The Foundations of Our Community
By Lisa Kane
Photography by Jim Bush.
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John Courtin, Gail Johnstone, and Ruth Bryant, chair
of the board of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, in front of the Martin House. |
Wright once said, “If you foolishly ignore beauty, you’ll soon find yourself without it and your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in it, it will be with you all the days of your life.” Reinvestments by the community will help undo the damage caused by years of neglect at the Martin House. A major part of that reinvestment—an inaugural grant from the 21st Century Fund of the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo—is a unique example of democratic philanthropic endeavor.
The 21st Century Fund was created by the Community Foundation to support one high impact project annually that is of strategic importance to Western New York. It’s a highly competitive, winner-take-all grant of more than $100,000. The 2000 grant to the Martin House was for $125,000. While it certainly isn’t the biggest grant the Martin House has received toward its $2.3 million capital campaign goal, the inclusive process by which it was awarded makes it very special.
An innovative aspect of the Fund is its democratic nature. Any non-profit organization can apply for any one-time project and the successful applicant is decided by a vote of the donors to the Fund. Every donor is eligible to vote, and the donors come from all walks of life.
Currently the fund includes members as young as sisters Shelby and Samantha Nephew, ages nine and eleven (whose mom Zenna gave them a shared membership because she “wanted them to have a sense of ownership in the city”) and the Nardin Academy Class of 2001. The class joined as a group and casts a single ballot. In fact, one of the Fund’s stated goals is to involve a new generation in philanthropy and community-building efforts. Another is to show that difficult decisions can be made by many individuals diverse in age and background working in a fair and open process. The oldest fund member is past eighty.
Reinvestments by the community will help undo the damage caused by years of neglect at the Martin House. A major part of that reinvestment—an inaugural grant from the 21st Century Fund of the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo—is a unique example of democratic philanthropic endeavor.
John C. Courtin, executive director of the Martin House Restoration Corporation, says, “This is an authentic American process with each person having one vote. It’s very unusual to have so many individuals be part of the process. It was also very American [for the applicants] to have such tough competition. We were impressed and excited to have young people in the process. They asked a lot of questions and really checked us out. They were seeing the Martin House through a much different lens than they would have during an ordinary visit.”
The 21st Century Fund’s review process offers another important opportunity for worthy projects to find funders. All applicants are invited to present their projects to a group that includes fund members and other invited guests. Richard Tobe, vice president for planning for the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo and administrator of the 21st Century Fund, noted that the presentation process is an opportunity to “make marriages.” He added, “We tried to use the opportunity to create connections between the not-for-profits and potential funders. You may love a project even though it didn’t get funded. To that end, we invited representatives from other foundations.”
The 21st Century Fund is only a small component of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo. The Foundation, which holds assets of $118.5 million, made awards totaling $5.7 million to 332 Western New York non-profit organizations in 2000. Grants were made for projects in the arts and humanities, education, and the environment, and to meet civic, health, and social needs. Recipients included such diverse organizations at Autistic Services Inc., Buffalo Audubon Society, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Buffalo School 82, Forever Elmwood, just buffalo Literary Center, Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center, and the Ronald McDonald House. College scholarships totaling $816,000 were awarded to 760 Western New York students, the largest number of scholarships awarded in a single year by the Foundation.
The Community Foundation is actually a group of many different funds that are all separate. There are more than 450 individual, named funds—sixty-six of them created in 2000. Potential donors are directed to an existing fund or can set up a new fund, depending on what they want their money to be used for. They can then specify whether or not others can donate toward the fund, and how much control they want to have in distributing money. For example, the Dominik Hasek Fund supplies inner-city kids with hockey lessons. This fund, like others in the Community Foundation, is really a mini-foundation of its own, with its own staff and regulations.
Gail Johnstone, president and CEO of the Community Foundation, says, “The inclusiveness [of the 21st Century Fund] is true of everything the Foundation does. The Foundation is truly of the community as well as for the community. Every time we award grants, we bring a broad base of community members to the table, and we give grants to help a broad spectrum of the community. Diversity is evident in everything the Foundation does, from staffing to grant making. The Foundation is unusual in that it serves the donors as well as the recipients. We have special services to educate them about community needs, and we bring them together with other like-minded donors to enable them to make larger grants. One half of our day is spent serving recipients, the other half serving donor needs.”
Foundations have a lot of money to give. Across the U.S., foundations provided grants worth $27.6 billion in 2000, an increase of almost 16% over the previous year. Between 1995 and 1999, foundation assets nationally nearly doubled, from $226 billion to $449 billion.
There are more than 170 foundations in Erie County, with total assets of nearly $700 million. In 1999, more than $28 million in grants was awarded. Niagara County has fifteen foundations with assets just under $20 million. Grants totaling $830,000 were made in 1999.
Foundations can be supported with either public or private money. Publicly supported foundations, often called community foundations, are non-profit organizations governed by strict, complicated IRS tax laws that are designed in part to ensure that funds come from a broad community base. Private foundations are also non-profit organizations, but the funds usually come from a single source, often a family, as is the case with the Joy Family Foundation, for example, or a corporation, such as the First Niagara Bank Foundation. A private foundation’s funds and programs are managed by a board of trustees or directors to benefit the cultural, educational, religious, social, or other charitable activities that concern the trustees and that fit the foundation’s mission.
Publicly supported foundations are often in the fund-raising as well as the fund-managing and fund-distributing business. Both types invest the funds they hold and generally only spend the income from those investments.
The largest foundation in Western New York is the John R. Oishei Foundation, which has more than $251 million in assets. In 1999, the Oishei Foundation awarded fifty-eight grants valued at $11.1 million. The largest award that year was to BISSNET (Buffalo Independent Secondary School Network), in part for a technology project designed to enhance the learning environment in individual schools, and to facilitate communication between technology personnel, librarians, and guidance counselors in BISSNET schools in order to share ideas for enhancing the use of technology. BISSNET also receives money from the Oishei Foundation—$500,000 in 2000—to provide scholarships to private high schools for economically disadvantaged students, with a preference given to minority candidates. The Oishei Foundation’s largest grant in 2000 was for $2 million for a visitors center at the Martin House.
The Oishei Foundation, which was established in 1940 by John R. Oishei, founder of Trico Products, is committed to enhancing the quality of life for Buffalo area residents by supporting medical research, health care, education, and the cultural, social, civic, and other charitable needs of the community. The board and staff of the foundation see its role as a catalyst to change in the community, and to that end seek out projects that will benefit the area in the long term. In addition to BISSNET, other major areas of interest are support of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Corridor, development of the waterfront, and cultural tourism.
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Muriel A. Howard, Erland Kailbourne at the waterfront.
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The Foundation also supports cultural tourism through grants to individual institutions within the Olmsted Crescent (“arts, parks, and science in the heart of Buffalo”) and by providing lead support for the formation of the Western New York Rare Book Consortium, a collaboration of the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, the University at Buffalo, and the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library. The Rare Book Consortium, which was announced earlier this year, will combine the resources of these institutions to provide state-of-the-art, changing displays at the Historical Society of rare book treasures from the University at Buffalo and the Public Library. There will be a special emphasis on the Mark Twain and Milestones of Science collections from the Public Library and the James Joyce collection from the University at Buffalo.
Erland Kailbourne said, “Western New York is blessed with a collection of rare books which is the greatest of its kind in any similar city. Unfortunately these collections are under-exhibited and not marketed aggressively to the public and to the cultural and intellectual interests around the world. At this juncture in history, Buffalo is also blessed with a national historic site—the Historical Society’s Pan-American Building, the sole remaining structure of the 1901 exposition—which will provide a unique venue for the Public Library and the University at Buffalo to exhibit and, more important, to utilize their most valuable assets for the benefit of all Western New Yorkers.” Visitors and residents can look forward to seeing more of these manuscript treasures soon.
The Baird Foundation, a private foundation that, with assets of more than $12 million, is one of the ten largest foundations in the area. Like the Oishei Foundation, the Baird Foundation is a supporter of the Olmsted Crescent, providing $10,000 recently to reprint a promotional brochure and to start the cultural master pass program that kicked off in October. In fact, Catherine Schweitzer, manager of the Foundation, has been credited with initiating the Olmsted Crescent promotional effort.
Deborah Ann Trimble, executive director of the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy and chair of the Olmsted Crescent, said “The Baird Foundation was the catalyst that began the Olmsted Crescent. It started with a conversation with Catherine Schweitzer about the strength of our local cultural institutions.” The Baird Foundation then funded a lunch meeting in May 1999 of the executive directors of the major local culturals, who liked the idea of marketing their institutions as a whole. With the help of some initial funding from the Baird Foundation, and creative input from Crowley Webb and Associates, the Olmsted Crescent was born. Ms. Trimble says, “It is all due to Catherine that we exist.”
The Western New York Foundation was created fifty years ago with funds that came primarily from the former Wildroot Hair Tonic Company, located on Buffalo’s East Side. Today, with assets of more than $13 million, it is the area’s eighth largest foundation. The Western New York Foundation provides funding to a very wide range of local organizations including most recently Buffalo Hearing and Speech, Buffalo Seminary, the Buffalo Urban League, Junior Achievement, a new program for children called Success by Six, WNED, and the West Side Rowing Club.
There are more than 170 foundations in Erie County, with total assets of nearly
$700 million. In 1999, more than $28 million in grants was awarded.
Niagara County has fifteen foundations with assets just under $20 million. Grants
totaling $830,000 were made in 1999.
Studio Arena Theatre has been one of the Foundation’s biggest interests—sometimes at a very personal level. Wells V. Moot Jr., president of the Foundation, who attends Studio Arena regularly, noticed recently that his seat was leaning to the left. This led to the Foundation making a grant to the theater to fund the repair of 600 seats and the purchase of a new carpet.
The Western New York Foundation prefers to give one-time grants rather than provide on-going support for programs. Mr. Moot said “A non-profit organization should exist because the community wants it to exist,” explaining that the trustees of the Foundation want to know that an organization has other means of generating ongoing financial support. He sees the Foundation’s role as taking care of special needs. For instance, the Western New York Foundation recently provided funding to a number of small-town libraries in the region, in some cases to wire the libraries for computer access, and in others to renovate the libraries’ deteriorating physical plants.
Richard Tobe of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo calls foundations “change agents.” At this critical juncture of Western New York’s post-industrial existence, foundations will provide much of the incentive and inspiration we need to reinvent ourselves for the 21st century.
Some of the other large foundations in the area are the Buffalo Rotary Foundation, the James H. Cummings Foundation, the Josephine Goodyear Foundation, the Margaret L. Wendt Foundation, and the Statler Foundation. There are many others. Although no one web site or phone number will reach a list, most can be found in the phone book. The Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo can be reached at 852-2857, www.cfgb.org; The John R. Oishei Foundation at 856-9490, www.oisheifdt.org.
Lisa Kane is a publicist, illustrator, and writer.
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