Something’s wrong at Global Action to End Smoking
I’ve written about foundations and nonprofits for more than a decade, Yet I continue to be surprised and distressed by the indifference, incompetence and arrogance — and especially the lack of accountability — of some foundation boards.
Scandal or mismanagement by senior executives of a foundation almost always reflect a failing board. See, for example, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the Marguerite Casey Foundation, or Zero Divide. At Bloomberg Philanthropies, a decidedly incurious board has failed to oversee the foundation’s miguided crusade against safer nicotine products. Now we can add Global Action to End Smoking to that ignoble list.
I was planning to take a break from work this summer (and beyond) but the events at Global Action to End Smoking needed attention, I decided.
So last week in Medium, I reported that Global Action to End Smoking and its overpaid board had dismissed, without explanation, its president CEO, Cliff Douglas, and a senior executive, Jeff Willett, who — unlike the directors — have devoted most of their adult lives to work designed to curb the deaths and disease caused by smoking. The board chair, Pamela Parisek, a lawyer and CPA with no prior history or experience in tobacco control who is paid $100,000 a year, was unwilling to get on the phone with me to discuss the changes at Global Action.
Here’s how my story begins:
Money worries help explain the changes at Global Action, but only to a point. In 2024, the foundation made $1Less than two years ago, Cliff Douglas, a well-respected anti-smoking activist, was named president and CEO of a grantmaker then known as the Foundation for A Smoke Free World. He vowed to bring nonprofits, public health experts, regulators and academics together to support a renewed effort to end the deaths and disease caused by smoking.
It has not gone well.
Last week, with its assets diminishing, the foundation laid off Douglas, eliminated the job of a senior deputy and said it would cut other staff and close its only office in an effort to curtail spending. It also hired a new chief development officer.
The foundation is important because, unlike other public-health nonprofits, it supports tobacco harm reduction — the idea that people who cannot or will not quit smoking should be encouraged to switch to safer nicotine products, including e-cigarettes or nicotine pouches.
But the foundation, which was renamed Global Action to End Smoking last year, has struggled to raise money. It is being outspent by Bloomberg Philanthropies and nonprofits including the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids and the Truth Initiative, all of whom take a hard line against any non-prescription use of nicotine and tobacco.
“Efforts to support tobacco harm reduction really need funding to counter the Bloomberg crowd,” says Scott Ballin, a health policy consultant who has worked to curb smoking since the 1990s.
The story goes on to describe the challenges faced by the foundation, which has struggled to raise money and says it laid off staff to reduce spending. It continues:
What Global Action has described as a restructuring appears to be little more than a power grab by its board of directors. None of its six directors have deep expertise or relationships in the world of tobacco control. All enjoy compensation unmatched by the vast majority of other grantmakers, including those at far bigger foundations.
Pamela Parizek, Global Action’s part-time board chair, was paid $100,000 in 2024, according to the foundation’s 2024 tax return. Three other directors were paid $75,000 each and a fourth was paid $56,000. The directors set their own pay.
By comparison, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the US’s biggest health-oriented funder with assets of $12.7 billion, paid its board chair $65,000 and paid other directors between $14,000 and $30,000. No director at Bloomberg Philanthropies was paid more than $12,500; it, too, has assets of more than $12 billion.
The compensation for directors at Global Action is also higher than director pay at the Ford, Hewlett, Mellon, MacArthur and Rockefeller Foundations, each with billions of dollars in assets.
You can read the rest of the story here.
