Council on Foundations Staff Continues to Shrink as More Leaders Depart

The Council on Foundations last week laid off its top policy and communications executives, and several other positions in those departments remain vacant after recent departures as the group prepares for new leadership next month.

Janelle Brevard, the group’s vice president for communications, and Hadar Susskind, the senior vice president for government relations, were both told last week that their employment with the council was terminated.

Gene Cochrane, the council’s interim president, said the cuts were not related to job performance but that they helped clear the deck for the incoming president, Kathleen Enright.

“It gives her the opportunity to build the staff she wants,” he said.

Susskind said his departure was amicable and allowed the council to “restructure to fit a new model.” Brevard declined to comment.

In addition to Brevard and Susskind, at least three other communications and policy staffers have left the council in the past few months. The membership organization employs 33 people, Cochrane said, down from 85 a decade ago.

Tough Year

The departures come a year after nonprofit priorities were largely ignored in the 2018 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the biggest tax rewrite signed into law in more than a generation. And they leave key positions vacant the month before Foundations on the Hill, an annual pilgrimage of nonprofit leaders to the nation’s capital to press their case with lawmakers.

To represent the council on federal policy matters until Enright formally takes over, Enright, Cochrane, and Javier Soto, the organization’s chairman, named a four-person policy transition team. Rob Collier, who last year retired as president of the Council of Michigan Foundations, will serve as the team’s senior policy adviser. Joining him are Stephanie Powers, the council’s executive-branch liaison; Sandra Swirski, partner at Urban Swirski & Associates; and Robin Ferriby and others on the staff of Clark Hill, an international law and lobbying firm.

Some philanthropy experts have said there are too many national membership organizations serving as nonprofit advocates and have urged them to consolidate. In addition to the Council on Foundations, Independent Sector, the National Council of Nonprofits, Philanthropy Roundtable, and the United Philanthropy Forum each represent nonprofits’ interest on Capitol Hill.

Financial Woes

Enright, who served as president of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations for 17 years, will succeed Vikki Spruill, who stepped down in June to lead the New England Aquarium. Her tenure was marked by declining membership, which had begun before she arrived, in the years following the financial crisis. In an attempt to bridge the organization’s budget gap, Spruill cut back on its programming, particularly for community foundations. In 2017, the council posted a $2.2 million operating loss, according to the group’s audited financial statement. When she left in June, Spruill said she had narrowed losses to $500,000. The council expects to break even this year, according to Cochrane.

As the practice of philanthropy has evolved, with many donors opting for nontraditional forms of giving, such as donor-advised funds or limited-liability corporations, the council and other organizations have found it difficult to serve donors who use different giving structures.

As president of the Duke Endowment, where he had a long career, Cochrane said his network of similar philanthropies consisted of a few dozen large private grant makers. Understanding the needs of private foundations, individual donors, regional grant makers, and corporate donors helped Cochran come to a “stark realization of how broad the field is” during his eight months as interim president.

Resetting Priorities

Cochrane and Soto said that over the next few months, the board will consider recommendations being drawn up by Enright and Collier to restructure and reset the group’s priorities. Pending board approval, Enright will provide more details about the plan at the council’s annual meeting, which will be held in Miami in April, said Soto, who is the president of the Miami Foundation.

Following Spruill’s departure, board members held meetings with more than 200 members, Soto said.

“Just about everybody said we need a strong voice in Washington, D.C., for the sector and that the council should be that voice,” he said. “That came through as a very central pillar of the council’s value and core work.”

Cutting Back

To stanch financial losses, Spruill scaled back. She organized smaller conferences rather than annual councilwide get-togethers and eliminated a separate conference for community foundations.

Fewer program options made many community foundations question why they belonged.

The Greater Washington Community Foundation and the Baltimore Community Foundation have left in recent years as membership at the council plunged from 2,000 in 2009 to its current count of 700.

“We filled the breach with other options,” said Bruce McNamer, president of the Greater Washington Community Foundation.

McNamer said that community foundations have a policy agenda that is distinct from the broader universe of donors represented by the council. In particular, community foundations are concerned with the regulation of donor-advised funds, which account for a large share of the money they control.

Other organizations, like the Community Foundation Public Awareness Initiative, founded in 2012, cater specifically to regional grant maker’s policy needs. And groups like CFLeads and the Indiana Philanthropy Alliance’s Foundation Legal Help Desk offer assistance for community foundations on programmatic and legal issues. McNamer said the cost to renew his group’s membership with the Council on Foundations was $25,000 for one year. The Indiana Philanthropy Alliance’s Foundation Legal Help Desk annual fee is $2,500, and the foundation can call for legal help as many times as it wants to in a year, making its services comparable to the legal advice provided by the council, McNamer said.

Given those options, it didn’t make sense for the Baltimore Community Foundation to continue its membership, according to Gigi Casey Wirtz, the foundation’s director of communications.

“For some community foundations, the value wasn’t there,” she said. “There are a number of organizations that have sprung up that serve the field.”

Local Engagement

The Community Foundations Public Awareness Initiative serves 125 regional grant makers. Jeff Hamond, the group’s coordinator, says he’d like that number to grow. He’d like to attract foundations from the districts of every member of the House Ways and Means Committee, where tax legislation originates.

But he stressed that his efforts complemented the broader mission of the council, Philanthropy Roundtable, and other organizations. He said that if a large group of organizations representing nonprofits spoke with one voice, tax-exempt groups could notch victories on Capitol Hill.

But much of the onus is on individual nonprofits, he said. Too often, foundations simply let organizations like the council represent them on Capitol Hill rather than becoming personally acquainted with members and their staff on key committees.

“The person from Merck or AstraZeneca isn’t going to say, ‘We don’t engage on the Hill because we are part of PhRMA,’ ” the lobbying juggernaut that represents drug companies, he said. “For too long in the nonprofit sector, people have said, ‘We don’t engage on the Hill because we’re part of the council or Philanthropy Roundtable.’ That’s the wrong way to approach government relations.”

Winning Back Members

Cochrane, the council’s interim president, said the group is considering restructuring its dues or offering several membership tiers to attract new foundations. He credited excitement about Enright, the incoming president, with getting 14 lapsed members to sign on. This year, he said, the council has signed on 36 new members, surpassing last year’s figure with two months left in the annual membership cycle.

Soto, the council’s chairman, believes more will return to the fold. When he and other board members sought out membership views following Spruill’s departure, foundations told them they wanted the council to tell a national audience of policy makers about the work they were doing at the local level.

Said Soto: “I heard a willingness of people to dial back in.”

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the role of Jeff Hamond in the Community Foundations Public Awareness Initiative. He is the group’s coordinator, not its founder.