EPISODE 57: LEAVING A LEGACY
Mary Morten: Welcome back to “Gathering Ground.” I’m Mary Morten, your host and president of Morten Group, LLC.
Each year more foundations are leaning into the philanthropic adage of using today’s money to solve today’s problems and making plans to spend down their endowments and sunset. It’s not a decision that’s taken lightly and it’s often hard for the board and staff of a foundation to pull the lever, so to speak. But what goes into the decision to spend a foundation’s assets down? How can they make sure their impact endures even after they close their doors? What happens after the grants have been fulfilled and the sun has indeed set? I sat down with three guests who have firsthand experience in sunsetting foundations to answer these questions and more.
Heather Parish and Marianne Philbin served as co-executive directors of The Pierce Family Foundation, which sunsetted in 2023; Malila Becton-Consuegra, postsecondary success program officer at the Stupski Foundation, which plans to sunset by 2029. We explored their strategies, the challenges they faced, the differences between legacy and impact, and their thoughts on the future of this growing trend in philanthropy.
So what I want to start out with: We always like to give our listeners some context for how you got to your role, either current or immediately past, and so I’m going to ask you, Marianne, to tell us, you know, a little bit about your background and how you got to The Pierce Family Foundation.
Marianne Philbin: I’ve been working in foundations and nonprofits for many, many years and had been – I was the longtime executive director at Chicago Foundation for Women during its startup years, then kind of went into consulting in the middle zone there, and through somebody at Forefront, which was then the Donors Forum, I met Dennis Pierce because they felt we might be in sync around issues that he was interested in exploring with this philanthropy, which in particular were about capacity building. And at the time there really were not a whole lot of foundations with trustees who cared about things like back office, supporting general op, building the organizational strength of an organization to deliver its program. Most places tend to focus on program, program, program. And so, you know, we had a meeting and talked through some of that, and I thought that would be that and it wasn’t. (Laughs.) Later he came back and said, you know, would you join me here and help me get this off the ground?
Mary Morten: And that was in – when did you start there?
Marianne Philbin: Oh, I was afraid you were going to ask that.
Heather D. Parish: That was around 2010, Marianne.
Marianne Philbin: Yeah, 2009 or ’10, yeah.
Heather D. Parish: Yeah, I think so.
Mary Morten: And I think that was – I met you years before at Chicago Foundation for Women because I was coming on the board for Chicago Foundation for Women. You were leaving. I didn’t want to take that personally – (laughter) –
Marianne Philbin: That was my one big regret about leaving, Mary, was like, darn, I’m not going to be there on staff while she’s on the board.
Mary Morten: Yes, I came on the board in ’95, so that tells you something there.
Heather, tell us about what your journey was like to The Pierce Family Foundation.
Heather D. Parish: Sure. Well, first, I want to thank you for having us on because I’m really excited to talk about our sunset journey and hear more about Stupski’s as well.
So my journey to Pierce: I would say that when I was a consultant for (years ?) in the nonprofit and philanthropy space, doing a lot of organizational capacity building, strategic planning, program design, implementation work, at some point, Marianne and I, we crossed paths through a consulting cohort that was put together by Andy Mott, who at the time was at the Center for Community Change; at least he was leaving. And we were in the special kind of initiative that he had pulled together with consultants around the country and that’s how we met. And then she asked me to partner with her on some work at The McCormick Foundation for four years, went from 2006 and 2010, and it was at the end of that that she ended up joining the Pierce Foundation. I was still consulting. And the person who became my predecessor – her name was Lindsay Marriott, so shout out to her – she ended up leaving kind of – you know, it was like December 2012 and Marianne called me one day and said, Heather, I need you to come over here and fill in for Lindsay until I can figure out what I’m going to do with her position. It was a program officer position. So I said OK, sure, no problem. So I filled in for about three months. Then she says, we want you to come join us; are you (willing ?) to, like, be a staff person? And I said, well, I don’t want to give up my consulting. She goes, but you can still do a little bit on the side, no worries, we’ll be flexible, but we really think you would be a good fit for us. So I ended being hired as the program director at The Pierce Foundation thanks to Marianne luring me in. But I also want to give a shout out to The Wieboldt Foundation because prior to that, from 2006 to 2013, I was a trustee, and Carmen Prieto and Regina McGraw, we crossed paths through the work I was doing for some of their grantees as a consultant and they invited me on to The Wieboldt Foundation board, and so that’s really where I learned a lot about – (inaudible) – and how much they modeled their relationships with grantee partners, and I really wanted to also bring that into whatever I was going to do in the future. I had been on the grant-seeking side and was trying to figure out, well, if I ever went to the grant-making side I would really love to take some of the learnings from Wieboldt and all the work that I learned from Regina and Carmen. So anyway, that’s how I got into philanthropy and Marianne and I became partners in justice for a long time, and still are.
Mary Morten: Thank you.
And Malila, what was your journey to philanthropy?
Malila Becton-Consuegra: So, prior to coming to Stupski, I spent about 25 years working in education and nonprofit and a lot of that time was asking for grants, managing grant-funded programs, and I felt like I had something to offer in philanthropy. So I saw a posting for Stupski and it talked about change. It was different than other foundation job postings that I had seen. It talked a lot about equity and redistributing wealth. So I was just really attracted to that idea and I just went for it and it was my first time applying for a role in philanthropy, and that’s how I ended up with Stupski.
Mary Morten: So, Marianne, I’m just going to ask you to explain to our listeners who maybe, you know, don’t understand, aren’t familiar with the term of sunsetting, right, a foundation or spending down. Can you just talk a little bit about that so we have some context for our conversation?
Marianne Philbin: Sure. And I don’t know how long that term’s been in the parlance in the field but it refers to a foundation’s intentional decision to close down and that’s based on not – typically not a series of wholly or exclusively practical considerations but philosophy, right, so that you place a priority on giving what you can and as much as you can and as strategically as you can in your own lifetime, as a funder or as an institution, and addressing the problems of your lifetime. So it’s a point of view as well as – you know, obviously there are practical considerations as well. But at The Pierce Foundation our trustees, Dennis and Martha Pierce, I think from the beginning – I mean, we wandered into it not – you know, full of, like, let’s experiment, let’s innovate, let’s just jump in and let it roll because Dennis has that entrepreneurial spirit and drive and he listens well to what’s happening in the community. But it was really pretty early on in the first few years of getting going that he started to say,well, I’m not going to do this forever and I think I really want to concentrate as much as I can to go out right now, versus structuring in some way that’s going to, you know, have us around in perpetuity because I’m not going to be around in perpetuity, so, you know, I don’t need the foundation to be. But it’s something that more and more funders I think are considering because it does have that political/philosophical dimension to it, as well as just, you know, the clock is ticking, is my money gone yet? Have I spent down because there’s nothing left or am I spending down intentionally?
Mary Morten: And, Heather, can you just give folks some context for what the work of The Pierce Family Foundation was? For instance, the fact that you focused on capacity building. I actually did a little bit of coaching through some of the programs there as well – that is unusual, it was unusual. But just so folks have an understanding that you worked with specific organizations over a period of time, which I think, in many ways, enabled you to have a deeper impact. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Heather D. Parish: Yes, I can. So The Pierce Family Foundation – well, back to what Marianne was saying about Dennis and what he wanted to do with his philanthropy. He really was concerned about back office and helping organizations become more sustainable. His wife, Martha, had worked at a nonprofit and he would hear the horror stories that she would come home with – (laughs) – every day about what didn’t work, what didn’t get delivered, what was broken, all of this kind of stuff. And so when they started the foundation they really wanted to lean in on back office infrastructure, helping organizations to be sustainable. And we focused intentionally on homelessness. That was the other thing, I think, about The Pierce Foundation that – you know, it was relatively small but because it focused on one key issue it was able to go deep and we identified a core – what we call our core grantees. We had, I would say, seven to nine grantees that we worked with at a time over a five-year period around providing multiyear general operating coupled with capacity-building grants. And that was very intentional because we felt like not only did they need the money that was unrestricted, they also needed access to professional development and technology and IT and being able to hire a consultant for specific things in their organization that they want some problem solving around. And we wanted to give them the agency to do that and also we realized, as we were in the work, that nonprofits typically don’t have – at the time did not have access to capacity-building grants on a regular basis. It was really usually one-off grants or discretionary grants that foundations would get, but they did not have it as a part of their model. And I really feel like – before it was being called trust-based philanthropy. In a lot of ways The Pierce Family Foundation was already practicing trust-based philanthropy and really trying to give the nonprofit grantee partners we worked with the agency to help them be sustainable and we did whatever we could to lean in, really develop relationships with them over the long term, and then help them do whatever they needed to do. So in the end we had about 20, 21 grantees that we would consider our core, because, again, we were bringing them on as cohort group – (inaudible) – and then once they rolled off of the five-year commitment we would then keep them in our portfolio but just provide general operating support. So they never went away. It’s just that the capacity-building grants weren’t given every year. But they could always come to us if they had a special need or some crisis and we would always be able to work with them. So that’s kind of the model.
Mary Morten: Wonderful. Thank you.
And Malila, can you talk a little bit about what some of the factors were with the decision to sunset Stupski Foundation?
Malila Becton-Consuegra: Yes. So in Stupski’s case the key factor was the passing of the founder, Larry Stupski. Prior to his passing he ran, along with his wife, Joyce Stupski, Stupski as an operating foundation for about 10 years and they worked specifically in education, public education. And they kind of had a hard go at – seek some of the change they wanted, just dealing with the public education system. So when Larry passed his wife, Joyce, wanted to honor his legacy by creating a spend-down, getting more impact, pretty much giving it all and being bolder with the philanthropy, just to honor his legacy.
Mary Morten: OK. Once the decision has been made to sunset, what was the approach for spending down – and I’ll go to you, Heather and Marianne, and start with you, Heather – in terms of those plans? Were you a year out, two years out? How much time did you give yourself to really – you know, we had this particular amount of money and we’re going to make sure that that is out the door by what period of time? Because – so Pierce Family Foundation – it was December of ’23 that you sunset?
Heather D. Parish: We sunsetted in 2023, right.
Mary Morten: So what were some of the decisions you had to make about how much money was going to be spent and in what period of time?
Heather D. Parish: Well, to be honest with you, we were in quiet sunset conversations for several years. We just didn’t know what the timeline was going to be and how it was going to happen. But I would say probably since 2016ish, ’17, we started seriously thinking about what a timeline could be, how much we would want to spend down, how would we give legacy grants? But it really depended a lot upon our founder, Dennis, and when he wanted to finally pull the cord or the trigger, whatever you want to call it, to finally make it happen. I think after various iterations that we came to a two-year plan toward the end; it actually ended up coinciding with Marianne’s retirement and then – so at the two-year mark, at the end of 2021, we sent out a notice to the sector to let them know that we were changing our staffing model and how we were getting more streamlined and efficient and that Marianne was retiring and that I would be leaving within a 12-month period. So the first phase of the, I guess, sunset was to sunset the leadership of the foundation first and then the remaining staff was there for the final year to help everything wind down. But we tried to do it – (inaudible). We had ample notice, I mean, because we knew we were in conversations around this for several years and we had actually – just for context, we had, in parallel to the core grantee portfolio, we also had like a general operating portfolio of other grants to organizations that were homelessness adjacent, so to speak, so like legal aid organizations, workforce development, other groups like that, and we were gradually downsizing that, starting in 2015 anyway, because we wanted to get more focused on our core grantees in giving them more intense support. So we were kind of gradually doing it without – you know how you’re in a relationship and you know that at some point it was good, the love’s still there but we’ve got to break up? And at some point we had to figure out when was the breakup going to happen? And Dennis has a very kind heart and I think he had a hard time trying to figure out how to make sure to take care of everybody, including staff, in the breakup. But at some point he says OK, I’m ready. (Laughs.) I think it just took him awhile to get ready – (laughs) – and once we got ready we had pretty much a two-year timeline to kind of wind it down.
Mary Morten: Marianne?
Marianne Philbin: Yeah. If I could just add on to that: One of the things that I think is interesting or is a reality about sunsetting is, just as is the case with the rest of philanthropy, the program and programmatic decisions are the fun part and, to some extent, the easier part. It wasn’t, frankly, that challenging to figure out how are we going to, you know, stair-step down the support we were giving to who and, you know, what was the nature of our giving going to look like? Because we wanted to stay on our path and finish strong, right? We weren’t going to be designing a whole different approach or attitude or factoring in new – it was like stay on the path, finish strong, be responsible, and always put the grantees first, right, which had been our operating, you know, M.O. for a long time. The challenge is the tedious, backroom, administrative stuff about, you know, well, does closing mean you’re ceasing operations or are you dismantling the corporate entity? Are you keeping the corporate entity but going dormant for X number of years? What’s your budget look like? What kind of extension beyond the public closing do you still need to actually keep your bookkeeping open because things – you know, like all that stuff, the legal questions about record retention. And, you know, we got some great advice from The National Center on Family Philanthropy. But it’s definitely a project, right, and that would be one piece of advice for anyone doing it. And we found that to be true at Annenberg as well when we closed the Chicago chapter here. You know, it’s a good nine-month-to-yearlong project with a lot of variables to make sure are all, you know, working together.
Mary Morten: You mentioned the Annenberg group, so you want to just give us a little context so folks know what that’s in reference to?
Marianne Philbin: Sure. Chicago Annenberg Challenge was a special initiative launched by Walter Annenberg, the billionaire education and media philanthropist, who wanted to direct large gifts to 10 cities around the country, specifically for improvements in public school systems. So Chicago got $50 million, which had to be matched – I think it was a two-for-one match – and it ran from 1995 to 2001. But it was always designed to be a limited-term initiative, and although I think we were always conscious of legacy, legacy, legacy, right – and this might be a topic we get into a little later – legacy is different from impact and legacy is very hard to control, right? And I think we also experienced that at Annenberg because the year that we closed there was a lot of stuff going on politically in the public school system and, you know, people were in their different camps and one group might think what we had done was great and appropriate and valuable and another group was ready to dismiss it and say it was a waste of time, you know, so you can’t always control for public opinion.
Mary Morten: Well, we’ve been talking about what’s happening here in Chicago and the Midwest and want to bring you in, Malila, and ask, with regard to the planning, what’s that been like? What’s the process, that kind of thing?
Malila Becton-Consuegra: Yeah, so there were a few different iterations to the planning, but the few things were – that stayed the whole time and that was that there would be a 10-year sunset horizon; the family wanted us to (space ?) a small staff, so that was under 20 people; and then the other part was that we had to just be in close relationship with grantees and communities on the ground. So those were the things that stayed throughout, but there were other things that were left a little open-ended, so as they decided to spend down they also added a few people to the team to get to that 15-or-so-person team and they started to hire people from the community, which included hiring myself, they started increasing diversity on the team, and they wanted to make sure that they utilized all of our experience in shaping how we would spend down. So some things were developed as we went along. And what that looked like is making sure how we decide to get into trust-based philanthropy, how we decided to bring in young people and community voices into deciding how we shape our strategies, and other things were getting into participatory grant-making models. So some of those things have been evolving along the way but what we kept were just the timeline, the small staff, and the way we engaged with communities. A few other things that we did with the planning was just talk to other funders that had already spent down, so we took a look at the Hazen report, we talked to the folks over at Bechtel, and got a lot of guidance through them of things that they did and mistakes and successes that they had and just kind of learned from those things. So that was our, like, early on learning period that helped to inform how we would start to move forward.
Mary Morten: That’s great.
Now, what I want to do is to take a little bit of time and talk about how this impacted your grantees and your other stakeholders, but first, we’re going to take a short break. You’re listening to “Gathering Ground” and we’re back in a moment.
Hi, everyone; thanks so much for joining me on “Gathering Ground.” We want to hear from you. If you have any questions about your work in nonprofits or any of the topics that we've covered here on “Gathering Ground,” send them on in; send them to mary@gatheringgroundpodcast.com. That's mary @ gatheringgroundpodcast — all one word — dot com. We look forward to hearing from you.
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to “Gathering Ground.” My guests today are Heather Parish and Marianne Philbin, the former co-executive directors for The Pierce Family Foundation, and we’re also speaking with Malila Becton-Consuegra, postsecondary success program officer, in the Bay area, at the Stupski Foundation.
So we were talking about sunsetting, spending out for a – or spending down, I should say, for a foundation, and I wanted to just focus for a moment on when you actually told your grantees, what kind of reactions did you get, your grantees and other stakeholders – you know, your colleagues, your community partners that you’ve been working with for many years, but in particular the grantees? We’re going to start with Malila. What was the response and how did you tell your grantees?
Malila Becton-Consuegra: So I started telling my grantees early and often and I started it about eight years before the spend-down date. So initially when I would tell them I think it kind of went in one ear and out the other; like, “Oh, eight years from now; it’s a long ways away.” But now, as we’re getting a little closer, they’re starting to really hear it. But one thing that’s been helpful, I think, in mitigating some of the anxieties, the multiyear grant-funding so that they know that it’s – they’re not cut off just yet with funding and then we’re also doing a lot of asking every single check-in, what can I do to help support to make this a smooth transition? What do you need? We’re here with you, you know, we’re in partnership and just making sure that they know they’re not being dropped or cut off abruptly but that we’re helping to ease out and make sure that they have what they need to flourish.
Mary Morten: So, Malila, tell everyone where you are in your timeline?
Malila Becton-Consuegra: So the spend-down officially is complete by 2029 but most of our grant funding will be out of the door by 2027. So we’re getting pretty close.
Mary Morten: All right. OK.
And, Marianne, what was the response from grantees?
Marianne Philbin: I’d say, given the nature of The Pierce Foundation and the way Heather and I were so out there in the community and active and engaged, as was our trustee, Dennis – I mean, we were on, you know, all the committees and in the special focus groups and co-partnering with so-and-so on the new initiative for such-and-such. So it was never a situation where a message came over the great wall and landed on the other side; you know what I mean? (Laughs.) I think it happened pretty organically in terms of how grantees heard about it and even a little bit ahead of – (laughs) – what we would have preferred, to some extent. You know, we both had the experience where people say, “Oh, is Pierce going to be sunsetting?” before we had even officially announced it because, you know, whatever, it’s a small community and we’re very connected and have a lot of relationships. But how they reacted, we had such deep relationships with our core grantees, so we were able to just have real straightforward conversations and Heather led the charge on all that, made sure everyone really knew what we were doing and why and how, and we did what we could to ensure that they weren’t left on the edge of a cliff. I will say that – this is not to suggest that anything should ever be done other than sensitively and with respect, but I think nonprofits tend to be accustomed to their funding mix constantly in flux, right? They are supported by a particular funder or donor for X number of years; that person maybe rolls off, they bring in – right? So I think we have to also credit the sophistication of nonprofits who understand that this is the nature of grant-making and grant-seeking and I don’t think anyone was like – certainly nobody was upset or shocked or – they really worked with us to say, here’s what would be helpful; you know, “If you can continue to do this and we would like to still participate in such-and-such” – for example, we had an IT program officer whose entire portfolio was to help grantees with their tech and a lot of grantees said, “Well, even when we stop getting grants can we still call David?” You know, and so a lot of that, what might have otherwise been challenging was mitigated by these relationships that we had.
Mary Morten: OK.
And, Heather, from your perspective, as the one who was doing some of the notification and talking to folks, what was that like and what kind of responses were you getting?
Heather D. Parish: Well, I got practice in doing it because the parallel portfolio around general operating that we were giving to other organizations, I was the person who also had to deliver that message as to, like, “We’re no longer going to be able to give you a grant, sorry,” but it was something where we were messaging early on, like, we’re giving you a grant this year but we’re not going to be able to continue to support you in the future. So there was always that kind of constant drumbeat around how we were shifting and changing our focus and getting more streamlined and strategic and intentional. So a lot of people, because we were giving that constant reminder that, you know, one year it’s going to be you next, they weren’t necessarily so surprised when they got the final notification. And we got a lot of notices of gratitude and appreciation for just hanging in there with them as long as we did, particularly from our core grantees. And like Marianne said, we all were still available for whatever request they may need or want to participate in.
One thing I would also want to add is that we also had relationships with our grantee partners because of the larger sector-wide initiatives that we also did, and so there were things that they were able to still connect with and that was a part of the legacy that we wanted to leave in the sector also. The Chicago Youth Storage Initiative was one; AMPT, Advancing Nonprofits, is another. The Chicago Funders Together To End Homelessness – we were key in the leadership with our colleagues from Circle of Service and Polk Brothers and Michael Reese early on with that work. So there’s things like that where we felt like we were hoping that people would still stay connected even though we may not be there physically present at the table. There were still things we were hoping to put in place and help influence, particularly around the importance of multiyear gen-op support, capacity building and all of that and helping our colleagues to really, you know, take the charge around that.
Mary Morten: And, Malila, give our listeners a little bit of the areas that you have been focused on, and have you shifted that focus knowing that the sunsetting is a few years away?
Malila Becton-Consuegra: So Stupski’s focus areas are: education, specifically postsecondary success; food justice; and then in health we have early brain development and end-of-life care and we really promised our communities that we would stick to these funding areas because one thing that we didn’t want to do was pull the rug from under their feet. What we have been doing is looking more at capacity building for those grantees, so not a shift in issue area but just a shift in how we’re able to support. And another thing that we’ve been doing more of since the spend-down is supporting policy and movement building so we can really see some lasting, systemic change and not just money going towards direct services.
Mary Morten: OK. And I want to take just a moment and talk a little bit about the management of The Pierce Family Foundation in that, Heather and Marianne, you all became co-directors in, I think, 2013. Is that right?
Heather D. Parish: I joined in 2013 as program director but it was in 2019 that Marianne and I became co-executive directors.
Mary Morten: Executive directors. And how did you come to that decision? Because, as I was mentioning before we started recording, I’ve actually done another podcast on co-directors, co-presidents, because we’re seeing more and more of that. Yet I have not seen it in foundations. So how did you all come to that decision?
Heather, you want to start?
Heather D. Parish: Sure. I have to give my colleague and partner, Marianne, a lot of credit for this because not everybody would be willing to share the leadership role. And like you said, Mary, in foundations and philanthropy that is very unusual, OK? (Laughs.) So I had been at the foundation for six years – and actually, what we haven’t mentioned yet, and this is very important, particularly around the sunsetting piece – we, in 2018, started to have discussions with another family foundation called the Cuore e Mani Foundation and they oftentimes – I’d say over 50 percent of our portfolios overlapped, and Pete Vilim, who was the main trustee with CeM, and Dennis would often be at the same tables, same boards, crossing paths all the time. They also started in – I think CeM started around the same time, maybe, late 2000s. So anyway, all that to say we decided to enter into a strategic partnership with them where we had a shared staffing model, where we were going to be staffing both foundations. And because of that, along with my expertise around community development – Pete Vilim had an interest around that as well – having discussions – and Marianne one day came to me and said, you know, we’ve been talking about this and we think because we’re going to be entering into this partnership with Coure e Mani that this would be a wonderful opportunity for you to join me as a co-executive director leading both foundations. And so it was really humbling to get that invitation from her and to, you know, be able – we were working in partnership kind of side by side informally anyway, but for her to say, you know, we need to walk the walk around racial equity, promoting leadership, making sure that we have more people of color in the sector that are taking on those roles and so this is an opportunity to – (inaudible) – and so that’s how that came to be. 2019 is when that started. And so yeah, it was great.
Marianne Philbin: And Heather’s leadership in the sector was extraordinary and, you know, there was no universe in which it made sense that she was the – we were doing the work together; why did we allow this sort of artificial distinction where, you know, “this is my title, this is your title” kind of thing? And again, luckily – and speaking to the ways in which she was very unusual, another trustee could have said, you know what, it’s fine; it’s fine as it is; it’s traditional this way; it fits in our budget this way. But when I approached him and said I’d like us to consider this, he was all for it. He was like, yes, absolutely. And I think one of the things that – you know, was great in a thousand ways but there is still something, whether legitimate or merited or not, about having that title which opens doors, right? So being able to join the roundtable on such and such as the CEO, all of that enabled us to do more of the big partnership work we were trying to do and to really share it between us.
Mary Morten: Wonderful.
Heather D. Parish: Yes. I just want to, like, put an exclamation point on that last point, Marianne, because there was a whole other world of meetings that I had no idea existed – (laughs) – until I became a co-executive director. I’m like, oh, that’s why they spend all their time doing this. Because they’ve got staff that are working doing that other work while they’re at all these meetings and tables helping to guide partnership and thinking and influence the sector. So yes, that was a whole eye-opener for me and it was – but greatly appreciated and much learning that I got through that process.
Mary Morten: Well, that sounds very similar to what Raul Botello and Jenny Arwade said when – as you know, this is a group – these are two folks who run an organization called Communities United in Chicago, but Jenny said that, you know, initially Raul was the associate director and there were so many times when if she wasn’t going to something she could not have him go; like, there was no way that he could go and he was absolutely doing the work in partnership with her and so that – you know, similar story – just made sense, right? Let’s remove that artificial divide there. And it modeled so many other pieces, I think particularly as you talk about a strategic partnership, right? That’s something that we want nonprofits to think about. It really, I think, modeled your philosophy in terms of look at capacity, how do we take care of the back office? I mean, it’s a really wonderful example of walking the talk that I don’t think I’ve fully understood until you just talked about it in this way. So really, congratulations on that and we want to make sure we continue to lift that up. So wonderful to hear about that particular piece.
Malila, as you are doing your work in the Bay area, what has been the way that you’ve brought your grantees together to help them down the road, if you will? Or have you started to think about how they will continue to sustain themselves, right, without the support and just in general, right? I don’t know any nonprofits that don’t need to be introduced or connected – (laughs) – with other revenue streams. And how are you doing that with your group?
Malila Becton-Consuegra: Yes. That’s been one of my main focuses as of late. So every time I check in with grantees I say, how can I help support you? And I’m hoping they say something easy like, give me 10 K for this thing, but no, they want funder introductions and it’s almost every time – and I love it and that’s what I want to do for them. So I initially started with these funder emails that were kind of dry and they didn’t really yield anything, so I’ve been moving into my next level of strategy which is intimate lunches, happy hours, bringing grantees along with me to anything that they’re allowed to come with me to, co-presenting and facilitation. So I’m really trying to get warmer introductions to funders and get funders in places where they can get a chance to see all the amazing work that the grantees are doing. And I think over the next few years, especially as the grantmaking is complete, I think that will be my primary, one of my primary roles, is really figuring out how to make these warm connections that lead to hopefully some grants for grantees.
Mary Morten: And give us some sense of the average size of grants and how many grants were you making – are you making because you’re still making them, you know, on average per year?
Malila Becton-Consuegra: Yeah, so most of my grants are about between 1 to 500 K per year and right now I have about 80 or so grantees, so it’s a lot. Yeah. And that’s just for my postsecondary success grantmaking. So then – we’re four program officers so maybe Stupski may be about four times that amount.
Mary Morten: That’s significant. (Laughs.) That’s a lot of – that’s wonderful.
If we think about legacy versus impact, let’s talk about that a little bit, right, because they are not the same thing.
Marianne?
Marianne Philbin: Yeah, I mean, I think of impact as multiple outcomes over time, that in some way you are paying attention to. Did we set a goal based on something that seemed to make sense to us? Was there progress towards that goal? Can we talk about it? What actually happened as a result? But the over-time piece is what you – you know, you don’t have impact in six months, right? Whereas legacy to me is a little bit more about, you know, who’s listening to what you’re saying, and is it or is it not influential in its day, which is a very different question from whether or not it will be influential in two years, five years, 10 years, right? And you can point to hundreds of examples where the legacy that, you know, an individual in history was – supposedly had and later that legacy shifted dramatically, right, because we looked with different eyes at the work that was being done. I think that is probably true in philanthropy, you know, that strategies that in any given era, a foundation may in fact somewhat radically lead the charge around, in another five years will – could be just commonplace, of course, you know. And I guess I was maybe less concerned about that, that I wanted to make sure – and Heather and I and our colleague Laura Jansen talked a lot about this – how do we tell our story not as testimony but as hey, you know, friend of friend having a drink at the corner bar, like, what did we learn? What might be useful? What was our experience? You know, take a look if you think it’s interesting to you. So we sort of put together this document that lives on our website about, here’s some kind of findings and observations over our run, and understanding, you know, somebody else might experience it differently or analyze it differently than we did but that was what we wanted to share, rather than saying we want to be memorialized in the following way for all time, which, you know, is not going to happen.
Mary Morten: I tend to think that your legacy, in many ways, you don’t have control over, right? I think – I mean, as I listen to what you all have been talking about and what I know about The Pierce Family Foundation and what I experienced from working with the foundation, the fact that you were, I think, one of the foundations that really understood that folks need back office support and capacity building, all those pieces at a time when that just was not happening and, to your point, Heather, that you were really working in the world of trust-based philanthropy well before that became an entire website – (laughs) – as it is now, right, that philanthropy is really thinking OK, this makes more sense. I mean, many of these things didn’t really take root, if you will, until after or some time around 2020. So what would you add to that in terms of your experiences with regard to legacy and impact, Heather?
Heather D. Parish: I think legacy and impact sometimes can go hand in hand, just to kind of build on what Marianne was saying. I think that there are things around legacy that will outlive your presence, and that’s, I’m hoping, what The Pierce Family Foundation was (able ?) to have in some respects in terms of any influence we had in the sector around the importance of general operating, unrestricted capacity building and the importance of that. Impact is what, you know, what we were able to help materialize or realize with our grantee partners over time, how were they better as a result of the work that we did with them for multiple years, versus when they first started with us, and particularly around, I think, the sector-wide initiatives that we helped to seed that are still living on. I think there’s a combination of legacy and impact there because there’s impact that we’re yet to see; at the same, we planted the seeds for that work to live beyond us. So that’s the way I would characterize it.
Mary Morten: Malila, what do you say to folks who are critical about a foundation sunsetting?
Malila Becton-Consuegra: Yeah, so I have a lot to say on this topic, but I think Marianne brought up one of the important or one of the interesting things, which is that foundations shift their strategies often and grantees are used to it and sometimes it’s not in a way that’s supportive or even respectful. When you have a planned sunset you have time to communicate it, you have time to roll out support, be in relationship with grantees, and really make sure that they have what they need to continue. So I think that’s one of the things. Also I think that because the problems that we’re working on are so systemic it’s really important to do it and give it all right now because it’s probably not enough to solve the problems right now, but it’s way more – there’s a higher chance of getting it done if we could give our best today. So those are a few.
Mary Morten: Did either of you get pushback from folks about sunsetting, Marianne or Heather, once that announcement became public?
Marianne Philbin: Do you think we did, Heather? I don’t think so. And again, that may be in part because it was a family foundation and I think in general people look at that a little differently, assume it’s – it’s like – you know, it’s personal, you know, so I don’t think there was a lot of criticism. Of course, everybody wished we would have been around longer and that more grant dollars would have flowed and more sector-wide initiatives could have been designed and supported by us, but we also feel terrific in the ongoing work that the Coure e Mani Foundation is doing with Pete and Joan Vilim and under the staff leadership of Laura Jansen. We work so closely together and it’s really kind of – that was a great thing for us just as leaving. You didn’t feel like you were, you know, turning the key in the lock and shutting the door and that was it because Coure e Mani is, you know, continuing much in a similar vein in terms of its priorities and mission.
Heather D. Parish: Thank you for saying that because I was going to mention Coure e Mani in the same (thing ?), in terms of our sunset not being so dramatic or, like, abrupt because of the fact that we had this partnership with Coure e Mani. Laura Jansen was – I tell you, she really carried the water that last year of the Pierce sunset. She really was stepping into multiple roles, having to pivot a lot, very organized around how that sunset happened, and at the same time, that was the way to help transition her to become now the executive director for the Coure e Mani Foundation and to help shepherd or steward the grantees from Pierce over to Coure e Mani, the ones that were appropriate to shepherd over. Like I said, we had some overlapping grantees anyway, but I think the fact that Coure e Mani kind of started the soft landing for some of our cores or a lot of our cores was really helpful, and they will continue to live on. They’re not planning to sunset anytime soon and they really – I would say Pete and Joan felt like they learned a lot from the partnership they had with The Pierce Foundation and how it helped to inform what their philanthropy is like now.
Marianne Philbin: One of the great, hilarious emails we got towards the end was Laura, who also was our business and finance manager, was tasked with making sure the spend-down-and-out matched, you know, what the budget obligated us to be doing and where the money was coming from, the different – anyway, she sent a screenshot of the last day where she had gotten it to balance down to like – what was left, three cents or something, right – (laughs) – and just was like, that was – the bouquet of flowers at the end there was amazing, yet she made it all balance out.
Mary Morten: That’s incredible.
So as we start to wind up and finish our conversation, there’s many more things I’d like to ask you but we are coming to that time, and I’d love for you to think about what you know now and what you knew at the beginning of the process, particularly for you, Marianne and Heather. Are there things that you thought mmm, might have done that in a slightly different manner? And also I want you to share some advice that you would – just one thing that you would share with a foundation that is moving toward or is thinking about sunsetting. And as you know, we have a couple of other foundations – at least one other foundation in Chicago that has talked about sunsetting but has a really nice runway, right, of almost 10 years. What would you offer up, Heather?
Heather D. Parish: I would say the runway is important. In hindsight, you know, maybe we could have given folks more official notice, even though, like Marianne said, it was kind of rumored – (laughs) – here and there that we were up to something but we weren’t quite sure how we could talk about it. You know, it’s not like we were The MacArthur Foundation, which at one point had pulled out of Chicago and now they’re back, but it’s like we weren’t a big foundation that was going to, you know, be missed all that much, but at the same time I think we had some impact and people appreciated our presence. I would say – so yeah, a longer runway, if you can; being transparent to the extent possible; also, while it’s – given that we want to center our grantee experience in making sure they have what they need and give them the agency to be honest with us about what we could be doing over time to help that off ramp be, you know, better for them so that they can have those introductions and do what we need to do to help them get to other foundations. It’s important to remember that the staff of the foundation also represent your philanthropic efforts and that their expertise and where they land and what their experience is with the sunset is also important and it expresses the values of the foundation and how they want to treat grantee partners as well as the people who have worked to help further that philanthropy. So whatever off ramp in terms of severance or an agreement for how long they’re going to stay – because that’s the other thing and with Stupski – I mean, they all know this is the date. With other foundations that are sunsetting, there’s got to be some kind of incentives for staff to stay to the end. And luckily, with Pierce, we pretty much all – except I left a year earlier but everybody pretty much stayed through because we wanted to see it through; we really were motivated to see it through. So whatever the foundation can do to help folks stay, be retained, as much as possible, and also give them enough cushion financially or runway or capacity building, relationship introductions that they are going to need to help go to their next position in the sector, so that’s what I would say.
Mary Morten: Anything to add to that?
Marianne Philbin: Just that never underestimate the value of multiyear general operating dollars, and multiyear being key, that whatever percentage of a budget a foundation is willing to pre-commit to multiyear commitments in any annual, you know, budget year, it’s so important to building the strength and innovation in the sector. And I think that was something we saw so much that innovation didn’t grow out of – you know, sometimes it did but it didn’t always grow out of the spontaneous blossoming of a brainstorm and the energy and electricity of a group of people who decided to make something happen that had never happened before. That is one track and that’s a good thing. Philanthropy places a lot of laurel wreaths on the heads of those who are working in that way. It tends to look less at what does consistency and multiyear backing up the commitment you made, what does that actually contribute to enabling grantee leaders to have the breathing room to do the kind of innovation that they need to do and want to do but you can’t do when you can barely pay the rent or, you know, you’re underpaying your staff by ridiculous amounts, et cetera. So I think it is as much a part of being radical in its own way and innovative as those kinds of initiatives that maybe get more attention. So that’s a big thing. Had we done it differently I would have pushed for us even (lose ?) longer blocks of time in the agencies that we were funding in – by telling them in advance how long it was going to be. They always knew when it was multiyear but it would have – we could have made it one more year, two more years.
Heather D. Parish: Right. And I would say longer-term capacity building over time is really important too. I mean, the fact that our model coupled multiyear gen-op with capacity building was really critical and it’s an accompaniment model where we’re – you know, it’s not transactional; we’re really developing a relationship with them to understand what their needs are and how we can scaffold the support that is required to help them be more sustainable and stronger internally over time as well. So I think the importance of that can’t be underestimated. And there’s also the life cycles that groups go through and sometimes (you’re ?) going to have to circle back and revisit and do things or they have a change in leadership and they have to kind of reset. So it really is important that a long-term view, a developmental view of capacity building really is something that I think I would want to emphasize with foundations as well.
Mary Morten: And, Malila, you’re on the journey now and are there things that you think, OK, we have an opportunity to make a few other tweaks because we have a few years in front of us, we have a few years behind us, right, on this path but we also have a few years in front of us? Are there things that you’re thinking you might tweak or there are some opportunities that you want to take advantage of?
Malila Becton-Consuegra: Yes. I think sunsetting a foundation itself is a huge opportunity, so the piece of advice that I have is make sure you make the most of it. So we talk about making those big bets on communities, getting large grants out, acting with a sense of urgency, really looking at impact, being responsive to feedback that we receive. I think that’s the biggest learning and it’s something that we’re always in relationship to. When something shifts, I might need to change something to be responsive because there is this sense of we don’t have forever to do it. But I think the piece of advice that I have is that it’s a very special opportunity and to make the most of it because it will go by really quickly.
Mary Morten: OK. I’m curious, and this is just something that I literally just thought about: As we sit in Chicago, there are a number of groups – and I know the same in the Bay area as well – that have received support from MacKenzie Scott. What’s been your impression of that kind of philanthropy that’s happened over the last several years? Do you know organizations – I certainly do; I’m sure you all do – that have received that money? What do you think about that kind of philanthropy in that manner?
Malila, would you like to –
Malila Becton-Consuegra: Yeah. I love it. My grantees – a few of my grantees have gotten these really large grants. They’ve been able to do things like purchase their buildings or help build staff capacity, hire – a lot more are doing the co-leadership/co-directorship, which has been really good for – to prevent staff burnout and encourage retention. So I’m in favor of the big giving. I know if it’s one time – the grantees know, they understand, and they know how to budget.
Mary Morten: Take advantage of it.
What do you think about MacKenzie Scott?
Marianne Philbin: I think any philanthropy that infuses new resources into a community or gives new power to an ability to tackle a need is a good thing. And, you know, there are challenges, there are issues of capitalism and all the rest, but I’d always rather see money going out to organizations than not going out to organizations, and I think that those kinds of transformational gifts can do just that. I mean, they can finally enable an organization to turn a corner that it has been struggling to get around for, in some cases, decades.
Mary Morten: Having that one large infusion.
And, Heather, what did you want to add to this?
Heather D. Parish: I think the large infusions are – (inaudible) – just sometimes to get people over the hump and out of the ditch – (laughs) – and over to the other side of something where they can be more sustainable. What happened during the COVID pandemic, when there were a lot of special grants or other income support programs, even for families, that lifted children out of poverty for the first time because of those infusions around child tax care credits and other things like that is a great example of how just a one-time infusion at a particularly critical time can really help get people to the other side. I mean, even me personally, I have been somebody who, until I was in philanthropy, was living paycheck to paycheck for years. And finally, being able to develop a nest egg and actually having – I’ll give Dennis some credit here; he gave us all some pretty sizeable outgoing bonus gifts, and that has really lasted me for quite some time because of just being able to take care of things I could never take care of otherwise and to have that. So I think what MacKenzie Scott and others are doing around these one-time large infusions that open up doors and realities for folks that never would have been able to even be thought about in terms of buying buildings, maybe even starting an endowment, seeding an endowment, other things that they could never have thought of before to help them be more financially sustainable, I think it’s really great and I hope it continues.
Mary Morten: Wonderful.
So as we close, tell me one thing you’re excited about with regard to what’s happened in philanthropy, other than donors like MacKenzie Scott? Anything come to mind that you think this is – this bodes well for the future?
Malila?
Malila Becton-Consuegra: I’m really excited about seeing funders breaking fake rules. So one fake rule that we broke was only spending 5 percent. We’re spending down. Funders are looking at things that we’ve been doing for so many years, just the way that we’ve been doing it, just because, and we’re saying, we don’t have to do it that way anymore; let’s break these fake rules and do things that are in support of our communities.
Mary Morten: Marianne?
Marianne Philbin: I love that, Malila, yes. And I think what I’m most excited about is the increasing – what appears to be the increasing willingness to do collaborative co-funding and really work to get things off the ground together, like AMPT is a great example, where nobody felt the need to claim it as this was the thing that we uniquely did at our foundation that we’re going to put our name on the top of, and that’s what it’s going to take to make things really move sometimes, and I think the collaborations that we’ve seen in the last few years in particular have actually been really successful in exciting ways and that’s something I love.
Mary Morten: Wonderful.
And Heather?
Heather D. Parish: I would say two things: One, there is more diversity in the sector, as compared to when we entered it. And there’s been intentional movement around hiring people that worked on the ground in nonprofit organizations that can bring their expertise and life experience to philanthropy – organized philanthropy, right? We all have come from traditions of philanthropy, in our families and our communities, but in terms of organized philanthropy, there has been a really significant movement to help people from the nonprofit sector into the work and I think that has influenced, really positively, some of the direction that philanthropic organizations have taken with their work that they may not have even considered but for the presence of those people with that experience, bringing their expertise and lived experience to the work.
Another thing that excites me is that foundations are finally – just to pick up on Malila’s earlier comment about going beyond the 5 percent and spending more than what’s required by law: That other 95 percent of these endowments that are sitting in investments in the capital markets – we’re finally getting more creative about how we’re investing those dollars for impact investing purposes. There’s the top – (inaudible) – more diverse managers, that are investment managers that are actually helping that money to go where it needs to go and to invest it properly, and then also ESG, environmental, social and governance factors that are guiding those portfolios in terms of are they socially responsible, where are they investing, are they investing in things that are toxic, that are adverse to the environment? So there’s more consciousness around socially responsible investing that I think has been really important that helps to also further the philanthropic dollars that we’re holding, and to be more responsible, honestly, about them and particularly those that are wanting to invest in perpetuity or to be around in perpetuity. It’s like, so how are you using that money and spending that money or investing it over time?
Mary Morten: Thank you again to Heather Parish, Marianne Philbin, and Malila Becton-Consuegra for sharing their invaluable insights on the journey and impact of sunsetting their respective foundations. Their experiences highlight the importance of thoughtful strategic planning and the profound effect that philanthropy can have on communities and organizations. The decision to sunset a foundation involves careful consideration of legacy, impact, and sustainability. By embracing these challenges and opportunities, foundations can make significant, lasting contributions to the causes they support.
This is our last episode before our summer break and I want to thank all of our listeners for your continued support of “Gathering Ground.” I also want to thank Vince Pagán-Hill, our producer, and Andy Miles, our editor. Couldn’t do this work without the both of you.
We’ll be back in the fall with new episodes, including an exciting series in collaboration with Elevate, an environmental justice organization here in Chicago. Have a great summer and remember to keep driving change, keep inspiring each other, and keep gathering ground. I’m Mary Morten. Until next time.