My Big Mistakes — And What I Learned From Them

Dealing with donors

One of the biggest foundations in the U.K. is run by a woman whom I had gotten to know quite well because she had come to several of my events. She is a very, very wealthy woman — probably worth the entire gross domestic product of several countries — and she had always been very friendly and courteous to me. One day she phoned me and asked why I had been complaining about her behind her back. She was right. I had talked to a funder I had known for many years, and it got back to her. Not a good idea.