Mark Verdi, Jan Swartz, and Rob Swartz

Jan and Rob Swartz and Mark Verdi (all MBA 1996) and Mark’s wife, Gina, have witnessed, firsthand, the negative effects of our nation’s disjointed approach toward the treatment of mental illness. “It’s fragmented and fractured,” says Jan Swartz. “That’s ineffective.” Their solution? The Goodness Web, a nonprofit that finds its strength in connection, in “a web of people who can aggregate resources—whether that is philanthropic dollars or contacts—to do good, better,” Swartz explains.

The Goodness Web aspires to be a kind of American Cancer Association for mental health, an organization that can increase awareness and reduce the stigma of illness as well as rally donors to make large, multiyear funding commitments to the most promising care and research in the field, especially for youth. “What we want to do is apply business principles: How can we bring a curation engine that’s really unrivaled nationally—and, eventually, globally—to understand what’s working with respect to mental health, and bring scale and resources to bear, so that we can help these organizations and create a network effect?” asks Verdi.

To date, the two couples have been funding the endeavor, but they have recently begun recruiting 100 founding families to the Goodness Web, with a goal of raising an initial $25 million. The overall ambition, though, is much bigger: In seven years, the founders envision a web of half a million people—those initial donors each attracting 25 people from their network, who each bring in another 25 people from their networks, and so on. At that scale, they say, annual funding could be, ultimately, in the billions.

“The Goodness Web will put that money in the place where it can have exponential impact,” Swartz avers. “Because we have a shared impatience for positive change in how we care for those who suffer from mental health conditions.”

Post a Comment