Karen Green, Bruce A. Maza, and Kathleen Odne

00:04 I'm Bruce Mason.

00:06 I am 57 years old and today is February 27th 2007 and we are at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel where we are in the final hours of the 2007.

00:24 Annual conference of for family foundations of the Council on foundations and I'm here today with two colleagues who in the process of my acquaintance was in the case in dear dear friends.

00:39 Cast of confidence

00:42 To talk about work that we did together that.

00:47 Kind of mattered a lot.

00:51 And that's why we're here to talk.

00:54 To tell the story

00:57 My name is Kathleen odney. I am 55 years old. It is February 27th. 2006 7

01:08 And I too am in the Baltimore Marina Marriott Waterfront, whatever and I'm also here representing Family Foundation that I managed the Dina Margaret Lesher foundation in Walnut Creek, California, and I served vigorously and affectionately with my two colleagues here on the family foundations committee for the Council on foundations where we'd like to think we engaged in some important work.

01:40 My name is Karen green and I'm 49 years old and today is February 27th 2007. We are at in Baltimore for the Council on foundations family foundations conference which meets each year and the two people I am with each chairs of the committee on family foundations, which is the advisory body to the council's Family Foundation Services members and I was the fortunate staff person at the council that supported their work and the work of their committees when they were chair.

02:32 So I thought we would reflect on the process of developing what are formally called the stewardship principles and practices for the Family Foundation field and what we can now call Best Practices, but maybe couldn't 10 years ago way back when we started this work.

02:59 Kathleen and Bruce, why do you think the stewardship principles actually developed? Why did they happen?

03:08 I'm pretty clear about this one. I've been in the field for 33 years and after 33 years now if you look back a little bit and you

03:21 Reflect kind of on where we've come from. It wasn't all that long ago before the family foundations in this country didn't even think of themselves as a field. They didn't recognize how much they have in common with one another and how much their collegiality could help them do their work.

03:39 And then the council on foundations did a big project going on twenty years ago now.

03:45 And then along about

03:48 MD 10 years ago

03:51 We all woke up one morning and realized you know, we are a field.

03:57 And then we ask ourselves. What are the characteristics of a field?

04:01 And the more the reflected on the work that we were doing the more we realize that there was a longing rising up in the field.

04:10 For some standards of behavior some standards of practice in the work and that's really why it started and

04:22 The work of the council them the Family Foundation division of the council turned its attention to asking us to define those standards. So that's how that's how it happened.

04:37 And I think the particular impetus was the transition from Bruce's leadership as chair of the family foundations committee to my own when Bruce very generously offered to host a thinking and planning retreat in Louisville, Kentucky where he manages the foundation and so coming together with the family foundations staff Bruce and I

05:07 I'm enabled us to perhaps people older than we would have been had we stayed in in Washington DC at the council offices and say who better than we to determine what does practices there are for the field it felt a little bold and somewhat arrogant and we were clear that we thought it was too pretentious to use the term best practices. We discussed that at Great length.

05:34 But yet we knew that this is what the field was really hungry and for

05:39 And so over the course of a couple very intense days of discussion in Louisville. We grabbed ahold of this and tried to give it some form and some shape that we thought we were best position to do it. We thought we had the most credibility to do it and we thought we had the best chance of articulating these and actually getting them out into the field as a whole. Just do our membership go to the field as the hole. So it really began in my mind in Louisville. And that's where the germ of the idea was born and then rapidly we can begin to bloom once we planted that seed there in Kentucky if it was

06:24 It's really come such a long way in just five or six years. Like Kathleen said we couldn't even say best practices we

06:36 We used to always win Family Foundation members would call us. We would just give out models. Like here's five different ways to bring your next Generation on or here's six different models for whatever it might be discretionary grants and and and people just thought that families were so committed to their individuality that they didn't even want to hear about best practice. So this was really kind of a revolutionary idea to bring to the field and and Lewisville did begin it because then I wanted to ask your opinions about your remembrances about the process. So Lewisville started it and then we took it to the committee and onto this conference but in earlier years

07:34 What do you remember about going through it?

07:38 I have a moment that I remember as a particularly poignant moment.

07:45 And it was Karen in our discussion and boy did we agonize over do we dare say that we are going to make a formula of best practice for running family foundations. And Kathleen is quite right. We feared arrogance we fear that they would be a kind of

08:07 Paul resistance from the field but Karen said look in the past we used to say well there are six ways to do this.

08:17 At that moment in time and that's an important element of this. It was the right time to do it. We had acquired enough experience and had reflected enough of what we did that Sharon. I remember very distinctly said, you know what there's an answer there. Yes, there are six things you can do. But if you do four of them, it'll take you to a place. You don't want to go so there are a couple of them that work better than it was that practical.

08:44 That's it seems to me that that was the moment that gave us the courage to move ahead and say all right, let's write this down and share it with people.

08:54 Because we're so lightly regulated as a field. I think there was an almost in slavish over attention to being idiosyncratic and paying homage to everyone's Independence because all the the personal wealth and privilege they are in our field have come from such disparate sources and and stories it felt as though that our philanthropy should reflect that that it should be whoever we were and wherever we came from and while I'm not disagreeing with that notion in terms of areas of Interest. We began to see that in fact, we did know that there were practices that were associated with strategic high-quality philanthropy and all we really did was articulate what was already out there in the field. We had observed practices of well-run Foundations who not only were doing good external work.

09:54 In terms of their grant-making but who had grab that elusive barometer of success that their trustees were highly engaged in philanthropy and it had become such a rewarding experience for them because we operate with this duality of an internal emphasis around trustee satisfaction and the growth and the eating of the philanthropic impulse as well. As of course the important work we do through our grants out in the community. So I think it was the first time we felt comfortable enough maybe we had grown up enough to say there are best practices associated with foundations who are doing very good work and we feel confident enough to be able to lift those up and articulate that to the field and yet Kathleen.

10:44 It wasn't it wasn't something that you and Bruce sat down and said here's what they are. Here's what we know Kathleen. Can you talk about the process of going out into the field and getting the fields buying?

11:01 We we did our best to draft through the committee and and hard work of many others Weebly prepared a provocative draft of what we thought encompassed best practices in our field some of which we knew going in were controversial others popped up as being controversial after we took our our show on the road. We actually did take our show on the road. We had what we call the listening to her where we went out through all the parts of the country.

11:31 And solicited feedback from members and non-members around what were these things that we had identified where we on the right track here had we articulated it we were doing our best but what was missing what was extraneous and that was a very fruitful process. It was not without vigorous and robust a disagreement on some of these

11:58 But I think that was an informative part of it. That's characteristic of our field. We have we bring strong emotions and we come from all over the perspective both politically and economically and geographically and in every other way, we can slice and dice it. So the process I I think was thorough it was very time-consuming. We spent nearly a year hashing around these are these best practices in and traveling around and soliciting feedback in any number of ways over the Internet personal calls are written documents. I'd like to think we we hit most of the ways that people if you were interested in interacting with him, we gave you an opportunity whether or not everybody picked up breakup was up to them.

12:42 And even prior to the National listening tours that we're done. There was a moment that gave us confidence that we were on the right track. Here. We are at the conference conference is a great place to reflect on past conferences and I'm sitting here thinking, you know, five six years ago, whatever it was. We had a we did have an electronic survey of the whole field everybody. I think it was the one of the best attended sessions in the history of the conference of the family foundations. Everybody came because everybody wanted to weigh in I also think they were attracted to the electronic gizmos that we used to do a survey of 1,800 people at the same time or whatever. The number was and no probably wasn't that large 700 stealth 600 people but we came and we said do you want us to do this? And why do you want us to do this? And I think we were amazed at the response.

13:43 So it kind of made all our shilly-shallying in Lewisville. Look maybe a little silly. At least we'd ask the right questions, but all of a sudden we thought this is a mandate.

13:55 And that sent us forward into the plan Kathleen is just described and then lo and behold.

14:02 They produce them. Yeah, I know that's what it's been exciting how how much of an evolution there's been from this very tentative meeting in 2003 in Louisville was like do we dare bring this up to this man did in 2004 at the family conference and then this year long process to vet them and change them and then we launched the stewardship principles in 2005.

14:36 And still even at that conference had a session on one of the controversial ones which was the compensation of trustees and then the last couple years we've had sessions on how do you okay now we've developed as a field best practices. How do you implement them and people are so receptive now?

14:59 To hearing about how you actually put these things in practice and when you look back that's four years more or less from start to finish and the mindset change is so amazing. I think our greatest fear was that we get this all put together and then it would get shoved on a shelf like many strategic planning process. These do you spend this incredible amount of time and effort and you develop a fairly worthwhile document and then you don't let it really guide your work. So we were determined I think from the very beginning we understood that this was part one and getting them and we did feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment when they were launched and printed and put up on the web and we did it was it was a wonderful moment and we took that moment and then we immediately said, okay now what and of course this is where the real work is because how do you

15:52 Seep these principles deep into the field and really make them something.

16:00 Something that matters. How do you get trustees to learn about them? And how do you get this these conversations initiated at four tables? And how do you really bring these things to life? So I'd like to think that we have really let it guide the work particularly as a committee on family foundations. I think we were somewhat of a model it I would be remiss if I didn't say how closely we worked with the corporate grantmakers during this entire process. We quickly determined that we had many more things that we agreed on then that distinguished from one another and we came up with virtually identical son of principles in the main and then at the end we customize them to the particular aspects of corporate and family, but really good grant-making transcend our individual constituencies. So we had a very close working relationship and I'd like to think that we served as an inspiration to the independent foundations who then began their own which Karen

17:00 I was intimately involved with their own development principles and practices.

17:06 So it's been a ride and we're at War it was certainly not done. In fact, we've probably just scratched the surface service about thinking of creative ways of how to get family foundations engaged with these best practices and continue to discuss them and we find them and we're certainly always open to new ideas and there's wonderful things going out in the field that will inform these principles as we move forward. I'm observing at this conference. However that

17:34 If you want to do it right here is a guide book.

17:39 And when you think about it, the fact family foundations started the process and then they invited corporations and now large private independent foundations are following suit means that the field at large of philanthropy is coming of age and the people who practice it both professionals and trustees have decided that they want to be a guild

18:08 That examines itself that recognizes achievement and the practices behaviors that will prolong philanthropy in the life of the society because at the end of the day no matter how technical the handbook becomes the impulse is to make certain that future Generations in the society will produce wealth that is used for the good of the society at large. That's what this was really all about.

18:40 So we talked about doing something that matters.

18:44 I don't know anything that matters more.

18:47 Those of us that have the opportunity to work with families in their philanthropic Endeavors. I think we we can agree that it's an extraordinary position to be on and it's my sense that

19:03 It's virtually everyone who's in the field wants to do it as well as they possibly can. I'm it's important to know that we have had some negative press around family philanthropy and we're proud of the fact that we started our work around best practices before this happened many people that we did it as a response to what happened, which was what we were always quick to point out when we could that we proceed to the negative press but of course, it has been helpful because there is an interest now, I'm in the general public and in our legislators around ethics and accountability and nose always preferable to set your own standards rather than have someone else at them for you. So I believe that many families

19:47 Want to do not only the right thing what want to do this as well as they possibly can and so having some written planner guideposts to help you because you filter everything through your own individual philanthropic experience, but I think it's been very helpful and whether your run by non-family staff or your run by a trustee, you still have an interest in doing this work fully and robustly and with great integrity. I think to the development of best practices for family foundations. I believe increased the respect for family philanthropy among other sorts of organized philanthropy. I think the view just as the field

20:39 Saw itself as idiosyncratic

20:43 People in independent foundations and corporate giving programs.

20:49 Saw family philanthropist as

20:54 Second-class Citizens or worse that you know, he was a bunch of know-nothings just writing checks and going off doing crazy things and the fact that this effort really

21:09 Mean the community of foundations, of course had their National standards even earlier, but they're public Charities and the fact that in the private Foundation field the lead was taken in family philanthropy rather than the independent foundations, which tend to be larger and more staffed the corporate giving and the independent foundations are more heavily staffed and organized inherently and that the lead was taken by the the the step sister. I think made an impact on how seriously family philanthropy was taken by other disciplines in the field and particularly the family foundations were more aggressive on certain of the practices saying that no, you know nonprofit.

22:05 Organizations don't pay their grantees and we will not pay I mean nonprofit. Don't pay their board members. Those are our grantees nor should we pay our board members and that's a position that independent foundations have yet to take so I think it ratcheted up the level of respect for the field a little bit.

22:29 As I reflect on the Continuum, it's amazing to really think back that 15 years ago. We we struggle just to even provide services specifically aimed at Family foundations. That was the Genesis of saying there's something different here. I'd like to think that they were also felt there was something special there and family foundations quite quite correctly were clamouring for we have a different set of issues. We have philanthropic aspirations that are all wrapped up in donor Legacy and family businesses and family offices and we're different we want to do this work well, but we have some things that need to be attended to so when you think that the council just really started to pay in a in a

23:16 Intensive and strategic way attention to family foundations 15 years ago. I'm proud of the fact that here we are in 2007 with a very well-crafted and vigorous set of standards that were created by and for family philanthropy.

23:40 One more thing.

23:44 I hope that anybody who ever listens to this.

23:47 Will come to realize that the process of doing this work on behalf of family philanthropy.

23:55 And the country and the world also produced a sense of collegiality that over the years has deepened into deeply valued friendship among the three of us who were telling this story.

24:11 And I think the pack clip the work that we were doing is spending so much on.

24:18 A vision of human connectedness, which is a finely what philanthropy is all about. It is after all simply away that we humans are sure one another that we are not alone could produce the kind of friendship that Kathleen and Karen and I share.

24:39 That's a consequence of doing this work together as teammates as trench, mate.

24:48 But I'll bet you for the rest of my life.