Foundations’ Asset Growth Brings Staff Expansion

The rapid growth of the nation’s wealthiest philanthropies has sent many institutions scurrying to find new staff members to help deal with an increase in grant-making activities, including the handling of a larger volume of grants and proposals.

Nearly one in four of the 126 big foundations surveyed by the The Chronicle said that they had recently hired new employees or plan to do so soon.

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation expects by the end of next month to receive more than $5-billion worth of stock from the estate of Mr. Packard, raising the value of its endowment to about $9.1-billion. As a result, it plans to have as many as 120 employees by year’s end. In 1996, the fund had 58 employees.

But hiring staff members has not been easy, officials say, because the foundation is located in the heart of the country’s thriving high-tech region, where unemployment is low, the cost of living is high, and salaries are often much more generous than what the foundation will pay.

As an incentive to find qualified administrative staff members, the foundation has offered its employees a finder’s fee — $1,000 if the applicant is hired, and another $1,000 if that applicant passes through a three-month probationary period.

At the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, 28 new employees started last year, pushing up the staff size to 283. And the foundation expects to hire several more people this year.

Even so, Kellogg hopes to keep staffing increases to a minimum. As it conducts a review of its work, the fund is looking for where it can increase the amount it invests, without hiring a greater number of people to make those grants.

In fact, several foundations are being cautious about adding staff members as a solution to dealing with the rising demands caused by the growth in endowment value.

Instead of adding employees, the McKnight Foundation, which saw its assets increase 14 per cent last year to $1.7-billion, is stepping up its use of outside consultants to help award grants. Officials there say they do not want to permanently increase their administrative costs in case the stock market sours. In 1997, Mc Knight spent $150,000 on consultants.

And at the foundation with the biggest number of employees — Ford — officials have decided that a modest staff cut was in order. Ford recently closed field offices in Bangladesh and Senegal, eliminating 18 jobs in the process. Ford now employs 617 staff members around the world, and it is using the money saved from the staff cuts to finance more charitable programs.