Community Foundation Head Says an Early Teaching Job Honed His Interest in Promoting Inclusion

ENTRY LEVEL

Thomas E. Wilcox

Age: 55

First job: Instructor, Fountain Valley School of Colorado, Colorado Springs

Current job: President, Baltimore Community Foundation

I had just graduated from college in 1970 and was hired as an instructor in history, government, and math at the Fountain Valley School of Colorado, which is a suburban independent school in Colorado Springs. I stuttered so badly that the public-school system would not hire me. This was also the period during which the civil-rights movement was gaining ground and the war in Vietnam was raging and the cities and colleges were burning.

I was sympathetic to the civil-rights leaders and to the antiwar movement, but I had very little patience with people who were burning draft cards and making fools of themselves when they could have been working to bring about real change. Another guiding principle for me has always been that one is more likely to effect change using honey rather than vinegar.

It was also a time when independent schools and colleges were really beginning to take integration seriously. The Harvards and Fountain Valleys were moving from having a couple of token people of color to having truly diverse student bodies. As educational institutions were beginning to recruit students from all backgrounds, I realized the unique role schools could play in realizing this new American dream of inclusion. One could argue that independent schools had originally existed to perpetuate a privileged class, but in this new era, those institutions came to realize that they could ensure the Jeffersonian ideal of education, which is to ensure democracy.

I’ve always been passionate about diversity. I grew up in Riverdale, which is a very privileged area of the Bronx, [N.Y.,] and I certainly wasn’t one of those kids who had to claw his way up. Still, in Riverdale, we did have a lot of United Nations people living there, and we all benefited from the diversity that resulted. And I spent a lot of time in Manhattan, which has an extraordinarily diverse population.

With the increasing diversity of educational institutions, I noticed the quality of the discourse in the classrooms was much richer when children of all sorts of backgrounds were discussing issues — assumptions were being questioned and put into a new light. It was so rich in the very best sense of the term and everyone gained from the experience.

Since my job at the Fountain Valley School, the notion of helping nonprofit organizations reconfigure themselves as the times and the American population have changed has always remained at the core of my work. In 1976, I founded and worked as the executive director of the Association of Boarding Schools, which included 200 of the leading independent schools in the United States. We supported those schools’ diversification and helped them build a new middle class. As headmaster of Concord Academy for 19 years, I personally witnessed the power of philanthropy in changing an institution: Representation of students of color grew from less than 5 percent to more than 25 percent. Generosity changed both schools and ultimately every aspect of America. It’s not just Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice — it’s people of color holding important positions in corporations and organizations everywhere.

Seeing what an impact philanthropy could have on society as a whole led me to my current job as president of the Baltimore Community Foundation. Here I really try to maximize the impact of philanthropy to bring about change in Baltimore and the region. And much of what I do is to help our donors understand the importance of their philanthropy.

Because of this community foundation, we have thousands of children in after-school programs who would otherwise be out on the streets. We’ve given grants to 64 of the most distressed neighborhoods, as well as given major support to our Healthy Neighborhoods Initiative, which demonstrates how voluntarily integrated city neighborhoods can add true value to real estate.

Baltimore recently received $12-million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and another $8-million from local philanthropy to reform its high schools — some of which have a graduation rate of 15 to 20 percent. Another huge project the community foundation has been involved in is Baltimore City New Schools. These are charter-like schools in which parents have a real say and a real responsibility in how their schools are run. This program gives neighborhoods the opportunity to create new schools, much like independent schools, but through the use of public dollars.

This is a city that has lost 30 percent of its residents over the past several decades, but people are beginning to move back into the city and we are all dreaming of becoming a new American city. Just as independent schools have become more diverse through philanthropy, community foundations have formed partnerships with all members of the community. By bringing various entities together and by helping all types of people see how they can benefit each other, community foundations demonstrate how real change can be achieved. — As told to Mary E. Medland

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