December 5, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
Nonprofit leaders hopeful that Barack Obama will listen to their ideas take note: This week he sent a senior adviser to meet with foundation officials.
During a meeting organized by the Council on Foundations, an association of grant makers, Valerie Jarrett, soon-to-be a White House senior adviser and assistant to the president for intergovernmental relations and public liaison, discussed ways the federal government and philanthropy can work together to overcome the nation’s financial turmoil and housing problems.
The event was closed to the news media, but Steve Gunderson, the council’s president, said that the “listening session” had gone very well. Ms. Jarrett appeared open to nonprofit ideas and did not come with an agenda to impose on foundations, he said.
Mr. Gunderson said that the discussion included the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, a program supported by the U.S. Labor Department and several grant makers, including the Ford Foundation and the Microsoft Corporation, to train people for new jobs in growing industries.
To cut through Washington bureaucracy, Ms. Jarrett said foundations should reach out to her office with their ideas, Mr. Gunderson said.
Several people who attended the meeting said Ms. Jarrett’s decision to come to the event was a significant sign of Mr. Obama’s willingness to work closely with philanthropy.
According to The New York Times, Ms. Jarrett will have the ear of the next president. She has known Mr. Obama for almost 20 years, first hiring him as a lawyer while she worked in the Chicago city government.
