Nikita Mishin: Why Entrepreneurs Should Lead the World on Educational Philanthropy

Entrepreneurs by nature are serial builders – they thrive on creating new ventures, products and solutions. They have a restless drive to innovate, disrupt and improve on the status quo. Imagine taking all this energy and talent and channelling it into the most urgent and worthwhile cause of our time – education, particularly for the world’s poorest and most marginalized children.

It is a perfect and necessary match in a world that faces a widening array of issues to confront. Entrepreneurs must lead the way on educational philanthropy as they possess the skills, resources, drive and vision necessary to make a lasting impact on global education, especially in areas where it is most needed and least available. By founding, funding and invigorating schools, providing technology, supporting teachers and students as they strive for more, and advocating for quality and equality, entrepreneurs can help transform the lives of millions of children and leave an indelible mark on the future of humanity.

With so many philanthropic options, one might ask, “why education?” What is it that would attract an entrepreneur to pursue this route?

Primarily, it is a natural extension of an entrepreneur’s passion for building, often in tough environments. Entrepreneurs love to see ideas come to life and grow. They enjoy the challenge of solving problems and creating value. They are not satisfied with how things are but want to push things to see how they could be. They enjoy the dynamic energy of change and the adaptation required to capitalize on it, extract more, make things better. Education is the perfect medium – it is different in every country and yet familiar, the challenges are constant and constantly changing, the need for help will always be there and always grow.

There are striking similarities between starting a business and founding a school. Entrepreneurs search for unserved markets – places that want a product but cannot access it or no one is providing it. In startup lingo, these are called “white spaces.” The education field is rife with these “white spaces” — underprivileged areas where children lack access to quality education or have unmet learning needs. Founding schools in these places is like creating a start-up. You ask: What is the need and how do we serve it?

Entrepreneurs also have a knack for identifying and recruiting the best people; those who believe in their vision, love a challenge and know what success looks like. They are well adapted to finding and hiring committed teachers and administrators who can bring their own energy and drive to educating children at the edge, who need more than a chair and a book to flourish.

Another reason educational philanthropy is an ideal fit for entrepreneurs is that many are driven by more than profit. Great businesses are founded to change the world and what better way to achieve that than by educating the neediest children, who will make our world’s future? Education is not only a human right, but also an integral tool for social and economic change. It can break the cycle of poverty, empower girls and women, foster peace and democracy, promote nature conservation and combat pandemics. By investing in education, entrepreneurs can make a lasting difference in the world, as the positive impact of their endeavours ripples on for generations.

As their work gives way to other interests, entrepreneurs should be building on their business careers by venturing into supporting educational causes, which offers a sense of purpose and fulfilment, and a true legacy that goes beyond individual profit or prominence. Some entrepreneurs like seeing their business expand and prosper even after they exit it. There would likewise be a perpetual buzz from watching their philanthropy bear fruit as children learn and develop, as students become teachers, creating a flywheel effect as one successful school leads to another, one generation after the next.

I have experienced firsthand how well entrepreneurship and educational philanthropy can come together. As a new college graduate, I joined friends from university to found a company involved in freight forwarding. This was shortly after the dissolution of the USSR and we saw a “white space” developing as Soviet-era logistics fell away, leaving a sector ripe for disruption and, ultimately, revenue-generation. We went on to build a portfolio of businesses in the logistics space – freight rail transportation, stevedoring, ports operation. We bought companies, added companies, built companies. But, for me, building a business was never quite enough. I wanted to apply the experience and techniques I’d learned to create opportunities for students, not just customers.

That’s why I established Dar Charity Foundation in 2005 as an organization to support educational philanthropy and carry out my vision of what a 21st-century education should look like, drawing on what I’d learned about some of the best schools and institutions worldwide. We assembled a brilliant team, with real clarity of purpose, and over the years we put these ideas into practice, not least when we founded Moscow’s New School in 2017, alongside other schools we opened and continue support around the world.

Entrepreneurs elsewhere are putting similar ideas into practice. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan have pledged to donate 99 percent of their Facebook shares to charitable causes, with a focus on education. They have supported initiatives such as personalized learning, teacher training and early childhood education.

But more entrepreneurs should be recruited and inspired to join the cause. The traditional model of philanthropy – wealthy individuals giving to charities upon their deaths – has produced innumerable benefits over the centuries. But an entrepreneur-led education revolution would yield infinitely more than that. It would create an ongoing and scalable explosion of disruptive thinking and boundless drive during the lifetimes of entrepreneurs that allows them to continue doing what they love most while bringing more and better education to the children of this world. “Entrepreneurs for education” would be a world-changing startup story.

Nikita Mishin is the founder of Dar Educational Charity.