Q: You both seem to be thinking in different time horizons than the average person, who is worried about the next two or three months.

JACK TEMPLETON: We’re trying to look at things from a 100-year projection.

Q: What growth opportunities are you involved with right now?

JACK TEMPLETON: We’re constantly thinking about evaluating our own performance. We want our programs to be as impactful as possible. We do not just fund the writing of a book for it to be put on a shelf.  For a few, we ask how can we really reach the audience we want. We want to look at these  investments in the same way a venture capitalist would.

Q: A venture capitalist would look at the return on investment in terms of dollars.

JACK TEMPLETON: We need to make a similar analysis as return on investment.

Q: But not in dollars, right?

JACK TEMPLETON: No, dollars can apply. If we funded a grant that developed into a book and it was immensely successful and it made a lot of money because it reached a large audience that’s one way of measuring the impact. But we would want to know more, what was the audience that read the book? Was it the general public? Or were we reaching the top opinion leaders? We are interested in levels of strategic impact. For my father and for us, the greatest impact is reaching the top opinion leaders.

Q: What do people fail to understand about the work being done at the John Templeton Foundation?

JACK TEMPLETON: Anytime you do unusual things the critics are going to come out. A really simple way of looking at it is that people on the secular side say we are a conservative religious organization. Then we have people who are very much on the conservative religious side who say that we are “one world” religion people, that we’re not espousing Christianity. But my father has always spoken strongly against the concept of blending all the religions into one. You have to understand that he loves competition. As far as the Foundation is concerned, the greatest engine for discovery is competition.

Q: You’re an evangelical Christian.

JACK TEMPLETON: Yes.

Q: Do you feel like there is any conflict between your personal faith and the Foundation’s open-minded inquiry into different faiths?

JACK TEMPLETON: I don’t feel a conflict. If some of the things the Foundation is doing are not dealing with what I adhere to as a committed Christian, that work still interests me. It’s broadening my horizons. And I’m open to that.

Q: What are the Foundation’s programs outside of Science and Religion?

JACK TEMPLETON: 40% of the Foundation’s  funding goes to areas outside of science and religion. The “donor intent” is spelled out clearly in the charter. And that’s important. We don’t think of ourselves as a general science or medical or health foundation, but we do deal with things in those areas.  One of the bridges into those subjects is character. For instance, we’re supporting projects that relate to AIDS by understanding what “character values” contribute to behavior choices and the bearing they have on health. In free enterprise, we were impressed by a research proposal that talked about the power of for-profit schools. The results are so compelling that even poor people in the inner streets of Mumbai, pay $10 per semester—which they can barely  afford—for their child to go to a for-profit school because the owners of those schools will fire the teachers if they can’t deliver. If the kids can’t, at the end of the year, master their verbal skills or math skills and so on, they’ll get another teacher. This connection of free enterprise to social beneficial results must then also be assessed by objective comparison evaluation of outcomes.

Q: You and your father have made it a guiding principal of the Foundation to be open-minded in its approach. It brings to mind F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” Is open-mindedness a defining trait of the Templeton approach over the years?

JACK TEMPLETON: Yes, this is one of the biggest impacts of my father, which has had a big influence on me.  He grew up with a very intelligent mother. She was a teacher and was a person open to inquiry without intentionally imposing her own values or beliefs. She had a strong religious belief that God loves you, and that there’s purpose to your life. That’s also what pervaded the culture he grew up in. His mother became very interested in the Unity School of Christianity, which does not focus on the negative, but on the positive things. It also stresses new ways of looking at things.

Q: Was his mother a big reader?

JACK TEMPLETON: Yes.

Q: Did she have a lengthy reading list for him?

JACK TEMPLETON: No, just the opposite. Dad has always maintained the greatest blessing of his parents is that they interfered as little as possible. His mother’s perspective was that if she noticed he was enjoying butterflies she would go buy a book about butterflies, but she wouldn’t give it to him. She would just leave it lying around where he could bump into it if he wanted to.

Q: Well that explains a lot.

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