Alex Honnold has given away about a third of his income since 2012. After getting his first big paycheck while living in a van on the floor of California’s Yosemite Valley, he remembers feeling he had money to spare. “The van felt very luxurious compared to my friends living in tents,” said Honnold, who was 27 at the time. “When it rains, I’m bone-dry. The van doesn’t leak. It felt great.” Today, Honnold, the world’s best free solo climber, is both wealthier and more famous after his Oscar-winning 2018 documentary “Free Solo.” He still gives away one-third of his income. And how he’s doing it may have something to teach us about how to give betterat a time when the climate, and other crises, need every cent they can get.
Most of us, he suggests, are playing it way too safe. This summer, I spent a day in South Lake Tahoe, California, climbing with Honnold (more on that in a future column) and talking with him about his foundation that funds community solar projects around the world. I wanted to hear why he hopes his giving, not his unprecedented climbing feats, will be the most important thing he ever does. Americans gave an estimated $394 billion to charity on an individual basis last year, roughly 1.7 percent of U.S. disposable personal income. But donors, large and small, typically fund safe bets, often with restrictions on how to use the money. Honnold and his foundation think we’ll be better off if all of us take bigger risks, trusting recipients to spend it wisely. In practice, that means accepting — even embracing — failure. In late July, Honnold and I were driving to Lover’s Leap, one of California’s iconic granite faces, where he likes to climb when not at home in Las Vegas with his wife and two young kids. I asked him how climbing influences the way he donates money after writing that first check in his van in Yosemite Valley. Honnold said his giving was nothing like free-soloing, his style of climbing on sheer rock without ropes, where a fall means death. It was more like traditional climbing with ropes. To master a challenging route, he’ll safely learn every inch of the rock. Then he’ll attempt the summit.
Most of his climbing, Honnold told me, is failing. Conquering a climb is a brief stopover on the way to failing all over again. Honnold rehearsed one especially difficult section on Yosemite’s El Capitan 40 to 50 times with ropes before his still-unrepeated free solo in 2017. “When you are trying something at your limit, you basically fail on it for months at a time,” Honnold said. “Then you succeed once, which often takes five to 20 minutes. Real failure is if you walk away, give up and you decide you can never do it. As long as you’re still working on it. You haven’t actually failed yet.” Honnold practices what’s called trust-based philanthropy, which gives recipients more power over how to spend donations. It’s built on a willingness to accept failure and trust others to succeed. “People are totally terrified of getting something wrong,” said Shaady Salehi, founding director of the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project, an advocacy group. “If you’re trying to tackle complex social issues, you’ve got to know that failure is going to be part of it, but you’re going to get better at it next time.” Honnold’s foundation is betting on small solar projects around the world, including community-owned solar panels in Miami and solar boats in the Amazon. Last year it granted $4.2 million, and the foundation plans to give $11 million this year raised from companies, foundations and individuals.
The climber covers the organization’s core staff and operating costs out of his own pocket. Rather than raise an endowment, the organization aims to gift almost everything it receives. (Most foundations disburse the legal minimum of 5 percent of their assets.) “There are many people on earth who are struggling in their day-to-day life,” Honnold said. “They don’t want you to build an endowment; they want you to act.” No giving strategy will solve all problems or feel right to everyone. As we face mounting crises including global warming and democratic retrenchment, here’s what Honnold’s foundation argues we need to do to make more progress on our biggest problems, whether you have a lot or just a little.
I want to hear from you! Email me your feedback and stories at futurecoach@washpost.com. See you on Thursday, Michael Coren, Future Coach |
