Entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist — Mark Gerson, co-founder and chair of 3i Members, has embraced all these roles. In a conversation with Crain Currency, Gerson delves into his philanthropic initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa and Israel, shares his philosophical approach to giving and reflects on his personal journey evolving in the years ahead.
Why do you believe in giving? What’s your philanthropic philosophy?
We believe in giving, first and foremost, because we are Jews, and the Torah commands us to do so. As usual, the Torah has very good reasons for doing so. In the building of the Tabernacle, God commands people to "take an offering." Why "take" instead of "give"? Because there is nothing as enjoyable, fulfilling and generative as giving as the Torah instructs — generously and enthusiastically. Therefore, giving really is taking as it, when done in accordance with biblical principles, leads to building deep and meaningful relationships, financial prosperity and the fulfillment that comes with knowing that a charitable gift has alleviated the pain, saved a life or created an opportunity for someone who would otherwise be without.
When we deploy capital philanthropically, we do so the same way as when we make commercial investments — with a projected expected return, based on a rigorous consideration of return on investment (ROI). Our goal is to save the most lives, ameliorate the most pain and create the most opportunities for the poor per dollar donated.
Tell us about your work in Israel with United Hatzalah of Israel.
More than 20 years ago, Eli Beer reflected on his experience as an EMT on an ambulance. He realized that he got to a lot of scenes of emergency calls — heart attacks, choking, accidents — but did not save nearly enough people for one reason: Ambulances are too few and too slow to function as effective emergency-response vehicles. When someone calls the emergency number [in the U.S., it's 911], they don't need an ambulance right away. They need a trained and equipped first responder within three minutes, and hopefully faster. Eli realized that such care could be delivered by a distributed cohort of volunteer first responders, trained and equipped medics in every community, who could drop whatever they were doing and immediately rush to a neighbor in need.
We co-founded United Hatzalah on that premise and with that strategy, oriented toward getting people in their most vulnerable moments assistance as fast as possible.
Fast-forward two decades to 2024, and we have more than 7,000 volunteers in Israel from every segment of society: Jews of all kinds, Christian Arabs, Muslim Arabs, Druze, men and women. With continually innovating technology and equipment funded by generous donors from around the world, United Hatzalah volunteers respond to over 2,000 emergency calls a day, saving countless people who would have died if they had to wait for an ambulance.
You also have a rather unique approach in sub-Saharan Africa with African Mission Healthcare (AMH). You and your wife are the largest donors to Christian missionaries and their work. Why?
In 2002, my great friend Jon Fielder called me as he was finishing the residency program at Johns Hopkins. He told me that as a Christian, he felt called to serve those who Jesus called in the Book of Matthew “the least among us” — who were, in those days, people in Africa who were being ravaged by HIV/AIDS. Jon went to Kenya as a medical missionary.
In his early years as a Christian medical missionary, Jon discovered the greatest humanitarian problem in the world: the lack of consistent access to reliable medical care for almost everybody in Africa. There was one small group of people who were providing consistently outstanding care and building, to the extent they financially could, the institutions that would both train more physicians and deliver care to the poor. These were Christian missionary physicians. And, for a variety of reasons, [they] had been effectively abandoned in the field.
We founded African Mission Healthcare to partner with Christian medical missionaries at Christian hospitals throughout Africa, providing clinical care to the poor, building infrastructure such as power and oxygen, doing training and sometimes hospital administration. We now have 31 partners in 17 countries and are working to build the Christian hospitals in Africa so that every African whose child breaks her leg, who needs a C-section, who needs a hernia operation to get back to work, who needs treatment for pneumonia — really, anything and everything — has an excellent hospital that they can rely on. The ROI that AMH enables is truly spectacular. For around $300, a donor can fund a C-section or repair a birth injury for a mother, enabling her to live and live well and be able to care for her children and her community for decades to come. For $300,000 or $3 million, a donor or group of donors can make life infinitely better for a huge number of people over decades and longer.
Yes, Erica and I are the largest donors to Christian medical missionaries. Doing so has, among other things, made us better Jews, as it has enabled us to fulfill our biblical commandment to “love the stranger” in the most profound way and has provided friendships for us and role models with our children with the best people in the world: Christian missionary physicians, who devote their entire lives to serve the poor so effectively.
How do you see your giving evolved in the next decade?
We believe in doing rigorous analysis to genuinely determine the ROI of a charity and then getting deeply involved, both financially and otherwise. Consequently, we give 95% of our giving to the several organizations we currently support and expect it to stay that way with the percentage and the organizations.