A Premature and Unfair Attack on a Leading Foundation

To the Editor:

I read Pablo Eisenberg’s attack on Deborah Leff’s leadership of the Public Welfare Foundation (“A Foundation’s Attempt to Make a Difference May Produce the Opposite Result,” November 29) with great dismay.

I have known and admired both Deborah Leff and the Public Welfare Foundation for many years, and I have every confidence that both will continue to make significant contributions to the public welfare for many years to come, despite Mr. Eisenberg’s allegations.

My dismay stems from the fact that Mr. Eisenberg — whom I count as a friend, and whose work I have been proud (most of the time) to support, at the Center for Community Change and then through his program at Georgetown University — has taken the inevitable stresses of organizational change and painted a dark and distorted picture.

It’s quite unfair to Deborah Leff, who is exactly the kind of visionary, progressive leader that Mr. Eisenberg is constantly reminding us — correctly — is in too-short supply in the foundation world.

In her tenure as president of the Joyce Foundation, Ms. Leff pioneered in supporting innovative public-policy campaigns on gun violence and campaign-finance reform, and in her early months at Public Welfare launched a million-dollar initiative to promote paid-sick-leave policies. She’s off to a great start.

From what I can tell, Deborah Leff is leading a good and respected foundation and — with the unanimous support of her trustees — taking it to a new level, deepening some of its work, moving on in a thoughtful way from some of the many issues its relatively small grants have supported, and reapplying the foundation’s core values to the challenges of the time. That’s exactly what she should be doing.

It is a rare foundation, no matter how well led, that would not benefit from review and reform after 15 years. I thought I did a fairly good job in 11 years at the Open Society Institute, but my successor as director of U.S. Programs there, Ann Beeson, has since overhauled the program structure in a way quite similar to what Deborah Leff has done at Public Welfare, and I applaud her for it.

That some staff members and grantees may be unhappy and disappointed in such a process is inevitable, and citing a few of them anonymously is far from proof that a foundation is on the wrong track.

Any new leader who takes a foundation, or any institution, in new directions will ruffle some feathers, make a few mistakes, and attract critics. It comes with the territory. It’s unfortunate for Deborah Leff that one of hers turned out to be someone with the platform of Mr. Eisenberg, who used it to ignore her impressive record and who hasn’t the patience to wait for the next chapter to unfold before passing judgment.

Gara LaMarche
Chief Executive Officer
Atlantic Philanthropies
New York

***

To the Editor:

On behalf of the Board of Directors, I write to express our concern about the opinion piece by Pablo Eisenberg, which contains numerous factual errors and misrepresentations, in contrast to The Chronicle’s own coverage of changes at the Public Welfare Foundation in the November 1 issue.

It would be hard for anyone who read Mr. Eisenberg’s article to realize that the new programmatic directions at the Public Welfare Foundation were pursued with the full support and encouragement of the entire Board of Directors.

Our focus on criminal and juvenile justice, health reform, and workers’ rights draws on areas of long and deep commitment by the Public Welfare Foundation, and we continue our long-held belief in improving the lives of low-income people. Deborah Leff, in our assessment, is doing an outstanding job of leading the foundation in attempting to achieve the greatest impact upon the quality of life of people whose voices are too often ignored.

Juliet V. Garcia
Interim Chair
Public Welfare Foundation Board of Directors
Washington

Ms. Garcia is president of the University of Texas at Brownsville.