Six years ago, a friend sent me an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled, The New Science of Giving.”

It was about a billionaire couple in their late 30s that wanted to revolutionize philanthropy.

They quit their jobs and took about half of their net worth, $1 billion and put it in a foundation called The Laura and John Arnold foundation.

It is not your typical foundation.

Laura and John are not your typical philanthropists.

They are “open-minded, gutsy flexible and collaborative.” They’re “willing to take big risks for at-risk populations.” And they are “guided by evidence-based policy, research and advocacy.”

One more thing, they are impatient. Very impatient.

They want to see results. Breakthroughs. Deliverables.

And dramatic change within their lifetime.

The article mentioned that they gave millions of dollars to a friend of mine in California that was working on obesity. I emailed him right away and told him how excited I was because the Arnolds are exactly what philanthropy world needs.

New blood, new ideas and new approaches that will bring about change now.

Not more of the same.

I asked him if he could try and arrange a meeting for me with Arnolds. He called me back a week later and said I told him all about you and they don’t want to meet with you.

I was so upset I wrote a five-page letter to Laura Arnold telling her why she should meet with me. She sent me an email saying to drop by anytime.

I flew to Houston to meet with John and Laura Arnold and it was eye-opening.

They are both extremely intelligent, open-minded and passionate about changing the world. \

They have a fantastic team of really smart and experienced folks who are working hard on a bunch of endeavors. They are tackling some of America’s most complex and difficult problems.

I was surprised “peace in the Middle East” wasn’t on their list of goals.

My pitch to them was simple. While you’re spending a lot of time and money trying to solve massive, systemic problems in the United States, you could also be saving hundreds of thousands of lives in developing countries through simple surgeries that cost next to nothing.

Global health unfortunately is not one of their priorities, so I had an uphill battle. But Laura Arnold is incredibly generous, and she gave us a very significant grant.

I went back to Houston many times over the next few years w for various reasons. I tried to help them with an obesity initiative that was struggling. The leading cause of death in America today is obesity-related heart disease. We’re basically eating ourselves to death and now 70% of Americans are obese.

After the Arnolds saw 5,000 before and after photos of children and adults who had received life-saving surgery thanks to their grant, they said they would continue to support us even though we were not in one of their focus areas.

They did ask that we complete an electronic patient record cloud database so we could guard against fraud while at the same time monitoring the safety and quality of all our surgeries.

We were very excited to have the Arnolds as a supporter. They really helped us scale up our surgeries quickly from 25,000 to 50,000 to 100,000 surgeries the year.

Out of all the major donors I’ve met over the past 30 years, Laura and John Arnold are two of my favorites.

I admire them for quitting their jobs and working full-time on philanthropy.

For signing the Giving Pledge and giving so much of their money to their foundation.

And for working so hard, 60 hours a week, on helping people, solving problems, and making the world a much better place.

The world needs more billionaires like Laura and John Arnold.