Using Business Skills to Bolster a Foundation

By David Whelan

Richard Goldman has put most of his fortune into his foundation, the $450-million Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund. But he does not want it to stay there forever. The 84-year-old hopes it is all disbursed by the 10th anniversary of his death.

Mr. Goldman made his own money in the insurance business, but much of his wealth comes from his wife, Rhoda, who died in 1996 and was an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune.

The couple both felt strongly that foundations do not need to exist in perpetuity, and Mr. Goldman has written articles and spoken out in the news media about his desire to persuade more foundations to step up their giving. At his fund, which supports Jewish, environmental, and social-welfare charities, he is giving away about 10 percent of foundation assets a year, or twice the amount required by law. To help in the process of giving away the money, Mr. Goldman has hired Samuel Salkin to run his San Francisco foundation.

Mr. Salkin and the Goldman family go back 13 years, to when Mr. Salkin moved to the Bay Area from Alaska. Mr. Salkin had by then carved out a career working for companies that considered their social missions to be very important. In Alaska he ran the Alaska Commercial Company, which operated 30 general stores in native Alaskan villages. He had previously published an alternative weekly and managed a cooperative supermarket and a cooperative bank.

After the eight-year stint in Alaska, Mr. Salkin moved to the Bay Area and became executive vice president at the gardening-supply company Smith & Hawken, which he says was then focusing a lot on what it could contribute to conservation. After moving to a job as chief executive officer at the Peet’s Coffee & Tea chain, Mr. Salkin decided to switch gears and became the chief operating officer of the local Jewish Community Federation. As an active donor, he liked the idea of moving into the philanthropic world. After four busy years, during which he was promoted to chief executive officer, Mr. Salkin says he felt burned out.

While he was still a businessman, Mr. Salkin had met Mr. Goldman and his son, John, through a mutual friend. He spent more time with them in recent years in part because Goldman family members are major supporters of the federation. At a federation luncheon that took place after he had announced his resignation, Mr. Salkin encountered Richard Goldman, who asked him about his plans. Mr. Salkin had been considering a return to the retail industry, but was open-minded about nonprofit opportunities as well. Mr. Goldman, who was in the middle of parting ways with his executive director, saw an opportunity.

“We had to make a change,” says Mr. Goldman. “The last thing I wanted to do was go on some kind of national search.”

Mr. Goldman, who founded a successful insurance brokerage that he sold in 2001, says he likes working with a foundation executive who has strong business skills.

“He’s picked up a lot of the loose ends that had been neglected before,” says Mr. Goldman, who says the budgeting process was in disarray before Mr. Salkin cleaned it up.

In addition to that sort of housework, Mr. Salkin will lead the foundation’s grant making. Most notably, that means giving away the Goldman Environmental Prize each year, a $125,000 award that goes to six grass-roots environmentalists on each of six continents.

In a conversation with The Chronicle, Mr. Salkin spoke about his new position.

How do you share responsibilities with the Goldman family?

Richard is the family representative to the fund. We speak every day and see each other at least once a week. The board meets three times a year for a grant-review process.

How much independence do you have from the family?

On the one hand, there’s no independence. On the other hand, creativity is greatly encouraged. I’m helping to focus the approach to the philanthropy and the fund, to take the list of what we’re doing and tighten it up. There may also be new initiatives. Mr. Goldman has a strong desire for the staff to be a source of creativity, but in a collaborative, as opposed to an independent, setting.

The Goldman Fund disbursed 10 percent of its assets last year. Should all foundations have to spend money faster?

Mr. Goldman put a strong stake in the ground that foundations should not be self-perpetuating entities. Let the next generation fund the next generation. I’m in total accord with that view. From a legislative perspective, an important change that would be consistent with Richard’s philosophy would be to exclude operating expenses from the mandatory payout formula of 5 percent of the corpus.

Has the resurgence of global anti-Semitism and continuing violence in Israel affected the foundation’s grant making?

We recognize that anti-Semitism is a growing issue and have begun to grapple with what role the foundation might play. We see anti-Semitism as a human-rights issue, not a Jewish issue. In terms of Israel the fund has historically focused primarily on the future of Israel. We give scholarships to poor Ethiopian students who attend Israeli universities, but the larger portion of our work in Israel is around issues of democracy, encouraging the emergence of a stronger civil society, support for religious programming, and increasing the inclusiveness for Israel’s Arab citizens. We’ll stay the course even while there’s pressure to succumb to the urgent and the immediate.

What changes to the environmental prize do you envision?

The stipend has grown in recent years. The prize has taken winners to Washington, D.C., to meet government and NGO [nongovernmental organization] leadership. It’s something we’re reconsidering. It may not have the impact that it used to have. We have a whole youth program associated with the prize. We’re in the process of re-evaluating that. Is it serving its purpose? Can we make it better?

Is there anything about the foundation’s locale that affects your priorities?

San Francisco is among the world’s most philanthropic communities. Philanthropic giving is approximately $280 per capita in San Francisco. In Los Angeles it’s about $15, and for the country as a whole it’s less. So I think we have to recognize that the giving spirit of our community is enormous. We have world-class civic and cultural institutions totally disproportionate to the size of the community. We have one of the finest symphonies in the world.

Could that be a bad thing, a misallocation of resources?

No. These are marvelous things. We’re a beacon to the world.

ABOUT SAMUEL SALKIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE RICHARD AND RHODA GOLDMAN FUND

Education: Earned bachelor’s and two master’s degrees from Cornell University; the bachelor’s degree was in industrial and labor relations; the master’s degrees were in development and sociology.

Previous employment: After college, Mr. Salkin became publisher of the Ithaca New Times weekly. He then worked as a manager at the Puget Consumers Co-op in Seattle, a chain of natural-food stores. He has also run the Alaska Commercial Company, an American Indian-owned chain of small-town general stores, served as executive vice president of the garden supplier Smith & Hawken, and been chief executive officer of Peet’s Coffee & Tea. In 1998, he became head of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco.

Favorite periodicals: The Art of Eating, The New Yorker, Sports Car Market, The Jerusalem Report