanket, Lady Gaga started talking about some of her ideas for inspiring young people, her mother says. Ms. Germanotta grabbed a piece of paper and began taking notes.
While the causes that some celebrities champion are head scratchers (how did Matt Damon pick water conservation, for example, or Natalie Portman, microfinance?), Lady Gaga’s is a no-brainer. She has talked openly about feeling “like a freak” as a teenager. Her songs—particularly “Born This Way,” the title track of her 2011 album—are sometimes appeals for tolerance, social acceptance, and courage. (“There’s nothing wrong with loving who you are,” she sings in the video, in dress that alternates between black-and-white underwear and a suit with a skeleton mask. “So hold your head up, girl, and you’ll go far.”)
Lady Gaga’s managers connected her mother with David Washington, a former aide in the Obama White House’s Office of Public Engagement, to serve as philanthropic adviser. Mr. Washington, like everyone else involved in Born This Way, takes pains to emphasize the seriousness of the endeavor.
Through his work with Causecast, a technology company that receives MacArthur money, Mr. Washington had been talking with Ms. Yowell. They realized Lady Gaga, because of her passions and social-media prowess, seemed like a good fit for the foundation’s goals.
Cynthia Germanotta, a businesswoman who worked in telecommunications for 25 years, visited MacArthur’s programs in Chicago. Later, thanks also to Mr. Washington, she had a two-and-a-half hour lunch with the California Endowment’s Dr. Ross at a cafe run by Homeboy Industries, one of the fund’s grantees.
Bus Tour
Born This Way describes its approach as “online, on the road, and down the street.”
It will develop a social-media campaign to share cutting-edge research conducted by Harvard and engage parents, teachers, and policy makers in discussions about how to protect and embolden young people. (In addition to the money it’s giving Born This Way, MacArthur is contributing $500,000 to the Berkman Center to produce research and proposals on youths in the digital age.) A tour bus sponsored by MacArthur and Born This Way will travel the country, providing a place for youths to feel connected and learn about ways to get involved in positive social activities.
The California Endowment is exploring ways to tap Lady Gaga’s influence, perhaps by using her name in youth centers and incorporating arts programs into those places. For the foundation—and for all of big philanthropy, for that matter—the arrangement is very much an experiment.
Says Dr. Ross: “I’m as interested to see how this turns out as you are.”
