August 7, 2008 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The Patterson Foundation, in Sarasota, Fla., has received a bequest of $225-million from the estate of Dorothy Clarke Patterson, who died last year. Ms. Patterson established the foundation in 1997 with a donation of $3-million. Ms. Patterson did not specify how the money should be used, nor did she leave any instructions.
Ms. Patterson’s husband, James, who died in 1992, was vice president and assistant managing editor at the Daily News, in New York, a newspaper that his father co-founded with Robert R. McCormick, a cousin. Mr. Patterson was also a descendant of Joseph Medill, who was one of the founding partners of the Tribune Company, in Chicago, and a former mayor of Chicago.
The new philanthropy has not yet selected a focus for its grant making, but has previously donated to Cardinal Mooney High School, Habitat for Humanity Sarasota, All Faiths Food Bank, and other Sarasota-based organizations. The foundation expects to disburse $11-million in 2009.
Deciding Priorities
The gift will propel the Patterson fund to No. 19 in the ranks of the largest grant makers in Florida, according to the Foundation Center’s data — and by far the largest foundation in Sarasota.
The Community Foundation of Sarasota County, the nextlargest fund there, had $159-million in assets last year.
The Patterson Foundation’s president will be Debra Jacobs, president of the William G. Selby and Marie Selby Foundation, also in Sarasota. She will begin her tenure at Patterson after December 31.
The foundation will form a new board by the end of the year and, during the months that follow, determine its grant-making priorities. John Berteau, chair of the foundation and Ms. Patterson’s lawyer, said the fund may give first to local charities before gradually expanding its geographic reach.
“Better to walk before you run,” he said.
Mr. Berteau said he hoped the foundation would focus on the causes of the problems it seeks to solve.
“If a charity comes and asks for $25,000 to do a specific thing, that may be like giving a person a fish,” he said. “It would be better if we could use that grant to fundamentally transform the need so that it’s less likely to reoccur in the future, or, if it reoccurs, it affects fewer people.”
Mr. Berteau and Ms. Jacobs have been visiting other foundations — the Duke Endowment, Cameron Foundation, and J. Bulow Campbell Foundation among them — to gather ideas.
Ms. Jacobs said she hadn’t been looking to leave her job at the Selby fund but is eager to assist in building a philanthropy from the ground up.
“It’s an opportunity to help those who want to do philanthropy the right way,” she said, “to help them think through all their options and discern the best way to have an impact.”
