Highlights, Updates & Information
December
2008
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A Note From ABFE Staff |
Farewell
to a successful and productive 2008!
We thank
all of our members and supporters for
making this year a success, and for helping
us to achieve ABFE's mission of promoting
effective and responsive philanthropy
in Black communities.
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Resources, Announcements
and Information |
Resources for Challenging Times
Council
on Foundations, Economic Xchange and Non-Profit
911, Nonprofit 911
Coming
Soon - A
call for nominations for the 2009 James A.
Joseph Lecturer,
the Emerging
Leader in Philanthropy
Award
and the Institutional
Award for Philanthropic
Leadership.
Beginning
in January 2009 ABFE will accept editorial submissions
for publishing on our website. Stay
tuned for editorial guidelines.
We've updated the design of www.abfe.org and created user-friendly
features to help you connect and communicate
with your colleagues and friends.
Members who are current are able to
access the "Members" section
with an assigned username and password.
To retrieve your user name and password,
please send an email to Summar Lyons
at sylons@abfe.org.
Save the Date - ABFE's Annual Meeting at Council
on Foundations, May 4 - 6, Atlanta, Georgia.
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Leadership News and Updates |
Susan Taylor Batten, ABFE's new President, is the
recipient of the 2008 Change Agent Award
presented by The Schott
Foundation for Public Education.
The Schott Awards are bestowed on activists
and community and philanthropic organizations
who have demonstrated exceptional commitment
and achieved extraordinary results in
advocating for equity in public education.
Susan officially comes on board January
5, 2009. (read the press release announcing
Susan's appointment)
Benjamin Todd Jealous, ABFE Board Member, was named
the 17th president of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People,
the nation's oldest and largest civil
rights organization, founded in 1909.
On November
25, 2008, the Obama Transition
team announced the selection of Dr. John H. Jackson,
ABFE donor, member, volunteer and ardent
supporter as well as President and CEO
of The Schott Foundation for Public Education,
to serve on President-Elect Obama's
13-member Education Policy Transition
Work Group.
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People Moving Up
and Moving On |
Dwayne C.
Proctor, ABFE Board Chair, has been promoted to Team Director for
the Childhood Obesity team at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
He is currently Senior Program Officer of Childhood
Obesity. He will officially begin in that
position on January 1, 2009.
KC Burton, ABFE Board Vice Chair, has accepted
the position of Deputy Director of the Interfaith
Center on Corporate Responsibility
(ICCR), a non-profit made up primarily of faith-based
organizations that invests member funds in corporations
to encourage socially responsible practices
and policies. KC was previously with the
Annie E. Casey
Foundation, and will
begin with ICCR on January 5, 2009.
Trista Harris, ABFE Connecting Leaders Fellow (2006-2007), has been named
Executive Director of the Headwaters Foundation for Justice
in Minneapolis.
ABFE member
Nicole Jones has been named Associate
Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations
at Loyola Marymount
University in Los Angeles.
Greg Roberts, formerly with DC Children and Youth Investment Trust
Corporation has been
named President of The
Muhammed
Ali Center.
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New Legislation to Help Children in America's
Foster Care System |
Casey Family Programs
applauded passage of the Fostering Connections
to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008,
federal legislation that will address some of
the long-standing issues affecting the more than
508,000 children in America's foster care system.
"By
passing this act, lawmakers have taken a significant
step toward improving the lives of the most
vulnerable youth in our nation," said William
C. Bell, President
and CEO of Casey Family
Programs and an ABFE
Board Member. "This legislation will
encourage more relatives to care for children
in familiar surroundings while connecting young
people to critical services that everyone needs
to have a bright future."
Casey, a
national foundation that has long backed the
reforms, has advocated for such changes as part
of the foundation's 2020 Strategy, which aims
to safely reduce the number of children in foster
care by 50 percent over the next 12 years and
to reinvest savings from that effort to strengthen
the child welfare system and improve education,
employment and mental health support for children
in foster care.
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Evergreen |
Radical Idea:
The New Philanthropy
Nicole Taylor, President and CEO of the East Bay Community Foundation,
shares her idea for reforming philanthropy with
KALW's, a local radio station in Northern
California.
Hear the interview...
Council of New Jersey Grantmakers (NJG) Members
Establish
Newark Philanthropic
Liaison
Philanthropy
has played a vital role in Newark
for decades. To harness grantmakers' interests
and foster greater effectiveness and impact,
the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Schumann Fund for
New
Jersey, Turrell Fund,
and Sagner Family Foundation
came together in 2007, through CNJG, to
create a philanthropic Liaison for the City.
Read more...
ABFE's Media Initiative
As part
of ABFE's Media Initiative launched at our annual
meeting at the Council on Foundations 2008 conference,
we continue the discussion of media and its
impact on the Black community; and more precisely,
how philanthropy is in a unique position to
respond.
In December
we hosted Media and Philanthropy,
an event which was co-sponsored by Grantmakers in Film + Media
and New
England Blacks in Philanthropy.
In an earlier
interview with ABFE, Dori Maynard who is President
of the Maynard Institute
for Journalism Education,
responded to member questions. Read Dori's interview with ABFE.
Stay tuned
for more of ABFE's Media Initiative in 2009.
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2008 Annual Meeting Highlights |
Carrolle Perry Devonish is ABFE's 17th James A. Joseph
Lecturer. Ms. Devonish is the Executive Director
of the Anguilla Community
Foundation in the British
West Indies and was the first to
organize ABFE's annual James A. Joseph Lecture.
Her lecture, A Philanthropic Safari,
is available at www.abfe.org.
Wendy
Lewis Jackson is
ABFE's 2008 Emerging Leader in Philanthropy.
Ms. Jackson is a Program Officer at the
Kresge Foundation.
The
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
is the recipient of ABFE's 2008 Institutional
Award for Philanthropic Leadership.
We thank ABFE's
2008 Lecturer and Award recipients for their
service, leadership and commitment to philanthropy
and ABFE's mission.
Reminder:
In January we will send a call
for nominations for the 2009 James A. Joseph Lecturer,
the Emerging
Leader in Philanthropy Award
and the Institutional
Award for Philanthropic
Leadership. Please think about who in
your network you would like to nominate., and visit
our website to learn more about
the Lecture and Awards.
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Sign of the Times |
"A
Casualty of the Bernard L. Madoff Investor Scandal."
A Foundation is forced to immediately close its
doors. Read More at ABFE News.
Source: The JEHT Foundation
In Challenging
Times...
"Weak
organizations cut 15% across the board - strong
organizations take the time to conduct a line-by-line
budget and program assessment and use a scapel
to strategcially cut based on which areas are
most in-line with the organization's mission,
and which reflect necessary, key core services.
This is more difficult and requires more thought
and effort but is the smarter, more strategic
way to address unavoidable budget cuts and would
place the organization in a better position
to maintain its value and survive these economic
times than a cut across the board. Protecting
100% of something is always preferable and more
strategic than maintaining 85% of everything."
Source:
Johsua Mintz - Cavanaugh, Hagan, Pierson &
Mintz
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A Final Thought from Great Thinkers and Doers |
In the spirit
of giving, thinking and doing on behalf of those
in the Black community who need our most urgent
attention, ABFE leaves you - the foot soldiers
of philanthropy - with these thoughts as we
exit 2008 and enter 2009.
I have found
that among its other benefits, giving liberates
the soul of the giver. Maya Angelou
The highest
test of the civilization of any race is in its
willingness to extend a helping hand to the
less fortunate. Booker T. Washington
None
of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves
up by our bootstraps. We got here because
somebody - a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League
crony or a few nuns - bent down and helped us
pick up our boots.
Thurgood Marshall
Happy Holidays and Happy New
Year |
ABFE STAFF
Susan Taylor Batten, President
Marcus F. Walton, Director of Programs
Sharon D. Toomer, Director of Communications and
Membership
Mary LuLu Lamping, Director of Development
Joshua Powers,
Director of Administration
Floria Abney,
Administrative Associate
Lynne Algrant,
Professional Development Coordinator
Summar Lyons, Coordinator of Membership Services
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ABFE's mission is to promote effective and responsive
philanthropy in Black communities.
As the first official affinity group of the
Council on Foundations, ABFE is the champion
of diverse leadership in philanthropy. Progress
is defined by a substantial increase in the
number of Blacks as leaders and emerging leaders
within the philanthropic field. Today, ABFE
counts among its members some of the most influential
staff, trustees, and donors of grantmaking organizations
who are intimately involved in shaping the focus,
decision-making, and response of foundations
toward Black communities. Please visit our website
at www.abfe.org.
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