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David Bennett is executive director of the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne. Editorial writer Karen Francisco spoke with him about the major gift from the Lilly Endowment announced last week and about philanthropy in northeast Indiana.
Here are excerpts of the interview; listen to the entire interview by going to The Journal Gazette’s home page at www.journa1gazette.net, click “opinion,” then click “5 Questions for David Bennett.”
The grant that Lilly announced for us today, which is $20 million, is designed to increase the pipeline of workers who have (science, technology, engineering and math) skills. There will be support at the K-12 level to support the launch of New Tech high schools. We will enhance programs at Ivy Tech and IPFW in areas like systems engineering, wireless communications, advanced manufacturing. And then we have funding to retrain at least 1,200 adult workers in skills that are needed in this (defense) sector.
In January, the board of directors approved $200,000 to eight local charities that are in the business of providing basic human needs in the community. It was given to them so they could help fulfill that need. We know there is still a need out there. We are contemplating additional programs in the future, but we were pleased that we were able to respond fairly quickly to what their needs were.
(T)here is no question our asset level has gone down. This does translate into fewer dollars available to grant to the community. We do a three-year rolling average when we calculate our base. … Even though our portfolio is off approximately 25 percent, it does not mean our grant-making will be off 25 percent. … This year we will make approximately the same amount of grant-making we did last year, which is between $5 million and $6 million, and we’re hopeful that with the recovery of equity prices that we will be able to maintain that level over a number of years.
A lot of foundations were started by one very generous person or one very generous family. We, in the 52 years we’ve been here, have had literally thousands of donors, and it literally ranges from donors who have given $1 to donors who have given us $20 million. We also have a wide variety of charitable interests. … We are very grateful that a high percentage of our assets are unrestricted – about 60 percent of our assets are unrestricted, which means we can use those earnings to identify the most compelling charitable needs in the community.
As an outgrowth of our giving culture and our entrepreneurial culture, I think regardless of what measure you use, you will find northeast Indiana is very blessed with a large number of generous foundations. If you add it all up, you come close to $1 billion in endowed assets serving the charitable needs in northeast Indiana. The other element of that is we have a culture of philanthropy among our corporate givers, as well.
