George Kaiser Quotes

It is important to view philanthropic ventures with an eye for business.

Good decisions can have bad short-term outcomes but be great for the business long-term.

Shouldn't you put the same amount of effort into your giving as you might for your for-profit investments? After all, philanthropy is an investment, and one in which lives - not profits - are at stake.

Charity only works when smart, innovative, compassionate people in the field are supported from home. The World of Children Award raises money and visibility for change makers, people doing the real work. We are a conduit for funding and resources only; all of our operating costs are covered by our generous board of governors.

In business, the market gives you feedback in real time. Your sales figures tell you what's working, what isn't, and how you need to change. If you don't listen to the feedback, you go belly up. In philanthropy, there is no market.

In many respects, we really are trying to not run the Social Office like a business, but we do have a strategy. We do have a mission. We are trying to standardize certain things so that our time is not spent on, you know, picking flowers or linens, that we've got standards.

Our ultimate goal is to stay in business. We are not here with a specific plan. That's kind of how our entire career has evolved. We will figure things out as we go along.

When people make donations to non profits, they want to know that their money goes to good use.

Instead of waiting until the holiday season - when mail solicitations flood in from worthy organizations - and making a flurry of gifts because this is the time of year to give, sit down and take stock. Identify your passion, learn about it, and direct your time, mind, and dollars to aligned causes and organizations.

I am a local economic revitalization strategist. But I am also a TV/radio host, and a small business owner. I find ways to use money more efficiently to realize positive goals for everyone.

Good household decision-making often relies on thinking about your household like a firm.

You can express your generosity in ways that are virtually limitless. This was what I wanted to convey in 'Giving 2.0' - that whether you have $10 or $10 million to give, if you identify the right opportunities and make the most of your resources, your impact can be tremendous.

But charity is a very complicated thing. It's important to find an area where you can really help and you can feel the results. Charity is not like feeding pigeons in the square. It is a process that requires professional management.

In business, staying focused requires that you turn most opportunities down.

Philanthropy without scale and sustainability is like any other bad business that will simply wither and die on the vine.

What an entrepreneur does is to build for the long run. If the market is great, you get all of the resources you can. You build to it. But a good entrepreneur is always prepared to throttle back, put on the brakes, and if the world changes, adapt to the world.

Every company has to identify what I call its strategic resources, and make sure that it grabs as much of its strategic resources as possible.

The key, I think, from a business point of view, is to learn how to be efficient in making a record that's not too expensive, so that you're not going crazy spending tons of money making a product that might not ever return that money.

A budget is a moral document of a nation’s priorities.

What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarcely be folly in that of a great kingdom.

Show me your budget and I’ll describe your strategy.

My goal is to make the biggest difference possible in the world. I have only so many resources and so much time.

Once you establish what activities your company needs to do, the next question is, 'How do these activities get accomplished?' i.e. what resources do I need to make the activities happen?

If you had a Starbucks that never sold coffee, you wouldn't keep the site open. It's not that we're abandoning sites, but we're saying, 'Let's go where there's HIV, focus our resources there.'

If one committee controlled your entire budget, I think you might make some effort to build up personal relationships. I think it is a no-brainer.