David is a world leader in understanding social impact. He is a serial social entrepreneur with four decades of experience in organizational effectiveness.
David is internationally recognised for pioneering the 'Keystone Partnership Survey' The gold standard for benchmarking partnerships in international development and their understanding of partners’ experience of working with them. Clients include Red Cross, Save the Children, and Oxfam.
In 2004, in partnership with the Nelson Mandela Foundation David co-created a performance measurement and learning system that has been widely adopted by foundations, non-profits, and businesses around the world.
David is a firm believer that the winning way to work in today’s world is by doing things with people, not to people or for people.
He founded or co-founded a number of civil society strengthening organizations in South Africa in the 1990s, including the Development Resources Centre, SANGONeT, Southern African Grantmakers Association, and the South African NGO Coalition.
With Ashoka, David introduced the field of social entrepreneurship into Africa, and a decade later, with the Aga Khan Foundation, he pioneered the Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy.
When taking some well-deserved time off, you will find David savouring the artistry of his filmmaker and novelist life partner, Elaine Proctor, and actor daughter, Lucia Bonbright. A lover of wilderness, David is a birdwatcher whose number one bucket list item is “To get completely and thoroughly lost in one of the world’s remaining vast wild places, preferably with someone who knows how to live off the land.”
