The National Center for Family Philanthropy recently spoke with Maurice “Mo” Green to learn more about how he has approached his role as the Executive Director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.

These aren’t aspects of success that you can measure with metrics or data, and they are things that many funders often either take for granted or completely overlook. Yet, when they are present, they make a night-and-day difference in effectiveness.

We challenged the nonprofit community to think creatively and to take risks. We asked them to take a comprehensive, enduring approach — not a quick fix, but a long-term plan for effective and transformative change.

We knew we had to change the dynamic. We began by changing how we show up as individuals and as an institution.

We usually think of scale as an escalator that moves in only one direction: up. Things start small and local and, if they succeed, they grow to be large and global. Sometimes scale can work in reverse — by taking a global idea or model and giving it a new application on the local level.

Tasked with the responsibility of creating a strategic focus for the foundation, I realized that I had to take a step back and understand how my family’s values and beliefs informed their philanthropy.

My moments of reassurance come when a family funder tells me about a grant or project they’ve launched to restore and reinvigorate community. Often, these are efforts to ameliorate suffering but also to get at root circumstances and causes

What if our generation aspired to create what our predecessors had by getting out ahead of the growth of our city and creating a new system of parks that would inject new life into Louisville’s neighborhoods? As a second-generation trustee of my family’s foundation, the C. E. & S. Foundation, I knew I had access to a resource that could help answer this important question.

As a community foundation, the Calgary Foundation understands the importance of our 3 key roles: donor stewardship, effective grantmaker, community leader…but what’s our why? What do we believe? After sixty years of serving philanthropy for the benefit of community, we’ve learned our knowledge of community issues and needs represents the distinct value we bring to donors - that’s our biggest asset.

NCFP just returned from Youth Philanthropy Connect's (YPC) annual conference where we presented on our 2015 Trends Study in Family Philanthropy study. One of the members of the YPC leadership team, Brendan Adams, is featured below. Brendan and his cousin Nadia make up the Junior Board at the Guadalupe...