Welcome to Inside Impact, Temelio's monthly video interview series, where we sit down with leaders across the philanthropic space for honest, unfiltered conversations about what's working, what isn't, and where the sector is headed. No sales pitches, no jargon, just real conversations with people doing the work. Each month we'll be exploring a mix of topics, from technology and operations to broader themes shaping philanthropy today.
For our very first episode, we're thrilled to have Dan Schoenfeld. Dan is a veteran of the philanthropic technology world, with experience spanning Knight Foundation, Fluxx, and the Bezos Earth Fund, where he helped facilitate billions in funding to critical causes around the globe. He's now building something new as head of grants management and operations at the Fund for Science and Technology, a rapidly growing foundation with an ambitious mandate. Dan brings a rare mix of operational rigor and a willingness to say the quiet parts out loud, which makes him the perfect person to kick off this series.
Operations first. Programs second.
One of the most striking things Dan's doing differently at the Fund for Science and Technology is the order of operations — literally. Most foundations build out their programmatic strategy first, and then scramble to retrofit operations and technology around it years (or decades) later. Dan is flipping that entirely: data architecture, systems integration, and measurable outcomes frameworks are being laid down before the grantmaking engine fully revs up.
"A lot of philanthropic funders treat operations as something that catches up to the programmatic side," he explains. "We're actually treating operations first." It's a philosophy that sounds obvious in startup culture, but remains genuinely rare in the foundation world.
The "impact" word problem
Dan doesn't mince words about one of philanthropy's most beloved, and most abused, terms. "Impact" gets thrown around constantly while foundations continue to rely on narrative reporting, subjective questionnaires, and qualitative summaries that are nearly impossible to act on. The Fund for Science and Technology is taking a different approach: KPIs, outcome tracking, and analytical reporting systems that produce actual evidence of whether a grant moved the needle.
What does that look like in practice? Quarterly reporting cycles, something Dan acknowledges is "a little controversial," so that if something isn't working three months in, the team can pivot rather than waiting a full year to find out they've been funding a dead end. The goal isn't to punish grantees; it's to course-correct together, fast.
Quarterly reporting cuts against the trust-based philanthropy movement, which advocates for reducing grantee reporting burdens. Dan argues these aren't mutually exclusive. You can build a trust-based relationship and still expect real data. That tension is real, and it's one the sector is actively debating.
AI: overhyped for the wrong reasons
Ask Dan what's overhyped in philanthropy tech right now, and he'll say AI, but not for the reasons you'd expect. He's not skeptical of AI itself. He's skeptical of the sector's tendency to theorize about AI for years while never actually deploying it. "Foundations will be talking about guardrails and AI for good for the next 10 years, and half the time they won't actually deploy it."
He draws a sharp parallel to cloud computing: foundations were still running server racks until recently because they didn't trust off-premise data.
Traditional philanthropy is ineffective. There, he said it.
The closing question, “What do you believe about philanthropy that most people would disagree with?” produced the sharpest take of the conversation. Dan's view: traditional philanthropy is genuinely ineffective. Not because the people in it don't care, but because the structure encourages slowness, risk-avoidance, and endowment preservation over aggressive capital deployment.
His countermodel? The creative LLCs and hybrid structures quietly that write billion-dollar checks, making program-related investments into for-profit companies tackling hard problems. In his view, those are the philanthropic entities that will actually matter in the next decade, not the legacy foundations.
Calling traditional philanthropy "ineffective" is a direct challenge to some of the sector's most powerful institutions. Legacy foundations have long argued that permanence, deliberation, and endowment preservation are features, not bugs. Dan's argument is that in a world of urgent, compounding crises, those virtues have become liabilities.
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