Wanted: A More Powerful Philadelphia Foundation

Foundations in Kansas Urban center and Tulsa accept surpassed ours in terms of reach and influence. How can we go our philanthropic Mojo back?

Wanted: A More Powerful Philadelphia Foundation

Foundations in Kansas City and Tulsa accept surpassed ours in terms of reach and influence. How tin we get our philanthropic Mojo back?

Mar. 20, 2015

Nowak

In 2022 the Cleveland Foundation celebrated its 100th ceremony. It was a landmark celebration for the $2 billion philanthropy. The Foundation is not only important to that city but it was the founding establishment of the community foundation movement.

In 2022 the Philadelphia Foundation will celebrate its 100th anniversary. It has done wonderful things for the city and region but its endowment is only $365 1000000 – in a city that is iv times the size of Cleveland. In fact, its size and its influence are a dandy deal less than that of other community foundations in about any other city in America. Is this a problem that we can fix or has the clock run out on the local community foundation model?

Here is some historical context. The Cleveland Foundation was founded in 1914 by Frederick Goff; a prominent Cleveland lawyer. Goff had a long association with John Rockefeller and admired Rockefeller's philanthropy, through the General Welfare Lath in 1902 and then the Rockefeller Foundation, launched in 1913.

Rockefeller was one of a number of tardily 19th and 20th Century industrialists along with Sage, Carnegie, and Mellon, who pioneered privately endowed philanthropies.

Foundations in Cleveland, Chicago, and New York have more $2 billion in assets, and Boston recently reached the $1 billion mark. Philly has trailed far behind with a $365 one thousand thousand endowment.

The big innovations of private philanthropy at that time were organizational and legal: Individual endowments could now function in perpetuity with favorable revenue enhancement treatment; rent professional staff; and stay aligned with original donor intent, rather than the whims of later heirs or executives.

Goff organized smaller donors to take the clout of the emerging individual endowments. Every bit a multi-donor trust, The Cleveland Foundation became a public charity, accountable to a broader representation, taking in money from many donors and focusing its endowment on charitable purposes.

Only every bit Rockefeller had a global vision for his Foundation, Goff's vision was for ane urban center and one region. While Carnegie was thinking about a national library system and Rockefeller was providing inquiry dollars for innovations in agriculture, the Cleveland Foundation was worrying virtually conditions in the immigrant east end.

One year before Cleveland was too the birthplace of another autonomous experiment in philanthropy: the community chest, later on known every bit the United Way. Its structure was based on an interfaith charity in Denver 25 years earlier.

Community foundations and the United Fashion became the ii mass philanthropies of the industrial age: the Vanguard gift funds and Kickstarters of a very different era. They organized donors at different levels of wealth and from unlike sources to invest in local civil society.

Immediately later the Cleveland Foundation was founded, prominent trust bankers and civic leaders followed suit in other cities: Chicago and Boston in 1915, Philadelphia in 1918 and New York in 1924. Today at that place are about 800 customs foundations in the United States and a like number around the world.

Where Philadelphia diverged from other large city community foundations is in asset growth and civic influence. Whereas Cleveland, Chicago, and New York have more than $2 billion in assets (Boston recently reached the $ane billion mark) Philly has trailed far backside.

Asset growth is not everything; effectiveness and influence tin happen exterior of larger pools of upper-case letter. They often exercise. Only scale provides one important pathway to social bear on, which is why a public foundation should be.

The other way to be influential is by how you do things: through pioneering funding strategies, convening borough partners to work on issues together, condign a warehouse for metropolis and regional data and progress indicators, or creating technology platforms for donors and grantees so as to increase efficiency and effectiveness.

Philly Foundation's pocket-size nugget base has always been a chip of a mystery. Is it a question of leadership over many decades, long before the current President? Is it a question of the interests and capacities of the trustees? Why is the place then seemingly sleepy and content in comparison to others around then nation?

Some blame the lack of growth on the dominance of larger individual foundations in Philadelphia that created their own endowments rather than deposit large sums with the community foundation. Just in that location is no evidence to support that theory. There are too many other cities from Boston to Pittsburgh to Chicago where large private foundations exist alongside a larger customs foundation.

The Pittsburgh Foundation was founded near 3 decades subsequently the Philadelphia Foundation and today is the 14th largest, with almost $1 billion in assets. And Pittsburgh is a city with meaning individual, industrial era philanthropy; in fact it has one of the highest levels of philanthropy per capita in the nation.

The Philadelphia Foundation is the 43rd largest among community foundations nationally. But we are the 5th largest city and the sixth largest region. Moreover, the Philadelphia Foundation has been around for near a century, time enough to accrue a more significant upper-case letter base.

The Foundation is currently looking for a new president to replace Andrew Swinney who announced his retirement several months ago. He has been at the captain since 1998. Andrew was brought in to build avails at the Foundation and on that front he did better than his predecessors.  But neither he nor his board was able to channel much of the new wealth created in this region over the past two decades into the foundation.

The Philadelphia Foundation needs to make a more dramatic change than just a new President if it wants to proceed pace with a city that has a new mental attitude almost growth and stature. It needs a new operating strategy and a dissimilar brand.

Think nearly the growth of some of the newcomers to the community foundation field. I spent time working in Kansas City recently where the local community foundation now has assets of over $2 billion. Information technology was formed in 1978 when a small group of donors passed a chapeau, as they draw information technology.

In 1998 the Tulsa Community Foundation was formed. Leaders there recognized (and were embarrassed past) the fact that Tulsa was the only major metropolitan area to not accept a customs foundation. Today, the Tulsa Customs Foundation has assets of around $iv billion.

What is the difference between Tulsa and Philly? Since 1998 the Philadelphia Foundation had grown its asset base past $165 one thousand thousand. Tulsa added $iv billion during that same time. In 1998 the Philadelphia Foundation was the 25th largest community foundation in the nation; since then we have fallen farther backside our peers.

There are two ways to grow the asset base of operations: Yous can manage the endowment in ways that generate enough administrative resource while also calculation to the corpus each year,  and you tin raise new money either through donor advised funds or large gifts that are not specified as to utilise, but that add to the endowment.

Some argue that changes in philanthropy are so profound that the concern model of the community foundation may be broken. After all if I want to establish a donor brash fund, information technology is easier and quicker to use Vanguard, Fidelity, or others like them. Every bit money managers they are in the business organization of fee efficiency and ease.

Moreover, there are numerous new Internet-based philanthropy platforms for raising money and giving money. I tin search for interesting new options that attract my involvement. And there are new funding circles developed past pocket-sized donors formed outside institutional philanthropy.

This is the age of what economists and others refer to as disintermediation. Increasingly sophisticated consumers no longer demand to employ the older industrial era systems that intermediated their business and borough pursuits; yous can go right to the customer or the source. Both customs foundations and the United Mode have to adapt to these changes or they lose relevance. Think of how donor advised designations take changed the United Way. The organization is increasingly simply an authoritative pass-through.

But none of these new modes of giving exercise the iii essential things you want from a corking community foundation or a more dynamic United Way: the perpetuity of an establishment that cares just nigh this place, the chapters to help shape a bigger vision for the region, and the ability to build the knowledge and feel to assist others effectively implement change.

At that place are two pulls in philanthropy that are hard to fully reconcile: the preference of donors to make choices and command the deployment of their gift and the need to build a more public pool of capital that tin can focus on solving problems (with collective input) over the long term.

To be effective at managing private donors y'all accept to exist great at operations from marketing to technology based administration. To be constructive at systemic change, you need to articulate a vision for the region that is compelling, just likewise more than the sum of the parts.

If you look at the growth of the new community foundations that take done well over the by few decades, they have get nifty at ane or the other (sometimes both) of those two tendencies: donor marketing and asset growth or civic vision and influence. Right now we are not quite expert enough at either.

Hopefully the Philadelphia Foundation that celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2022 will go the leader we demand in public philanthropy.

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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/wanted-a-more-powerful-philadelphia-foundation/