Case Studies

Editor’s Note: This is one of three “Family Office Spotlights” included in the National Center’s new report, Working Together for Common Good. The Joseph and Harvey Meyerhoff Family Charitable Funds are a group of Baltimore-based family foundations whose philanthropic contributions have had significant impact not only on the city of Baltimore, but nationally and internationally as well. Joseph Meyerhoff, a premier… Read More

The Springs Close Foundation is among the largest family foundations in South Carolina, and one of the oldest in the South. Assets at the end of 2009 were approximately $38 million, and over the past seven decades the foundation has invested nearly $100 million in the state – primarily in a rural three-county region known as the “Olde English District” or… Read More

Summer’s over, but for many Massachusetts families, the memories linger on. That’s because from July 3 to September 4, Boston’s Highland Street Foundation sponsored Free Fun Fridays at each of 10 museums and other attractions across the state. Thousands of children and families enjoyed a free experience that some might not otherwise be able to afford, and the 10 institutions… Read More

In 1990, a family trust in Connecticut decided to pursue an audacious goal: to end homelessness in America. The board thoroughly studied the issue, and eventually committed themselves to an equally bold strategy – creating a national movement. The Melville Charitable Trust’s considerable impact since then was recognized recently when its long-time executive director, Robert Hohler, received the Council on… Read More

Lessons from One Family’s Transition from Founder to Nonfamily Director When Bill O’Neill Jr., president of the William J. and Dorothy K. O’Neill Foundation in Cleveland, decided to step aside from being “chief cook and bottle washer for 20 years,” the family faced a common dilemma: how to shift the foundation’s leadership to a successor and who it would be… Read More

When the Tracy Family Foundation (TFF) set out to determine its strategic vision for the next five years, the Mount Sterling, Illinois family foundation included goals for Brown County, the surrounding region in western Illinois served by the foundation, and the Tracy family itself. The plan’s goals for Brown County and the region touch on Catholic school enrollment, nonprofit capacity… Read More

When Leonard and Claire Tow created the Tow Foundation in 1988, it was like many other family foundations that base their grantmaking programs on the interests of the trustees. But by the late 1990s that had changed. Seeking funding gaps in their home states, the trustees began to focus collectively in an area about which no family members were particularly… Read More