To understand Ulrich Schmid-Maybach and the new foundation he created is to understand a family story that dates back to the mid-1800s. In a German orphanage, the drawings of student Wilhelm Maybach caught the attention of design teacher Gottlieb Daimler.

The resulting mentorship segued into a partnership, and for 35 years the pair worked together, forming Daimler Motor and creating innovative engines and the now-iconic Mercedes automobile. Today, Schmid-Maybach, Wilhelm’s great-grandson, works on a global basis to replicate the success of Daimler and Maybach’s historic relationship.

The Maybach Family Foundation, where Schmid-Maybach serves as president, is a hybrid, set up through both family and corporate organizations. It eschews broad-brush philanthropic efforts such as feeding the hungry and combating disease, embarking instead on a quest to make a difference by setting up global mentorships. These arrangements connect a mentor with a protégé—a young adult with particular promise in a chosen field who is from a disadvantaged country or background. The four general sectors of interest for the foundation are science and research; art, design and architecture; community and ethics; and business and technology. These four areas are further broken down by geographic regions.

According to Schmid-Maybach, philanthropy originally was based on one person helping another.  “Rockefeller and Carnegie moved away from helping individuals and started funding the discovery of medical cures and feeding people. We’re interested in one person—like Daimler found Maybach. We want to create an environment where they are driven,” he explains.  The goal is that these apprentices eventually will take leadership positions in their fields in their home countries and be able to effect policy, which could ultimately help millions of people.

The Maybach family’s interest in Daimler and the Mercedes name ended when Wilhelm had a falling-out with the rest of the Daimler management after his partner died. He and his son Karl then founded Maybach Motorenbau, creating Zeppelin engines and designing an eponymous luxury car in the interwar years. Ironically, neither man ever owned a car, Schmid-Maybach says.

The two companies renewed their relationship in the 1960s when Daimler bought into Maybach. Schmid-Maybach, who lives in the San Francisco area and originally worked in aquaculture, software and real estate, eventually went to work for Daimler, spending 10 years as an ambassador for the Mercedes brand. He was, as he puts it, “the heritage guy,” especially after Mercedes resurrected the Maybach marque in 2002 to compete with Rolls-Royce and Bentley. He led the life of appropriate luxury, meeting with celebrities and successful business executives. However, at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival he realized that although he was in a dazzling location and seemed to have everything going for him, he was not particularly happy.

At this point, Schmid-Maybach was no stranger to public service. His interest in aquaculture had been fueled by the idea of finding an innovative way to feed the world’s population. He founded the Tahoe International Film Festival in 1996, and donated property on the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada to a land conservancy. He and his mother, Karl’s daughter, Irmgard, headed up a family foundation that also included his brother and two sisters.  Yet he wanted more.

Heavy Lifting

On his flight from Cannes back to the United States, Schmid-Maybach sat next to physician David Bangsberg, who described the work he was doing as a mentor for young doctors in Africa. “It fit the idea I had been thinking about,” he recalls, “but it hadn’t crystallized yet.”

After fine-tuning his mentorship concept, he wanted the Maybach marque to join forces with the family foundation to create a hybrid organization. The two entities would be equals, rather than the business being a sponsor. The concept received an added boost when Schmid-Maybach explained the idea to Dieter Zetsche after Zetsche became CEO of Mercedes’ parent company, DaimlerChrysler, in 2006; the new CEO endorsed the idea.  The corporation real-ized that philanthropy, including social responsibility and mentoring, is an important pillar, Schmid-Maybach says.

But while the plan fit company goals, such a joint venture, however welcome, faced significant roadblocks. Large corporations generally support a corporate foundation that they fund and control. Private families create and fund their own foundations, Schmid-Maybach explains. “The general philanthropic model is corporate foundation or family foundation—two separate things,” he says. “I couldn’t find anything like this out there.”

For the collaboration to work, a retooled legal structure was required. The hybrid—dubbed the Maybach Family Foundation Partnered  With Maybach—allowed it to become a 501(c)3 and raise funds from third parties.

The mixed private-corporate ownership was not the only complication. This joint venture was between a German multinational company and a U.S.-based family.  “We approached this by creating two legal structures: one in the U.S. and one in Germany,” Schmid-Maybach says.

Lesson Plan

With the legal hurdles cleared, the new foundation launched in October 2006 at the United Nations Global Youth Leadership Summit. Schmid-Maybach announced the pilot project—a medical mentorship in Uganda—at the Milken Institute Global Conference in April 2007, and in September, the foundation named Ugandan doctor Conrad Mazoora as the protégé who would be mentored by Bangsberg, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. However, a mentorship set up through the foundation is not one-on-one. The primary mentor will have a team of donors and other experts, as well as a case manager.

For its part, the foundation will take Mazoora and future protégés under its wing, funding research, connecting them with experts from around the globe, and sending them to events such as conferences. The goals are to provide a platform not only to increase a protégé’s knowledge of a field, but also to hone the leadership and social skills necessary to interact with others and, eventually, influence policy.

The foundation will also provide salaries for those in the program. “It’s an issue of brain drain,” Schmid-Maybach says. “A doctor in Uganda works 12 hours a day for less than he can make elsewhere in eight hours. So why do it? We try to create a competitive pay schedule for him so he doesn’t go elsewhere.”

The foundation is recruiting its donors and mentors from among the very wealthy—those with the resources to buy Maybachs. Firms such as Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management, Lufthansa Private Jet and the global law firm HRO, which have partnered with the founda-tion, invite clients to intimate gatherings to meet Schmid-Maybach.
As the foundation grows, he will be able to match mentor-donors with protégés who share their interests and who come from a particular geographic area. A supporter may not be particularly enthusiastic about medicine or architecture, he explains, but would be thrilled to mentor someone involved with biofuels in Brazil.

To build the foundation, Schmid-Maybach has taken his great-grandfather’s values and history with him as he traveled across the United States, to India and Uganda, and back to Cannes. “Philanthropy has turned into a luxury of a sort,” he says. “A lot of people would like to be able to do something, but have to work. We have customized philanthropy. We say, ‘We are supporting these 10 people; who would you like to get involved with?’”   

Debra Ryono is the managing editor of Worth.