David is founder and Chief Executive of Keystone. Most recently, David directed the Aga Khan Development Network’s Civil Society Programme. As a grantmaker and manager with Aga Khan Foundation, Ford Foundation, Oak Foundation, and Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, David has sought to evolve and test innovative approaches to strengthening citizen self-organization for sustainable development as an alternative to prevailing bureaucratic, top-down models of social service delivery and social value creation.
While with the Ford Foundation, he was declared persona non grata by the apartheid government in South Africa. In 1990 he returned to South Africa and entrepreneured the development of key building blocks for civil society, including the first nonprofit internet service provider, the national association of NGOs, the national association of grantmakers, and enabling reforms to the regulatory and tax framework for not-for-profit organisations.