Richard Murray is president and founder of Equity Schools, Inc., an Illinois benefit corporation developing Nonlinear Funding solutions for social causes nationally and internationally. Richard’s education, reflecting his curiosity and diverse interests, has included: The London School of Economics and Political Science; Universität Salzburg; Loyola University Chicago School of Law (JD); University of Michigan’s Rackham Graduate School (at the UM Biological Station); and the University of Michigan (BA in Environmental Design and Psychology, including the Honors College of Literature, Sciences and Arts, with studies in other colleges of Architecture, Business, Natural Sciences, Engineering, and Urban Planning). After law school, Richard initially worked as managing editor of a Chicago newspaper investigating corrupt lawyers and politicians and wrongful convictions (he says they had no shortage of story material). Later he was president of a Chicago real estate development company (in an industry which he says also had a corruption theme, but he didn’t get involved in that part). Richard has been active with: American Refugee Committee (Board Member); Human Rights Watch Chicago Committee (Founding Member); Bosnian Herzegovinian American Cultural Center of Chicago (Co- Founder); Human Rights Advisory Committee at Northwestern University (Member); and other environmental, business, human rights, and refugee organizations. He researched, advocated, and published: “Compensating the World’s Landmine Victims: Legal Liability and Anti-Personnel Landmine Producers.” Despite Richard’s education (or, he says, perhaps because of it), he does not consider himself an academic, although he has taught at the high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels.
Please describe some of the work an expert typically does in your field.
Thank you for inviting me to do this interview. This first question throws me a bit, though, because my staff and I are the only “experts” in the field of “Nonlinear Funding.” What we do is solve the funding gaps of various social causes.
What do you mean by social causes?
I’m a big believer in the importance of education, so a lot of our work involves schools and education (hence the name Equity Schools). In my view, education really is the basis of civilization, who we are, and how we’re going to achieve a sustainable and just world. The solutions to today’s problems begin with education and building on our accumulated knowledge. This has been true since the beginning of recorded time. That sounds pretty grand. Let me give some examples of our work.
The United States has far too many underserved communities without access to quality education. I invented a high school model for families in these underserved, lower income, urban communities. There are now 37 of these schools and 90+% of their graduates go on to college. But this couldn’t happen without funding. My Nonlinear Funding invention has leveraged $1 billion so far from for-profit businesses to support these schools – these students – and that money is tax deductible, yet it’s not charitable (any charitable donations are additional revenue streams). And these schools don’t receive any government funding either.
Internationally we are developing a plan to provide teacher training in the world’s least developed countries. These areas desperately need access to education. They don’t need school buildings, they need teachers. Yet their extreme poverty prevents their citizens from getting college degrees to become teachers. And unless the situation changes, the current level of poverty, which is breathtaking, is bound to become entrenched. Of course, this will contribute to generations of hunger, disease, conflicts, and enormous suffering. Can we wait for the wealthiest countries to decide to increase foreign aid? Realistically, I don’t think so.
So we’re devising a mechanism to pay for the college training using a Nonlinear Funding solution. It’s a bit complicated, involving a tax avoidance device for the wealthiest U.S. universities so they pay for the overseas teacher training while actually saving on an obscure US tax. I know that it can work legally and financially. Will the universities use it? I don’t know. All we can do is try.
We also work on causes beyond education. For example, affordable senior housing, community centers, and we’re starting to work on how to sustainably fund cleaning up the oceans’ plastic pollution while helping preserve coral reefs. (In our offices we’ve created an informal “Nonlinear Funding Strategy Lab” for the more unusual challenges.)
In summary, while other experts identify the problems and quantify their solutions’ costs, typically all they propose for funding sources involves conventional forms of government funding or philanthropy that—again, typically—is insufficient or unlikely. So, the trick becomes funding those gaps. This is where we come in with Nonlinear Funding.
What exactly is Nonlinear Funding?
I was afraid you’d ask this. For years, I’ve intended to write about “Nonlinear Funding.” But while it’s true I invented Nonlinear Funding, even I am not sure how to explain it; I just do it. And we’re definitely successful using it to solve seemingly impossible problems. But how? Usually, I tell people to contrast it with “linear funding” which has only three, familiar sources: (a) government funding, (b) philanthropy, and (c) user fees or tuition (for private schools). Then I say, “Nonlinear is the rest of the universe.”
Believe me when I say this explanation satisfies no one. In fact, Nonlinear Funding is related to chaos theory. You should see the looks I get when I offer that. Pretty amusing. The truth is that nonlinear thinking itself is hard to define. A good description (I’m borrowing some phrases here): human thought characterized by expansion in multiple directions, rather than in one direction, and based on the concept that there are multiple starting points from which one can ultimately apply logic to a problem.
Nonlinear thinking, compared with linear (i.e., logical), is less constrictive – letting the creative side run rampant because of its inherent lack of structure. Visualize letting a puppy run wild on a walk up a mountain—anything of interest will be thoroughly investigated (and perhaps peed on) before jumping to the next, possibly nonrelated subject. Nonlinear thinking is vaguely similar to brainstorming—allowing thought to flow, unhindered, in attempts to arrive upon something special. Nonlinear thinking increases possible outcomes by not being so certain about the starting point for any logic process. Nonlinear thinking tends to jump forward, and from side to side, through the steps of a project. I know this might seem counterintuitive for solving complex problems, but basically the idea at the start is to intentionally get lost—abandoning even the confines of language—in an effort to see the big picture, and then, while you’re lost, drawing the missing map you need to see where you are, which you then can follow to the solution.
Sure, but for what we do, applying nonlinear thinking to solving funding problems, let me offer some “rules” (that I hope to expand on some day). Admittedly, most of these rules won’t make sense to anyone other than me, but that’s part of the idea. Nevertheless, I really have put a lot of thought into this list. The “rules” are true, at least for me.
The 17 Rules for Nonlinear Funding
(1) The world is chaos. Embrace it.
(2) Stay calm, or at least try not to panic.
(3) (a) Don’t assume tradition is the best approach. Sometimes it’s stupid … on the other hand, (b) Tradition might be the best approach.
(4) Maybe the starting line is not where other people believe it is.
(5) Sometimes the answer is so close to you, you’re looking past it.
(6) Nickels and dimes can build massive bridges.
(7) To get a big number, it may be better to bend a slice from an even bigger one than to gather many smaller ones.
(8) Professionals are not as expert as they might be telling you.
(9) To see all the stars in the sky, look just a little bit away from them.
(10) Maybe we are the terrorists.
(11) There is no shame in saying you don’t know the answer, but there should be in always saying you do.
(13) Never, ever take credit for others’ ideas (give attribution when due).
(13) People who prize safety and order are much better at running the trains on time than at building the bridges they run on.
(14) Categories are the road to ruin.
(15) Blimp ports are a good place to start.
(16) Try, only try. (Persistence is more important than spreadsheets. If you know you have it right, you must be relentless.)
(17) Faith is critical, but not in the way most people think.
Coda: If you think 17 rules explain it, you’re missing the point. Relax. It’s chaos.
Yup, there you have it. That’s how to solve seemingly impossible problems using Nonlinear Funding. A little crazy, but it gets results.
What kind of education/training, knowledge, skills, and dispositions are required for developing the necessary credentials and expertise in your field (academic degrees, licenses, internships, etc.)?
First of all, let me say I could not be more impressed by the other Roeper School alumni experts the Roeper Review has interviewed. Seriously. Pulitzer Prize winners? Olympic gold medalists? Academic physicians? I could never do those things. I’m not “gifted” that way. In my defense, I did attend Roeper City & Country School (um, a half century ago), but I think the closest I’ve come to any honor was induction to the Roeper Athletic Hall of Fame. Hey, I’m a proud member.
But to answer your question fairly, once I started in higher education, I pretty much let my curiosity run wild; I wanted to know everything. I just couldn’t seem to get enough, and I usually took an overload of courses, many of them by skipping past their prerequisites. So I don’t think I got very good grades, and, in all candor, I made it a point never to know what my grades were as long as I passed.
In fact, in college, grad school, law school, and even the bar exam I never took notes. I wanted to listen as intently as I could, think, and try to understand. This probably was not a recipe for good grades or honors (I suspect this, I don’t really know), but grades and honors were not my purpose. In summary, to be an expert at what I do, it’s necessary to know as much as possible and to use it holistically. If I have any “giftedness” that’s it.
Add to this that I have an unusual form of synesthesia where I feel the physical pain of others when I witness, or even hear about, them being hurt. Many times every day I have painful shocks as I encounter anyone suffering, even in minor ways. My pain synesthesia helps me better understand how other people are experiencing their lives.
Can you think of a teacher or mentor who helped you prepare for success in your field? How did this person help you develop the knowledge, skills, dispositions, or motivation that contributed to your success?
Yes, two. Both were at Roeper City & Country School, although I didn’t fully appreciate them until years later.
George Roeper. George had a humanity that most people felt immediately. I can’t think of a more concise way to express it. He was genuine, moral, pacifist, compassionate and—I still marvel at this—he interacted with everyone, regardless of age, as equal human beings.
In my adult life, unfortunately, I’ve encountered some very bad people, as well as the consequences of their amorality, greed, bigotry, and sometimes outright evil. George, as a refugee from Nazism, knew even worse, yet he seemed to have absolute faith in people’s goodness. And somehow, without any hint of lecturing, he spoke about simple decency, dignity, and human rights (he talked about “human relations”). As I say, my appreciation for him grew over the years.
The second person is Dick Morrow, who is one of my favorite people and was Roeper’s remarkable math teacher, leading so many of us to better understand and enjoy math. Dick (now retired) was more than a great math teacher. He helped us explore how to think, how to analyze problems, and how to craft solutions.
Dick was such a master that in my senior year at Roeper, nine of his students (surprisingly including me) reached the final 100 of the Michigan Math Competition—out of the 20,000 high school students who took that test. Dick basically convinced us that, if we looked beyond conventional methods, we could solve anything.
Many years later, his work inspired what I do now, and it’s why I call it “Nonlinear Funding.” At a time when I was becoming increasingly upset by social problems and injustices, it seemed to me that the world was not doing enough to solve them. So I returned to Dick’s message: “You can solve anything.” I decided to use his incredible lesson and apply it to social causes. At least that’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.
Describe a typical workday for an expert in your field. If there isn’t such a thing as a “typical” workday please explain why that’s the case.
“Typical?” That’s funny. As I noted, our work is related to chaos theory.
Think of a challenging initiative or project in which you were involved. What barriers and opportunities arose throughout the development of that project? How did you overcome the barriers and/or capitalize on the opportunities?
Gosh, right now we’re working on transforming an elementary school serving families from one of Detroit’s lowest income and highest crime zip codes. We were faced with what its previous administration had created—a textbook case of “warehousing” children. Row upon row of windowless classrooms in an old supermarket building surrounded by acres of asphalt on a desolate stretch of commercial road where the only businesses are cannabis dispensaries and strip clubs. Depressing, to say the least.
The school had no library, no gym, no music or arts of any kind, no athletic field, no kitchen, no science lab. Not even any natural light. The list goes on. And we had no new government funding, no fund raising, no foundation support, and we refused to use any of the school’s limited operating budget. Responding to your question, we faced “barriers.”
Our solution involves creating quality learning environments: library, tutoring rooms, tech labs, science labs, art studios, maker space, TV/video studio, faculty co-working rooms, student lounges, bouldering studio, family lounge, teaching kitchen, dining hall, black box theater, gym, indoor soccer field, enhanced campus security, outdoor athletic field, student gardens, playground (student designed), and a large interior “Learning Street,” plenty of natural light, better air quality and nutrition, plus co-curricular and extracurricular programming. We believe this will be transformational for the students, families, and community.
Funding? We’re doing it without any of those conventional “linear” funding sources – no new government funds, no fund raising, no foundations, no diversion of the school’s operating budget. And we’re actually lowering the school’s debt burden.
That’s Nonlinear Funding. Voila! But much as I love that cool French expression, it implies a casual ease that was not the case here. This was not easy.
To what extent does success in your field emerge from individual work versus teamwork?
Teamwork is not essential, but it helps. We start every project with immersion in everything we can discover about the school (e.g., curriculum, pedagogy, financials, real estate, culture, board composition, internal and external relationships, etc.), the community (e.g., economics, demographics, governments, politics, transportation, recreation, geography, etc.), other schools, businesses: just about anything. And – George Roeper would like this – I sit in second grade classes and maybe help prepare lunches, I walk the neighborhoods, and I have coffee (or, after hours, beer) with staff, board members, friends of the school, anyone of possible interest. (Remember the puppy?)
With a team for this process, we can distribute the research and then collaborate on what it’s telling us. We stack everything we’ve found on a table (these days that’s mostly digital) and we sift through it. We’ll look for what’s obvious and non-obvious, trends, patterns, and – harder to see – for what might be missing. Probably 95% of it turns out to be irrelevant, but when you start you can’t know what the relevant 5% might be. This is a time-consuming process, but we go into it believing that somewhere in that stack on the table are the things we need to craft the solution. Then we have to get creative, come up with possible solutions, model them, test them, refine the most promising ones, present and explain them, and eventually put everything in a form that the bankers and lawyers will understand (translating the nonlinear into linear form).
I’d love to hire more staff or interns and teach them Nonlinear Funding, but we do all of our work at discounted rates or pro bono (keeping it affordable for those social causes). Although you might expect we’d get foundation support, I can say from experience that if you want to meet people who predominantly think in only linear terms, that’s where you’ll find them; we don’t fit their predefined boxes.
What are some things about your work that you find most rewarding?
I can honestly say virtually all of our work is rewarding. Yet at the start of each project there often is a high level of anxiety caused by setting aside the lofty goals while getting intentionally “lost,” and then frustration caused by other people. The endings, however, are worth it.
What advice would you give to a gifted, talented young person who is interested in pursuing a career in your field?
As Dorothy Parker said (advice for aspiring writers), “ … shoot them now, while they’re happy.” Seriously, though, I would say it is not for the faint of heart. I can’t count how many people insist their problem can’t be solved or, worse, they don’t believe we can do it. Although I try not to show it, those moments can be disheartening, which is much worse than failure. You can, you should, learn from failures. But feeling discouraged is just plain lousy.
Yet for those people who have believed in us, we actually have a 100% success rate. Ultimately, when we’re done, they’re grateful. And afterward I love quietly visiting the schools, for example, and knowing all those engaged students are there because we made it possible.
Nevertheless, I admit that as I face new challenges, many of my mornings involve trying to stay calm and reminding myself that any problem can be solved. These can be solitary moments, questioning myself, and they can be difficult.
Finally, if I can offer a little more—you did ask me—I’d advise that young person to keep learning as much as they can, and to keep thinking and problem solving. Don’t expect any of those “light-bulb-over-your-head” moments. That’s not how it works. Stay calm, have faith, take your time. It’s a process. It will come. This is as true for the problems you may be trying to solve for others as it is for your own.
Is there anything else you would like to discuss that we haven’t yet covered?
Yes. First, thank you for inviting me to ramble on about all this. And, in case anyone wants to use any part of this interview, here’s an important remark from Groucho Marx: “Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted.”