Case Studies

A few summers ago, the board of the Lawrence Welk Family Foundation issued a challenge to the fourth generation of Welk family members. They were told about a local shelter for homeless families which hosted a preschool and therapeutic learning center that needed a new air conditioner. It would cost around $1,000, and the children were going to help. … Read More

The Tecovas Foundation was created in 1998 by Galeti’s grandmother, philanthropist Caroline Bush Emeny, with a single purpose: to establish the Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts in Amarillo, Texas… Read More

Inspired by a vision of “a world where being low-income does not mean having to choose between housing and food, and where everyone can have faith in our system of justice,” the $11-million, Washington, DC-based Butler Family Fund is an important advocate in the realms of homelessness and criminal justice reform. … Read More

Like many family foundations of its size and age, the Roy A. Hunt Foundation of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania faces a number of challenges: carrying on an important charitable legacy while engaging a growing geographically dispersed family, and balancing the diverse interests of that family to make grants that make a difference. It succeeds in navigating these sometimes difficult waters by virtue… Read More

I catch up with Carol Paine-McGovern in a fourth-floor conference room in the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. Carol is President of the Paine Family Foundation, a small family foundation based in Manistee, Michigan, and is in town for Foundations on the Hill. … Read More

A new group of young Jews, the grandsons and granddaughters of several prominent giving families, is carrying on a legacy of giving while rewriting the rules for a new generation. The Slingshot Fund was born on Grand Street. Danielle Durchslag, a great-granddaughter of Nathan Cummings, founder of Sara Lee, wanted to meet some of her peers, to explore what the… Read More

Many foundation investment advisors contend it’s best to keep the investment side and the grantmaking side of philanthropy separate. “I hear it all the time,” says John Powers, a board member of the Educational Foundation of America (EFA), a family foundation based in Westport, Connecticut. “Let our money managers make money any way they can because you’ll have more to give away.”… Read More

Clarifying the founders’ intent is an issue very close to the heart of many philanthropic families, but this concern took on special urgency for the Dexter F. and Dorothy H. Baker Foundation of Allentown, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1986, the $17-million family foundation is located in Lehigh County where the Orphans’ Court periodically reviews the foundations established there, and has considerable… Read More

When the Lumpkin family began, in 2005, to consider a new grant program, they encountered a stumbling block. While the family had a number of common interests—healthy food, education, water quality, nonprofit capacity-building—none of them produced enough “collective passion” to warrant the creation of a new grantmaking focus. “Rather than picking one of the program areas to work in, we… Read More