May 1994
Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina • 21
Donor
I Continued from page 1
f grew up questioning the establish
ment in an era of increasing social
ills isn’t expected to follow estab
lished giving patterns.
Some don’t expect the younger
generation of donors to be as gener
ous with their dollars as were their
parents and grandparents. Others
expect that a yonnger generation of
tmstees will shift the focus of family
foundations from institutions such
as hospitals and universities — tra-
dition^y the top recipients of foun
dation dollars — to nonprofits that
deal with teenage pregnancy, domes
tic violence, inner-city revival and
similar concerns.
The Council on Foundations in
Washington recently launched a
three-year project to study family
foundations.
The council hopes better to serve
the 20,000 family foimdations in the
United States whose assets total
more than $86 billion. The initiative
also will study how the arrival of
younger trustees mi^t alter the dis
tribution of $5 billion in family foim-
dation grants.
Many family foundations came
into being early this century. That
means two generations often sepa
rate younger family trustees and the
original sources of wealth.
“The first generation sort of
thou^t this is what we’re supposed
to do,” says Tom Lambeth, executive
director of the Z. Smith Reynolds
Foundation in Winston-Salem and
chairman of the family foundations
initiative.
While that first generation for the
most part followed in the landing
footsteps of their parents, he says,
“The next generation sees that the
world has changed.”
Their philosophy of helping oth
ers may set younger trustees and
donors apart from preceding genera
tions. Younger donors, says Worth
Durgin, executive director of the
Foundation of Greater Greensboro,
think that “doing for people is a
debilitating thing, and that it’s very
important to empower people rather
than tell people what they need and
give it to them.
“There seems to be a coalescing
of sorts of a multifaceted way of look
ing at things that’s quite distinct
from how it was 10 to 15 years ago.”
Bill Bondurant, former executive
director of the Mary Reynolds
Babcock Foundation in Winston-
Salem, says that foimdation trustees
need to evaluate their giving fre
quently and that flexibility in
response to social needs is a hall
mark of a good family foimdation.
“I think that John Rockefeller
once observed that no living person,
however wise, can better direct the
use of the foundation’s resources in
years to come than hoard members,
alive and dealing with those future
issues at that future time.”
What’s important, Bondurant
says, is teaching children how to
decipher the important issues of the
day so that they can, when the time
comes, make grants wisely.
“The key is that the parents cre
ate a foundation whose philosophy is
that each generation of hoard mem
bers must determine the most com
pelling needs in their day and time.
It’s a matter of trusting the next gen
eration to use its head.”
Durgin of the Greensboro
Foundation says the grant making
tendencies of younger, trustees mi^t
be different simply because many
programs haven’t delivered what
they promised. 'That frustration may
be reflected in how individual donors
give.
“Statistics show that the younger
people aren’t as giving,” Durgin says
“hut I wonder if there isn’t a lot of
pent-up desire for something that
would work.”
Whitney Jones, a fundraising con
sultant in Winston-Salem, says peo
ple in their 30s and 40s already are
more selective about their contribu
tions.
“They want more information,”
he says. “ They give less and to more
things.”
'This suggests that raising money
from baby boomers vrill be more com
plicated than raising money from
their parents.
“People always say that the
essence of fundraising is people giv
ing money to peopie,” Jones says.
What that used to mean was that
a small network of 10 to 15 communi
ty leaders could set in motion a cam
paign to raise huge sums of money.
That has changed. A few wealthy
families no longer can dominate the
donor landscape. Today, communi
ties are more diverse, newcomers
abound and children don’t necessari
ly share their parents’ ideas.
Instead, Jones says, fundraising
needs to be much more driven by
information and oriented to the mar
ket.
“The solutions are to do in the
nonprofit world what’s being done in
the corporate worid,” he says. “Be
far more aware of what the needs of
the different segments of your donor
populations are and respond to those
needs more directly.
“The canned approach to
fundraising won’t work anymore.”
Aithough many in the nonprofit
world see wholesale change coming,
others say that by the time baby
boomers reach their 50s and 60s,
they will be as giving as their par
ents were.
Five or six years ago, says Bon
durant, the former Babcock Founda
tion executive, “I would have
expressed concern that the 25-to-35-
year olds were becoming less philan
thropic, and were likely to cany that
into their middle years and their
responsiveness to the needs of their
fellow men. That seems to have
turned around in the past five years.”
Bondurant attributes this shift to
a collective realization that there’s
more to life than accumulating
wealth.
“Some of the younger generation
have lived throng the years of cele
bration of greed in this country, and
they’ve seen that isn’t ultimately sat
isfying,” he says.
Kay Hagan, 40, a lawyer and
mother of three hving in Greensboro,
is part of that younger generation.
She says people her age are as com
mitted to giving and volunteering in
their community as were their par
ents, and that if they seem less giv
ing, it’s only because “younger peo
ple today, with younger children,
have so many obligations pulling on
them in so many different ways.”
Whatever the baby boomers’ atti
tudes on giving, trillions of dollars
soon will be in their hands. This is
the generation that grew up during
Vietnam and Watergate, and came of
age under Reagan. If philanthropy
wants to benefit, say many founda
tion leaders and funifraisers, it needs
to act now.
“We’re seeing evidence that
there’s major things happening
already,” says Bill Spencer, execu
tive director at Foundation for the
Carolinas in Charlotte. “There’s a lot
of potential for all kinds of nonprofits
out there... but in order to re^e it,
it does take some cultivation and
education.”
here seems to be a coalescing
of sorts of a multifaceted way of looking
at things that's quite distinct from
how it was 10 to 15 years ago.
WOR'TH DURGIN
Executive Director
Foundation of Greater Greensboro
Children
Continued from page 1
shared a stage at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill and
together urged business ieaders to
fight aggressively to improve the
lives of children.
“The business community should
reach out and involve itself in ali seg
ments of the community, particularly
children,” Edelman told a symposium
on the role of business in improving
the lives of children.
And McColl, citing NationsBank’s
efforts to invest in communities and
offer famiiy-friendly policies to
employees, said business leaders
“must act — if only out of a sense of
enh^tened self-interest.”
The need to take action to attack
the crisis of children and famiUes in
the United States was the message of
the symposium, which was spon
sored by the Kenan-Fla^er Business
School and the School of Social Work
atUNC-CH.
The delivery of that message is
part of a national assault on the pro
blems of children that quickly is gain
ing momentum. The same day the
symposium was held, for example,
the Carnegie Corporation of New
York released a three-year study
that documents in extensive detail
the crisis facing children in the
United States.
Children in the United States, the
report says, face chronic exposiure to
violence, poverty and broken homes.
'That environment, in turn, “jeopar
dizes our children’s healthy develop
ment, undermines schooi readiness,
and ultimately threatens our nation’s
economic strength.”
The report recommends an all-
out frontal attack by “all sectors of
American society to join together to
ensure the healthy development of
our nation’s youngest children.”
The Chil^en’s Defense Fund, as
coordinator of a national Black
Community Crusade tor Children,
this month is expected to release a
comprehensive poll of black families
and children that was conducted by
the Peter D. Hart Research Group.
And in June, the national initiative
will launch an ad campaign on vio
lence prevention and children.
The Black Community Crusade
for Children also is expanding its
Freedom Schools program, which
pairs black college students with
inner-city and disadvantaged minori
ty children for summer day pro
grams. Edelman said the program
will be offered in at least 20 sites,
including Durham, Raleigh, Charlotte
and possibly Warren County.
Edelman had hi^ — but qualified
— praise for North Carolina’s Smart
Stak project, an initiative of Gov. Jim
Hunt that aims to create local non
profits to coordinate community ser
vices for preschool children.
“You are making extraordinary
strides but you have a long way to
go,” she said.
Hunt, in a speech to business
leaders and others before the sympo
sium, said it simply was good busi
ness to invest in children.
Children represent the future
workforce, he said. And snpporting
famihes and children, and creating
new jobs, he said, helps build
stronger communities.
Saying that public-private part
nerships characterize North
Carolina’s progressive approach to
social problems. Hunt said the “key
to this approach absolutely is the
business community.”
Paul Fulton, dean of the Kenan-
Fla^er Business School and former
president of Sara Lee Corp., North
Carolina’s largest corporate employ
er, said nothing taught at the busi
ness school was more important than
the lessons of “leadership and com
munity and the responsibility of busi
ness people to put something back
into the community.”
The health of a company, he said,
“depends on the health of the com
munities it serves.”
In preaching the gospel of com
munity to improve the lives of chil
dren, McCoIl and Edelman are draw
ing on the hometown roots they
share.
“Both came up from educated,
supportive families,” says Bill Kinney
Jr., a lifelong friend of McCoU’s who
is editor and publisher of the
Marlboro Herald-Advocate in Ben-
nettsville. “I think it’s wonderful that
the two at the zenith of their careers
have fonnd each other to be people of
worth and who share dreams of help
ing make a real difference during
their lifetimes.”
Olive W. Covington directs the
youth development and education
project of the Children’s Defense
Fund, the only office of the national
policy and advocacy group that actu
ally delivers services to children. The
office is in Bennettsville, and Coving
ton was recruited to run it by her
younger sister, Marian Wright
Edelman.
Covington runs a summer enrich
ment program for 600 children, and
an after-school tutorial program for
275 children. And she’s beginning to
enlist churches and businesses in
supporting her work.
Recently, for example, she chal
lenged members of the local chamber
of commerce to hire hi^ school stu
dents in summer or part-time jobs.
“These kids are not just their par
ents’ responsibility,” she says. “'They
are the responsibility of the church
es, of the businesses, of everybody.
We have got to, everybody, come
together and try to save this genera
tion of children.”
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