When venture capitalist and mother of three Amy Dornbusch took over her family’s $85 million Marks Family Foundation in 2015, she had very little philanthropic background to go on. Her dad, Michael Marks, a founding managing partner at Celesta Capital, former interim CEO of Tesla and former CEO of Flextronics, launched the foundation in 1998 with his wife, Carole. They primarily funded in a relationship-based way, supporting organizations they already knew or that they learned about through their community.
Dornbusch wanted to professionalize the family’s giving — which is about $5 million a year today — but she hadn’t grown up in the world of philanthropy, and didn’t know how.
She set about educating herself, tapping into the then-relatively new resources available for next-generation philanthropic heirs. She attended the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society’s learning program for philanthropy professionals, connected with 21/64, a former Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies advising program that is now an independent nonprofit, and read countless books and articles. “I interviewed a lot of major philanthropists, like Mike Moritz [Sequoia Capital] and Ron Conway [an American venture capitalist and philanthropist in Silicon Valley]. Our family spent a couple days up at the Gates Foundation when we were formalizing our strategy,” she said.
Armed with this new insight and information, Dornbusch established the Marks Family Foundation’s current four core grantmaking areas and formalized its approach and practice. But when her young daughters wanted to learn more about her philanthropic work, she realized that none of the resources she’d used were designed for kids. She wanted to find a way to teach philanthropy to children.
A lightbulb moment in Zimbabwe
On a field-study trip to Zimbabwe in 2023 with her mother and her oldest daughter, Ruby, who was six at the time, Dornbusch had an inspiration: She could bring mothers and daughters into the field to meet grantee partners and see the work, then wrap kid-friendly philanthropic education around the trip.
In Zimbabwe, they visited one of the foundation’s partner organizations, We Care Solar, which was bringing life-saving solar “suitcases” to every non-electrified rural birthing clinic in Zimbabwe, allowing women giving birth at night to do so under LED lights. They visited one of the organization’s final installations in progress and a kindergarten class. “I found myself really teaching Ruby about the philanthropic work we do as a family,” said Dornbusch. “She saw a woman with a tool belt get up on the roof and install solar panels. It was a way to teach her in a way that she could understand.”
Back home, Ruby led a 45-minute slide presentation about the trip at her elementary school. “She was so empowered to teach her classmates something. She taught them about how solar electricity works in a way that kindergarteners can understand,” said Dornbusch. “I was so inspired by that. I just wanted to allow other kids to do it.”
Bringing future funders into the field
After selling a business she was running in summer 2023, Dornbusch spent much of this past year launching AtlasDaughters, a super-high-end travel company centering philanthropy education and mother-daughter bonding. She plans two trips for next year, one to Samoa and one to Zimbabwe.
Each trip, over about six to 10 days, starts with an in-depth field immersion with a nonprofit partner, much like Ruby’s experience. “We’re really delving into how all these players work together: government, NGOs and philanthropy. How we show up for each other, partnership-, family- and trust-based philanthropy,” said Dornbusch. “The second part is taking a breather from everything we just saw, which is intensive, to synthesize and reflect on all that we’ve learned. Then we move into family philanthropy and individual change-making work and build a personal impact plan that moms and daughters can do together when they get back home. These trips are meant to inspire legacy and impact. It’s not a service trip; it’s a learning experience.” (They’re also meant to be fun. As the website says, “We won’t forget to add in magical things like animal safaris or hikes to majestic waterfalls!”)
A leader-in-training from the United Nations Foundation’s Girl Up global leadership development initiative, a partner in the project, leads workshops. “It’s answering the question, ‘Well, what can I do to save the world? I’m just one person.’ We kind of go through that. It’s an education about how the world thinks about solving problems,” said Dornbusch.
While Dornbusch’s own children are still aged seven and under, AtlasDaughters is geared toward tweeners — kids between the ages of eight and 13 — who are “at a pivotal age for value formation and are poised to comprise the next generation of powerful female philanthropists,” said Dornbusch. “There is an imprinting period that happens with girls in that age. It’s a really, really critical time to expose them to visions of leadership and bring them into their own power so they feel emboldened to become a change agent.”
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See the work, fund the work
In addition to educating youth and mother-daughter bonding, a major goal of AtlasDaughters is fundraising for Marks Family Foundation’s nonprofit partners. The first trip, slated for June 2025, will take eight mother-daughter pairs to Samoa to see the work of a nonprofit partner dedicated to eradicating plastic diaper waste in oceans — and to fund a similar project in Tuvalu. The second trip, planned for late summer 2025, will return to Zimbabwe to look at We Care Solar’s work there and fund a similar project in Malawi, in East Africa, with about $1 million in donations from the travelers.
One big takeaway for Dornbusch from her family’s Zimbabwe visit is that the best way for nonprofits to fundraise is to let potential donors see a project in action. Partner organizations, however, are generally far too busy to act as travel agents and tour guides. AtlasDaughters is designed to be the connector, arranging the trips for donors — specifically those who can meet a $100,000 donation ask — plus the cost of a high-impact trip.
“We do a lot of work identifying aligned family philanthropists interested in women and girls and climate work and that have the ability to move major funds and write big checks,” said Dornbusch. “We are talking about six-figure investments, so these conversations with prospective trip goers really delve into the work the nonprofit does to see if it aligns with their family vision.”
This approach supports Dornbusch’s focus on collaborative philanthropy and her desire to steer other funders toward nonprofits her family supports. Take the Zimbabwe trip: “We want this cohort to be a giving circle that will fund that project, which is about $1 million. If we can do that, we will significantly expand the annual funding that We Care Solar has,” said Dornbusch. “It took $1 million to install solar in every single rural clinic that doesn’t have electricity in Zimbabwe. The reduction of infant and maternal death due to not having light is really staggering.”
The solar suitcases also have other medical attachments, such as a fetal doppler, and can charge everything from cellphones to batteries. “The implications are so big, and the relative investments are relatively small. It’s so inspiring. There is a lot more we can do than we realize,” Dornbusch said.
Not travel for the masses
So far, half the Samoa trip is filled. Dornbusch is in conversations with prospective Zimbabwe travelers. Certainly, AtlasDaughters is catering to a highly select group — call it the top half of 1% of family travelers. Also, mothers. Also, mothers of girls. “My goal is to go deep, not to go wide,” said Dornbusch. “There are other companies that bring people on service trips. I don’t envision we’ll have 20 trips a year. Maybe we’ll have three or four or five.”
Future trips may include sons, based on feedback. Still, her major focus is high-net-worth mothers of girls. She referenced the ongoing transfer of generational fortunes to heirs, much of which will power the philanthropy of the future.
“There is $30 trillion about to change hands, going to many Gen Z and millennial women who have children. Impact investing and travel with their families are big interests for this group. They are in the top five value priorities for Gen Z and millennial women. Collaborative philanthropy has unlocked over $3 billion of nonprofit capital in the last five years. Most of the people in these collective giving groups are women,” said Dornbusch.
“Fundraising for philanthropy is matchmaking with money. You have to find people who are able to move big sums.”
