WHY YOUTH? WHY COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONS?
by Russell G. Mawby W.K. Kellogg
Foundation
(following is a keynote address delivered by
Dr. Russell G. Mawby, Chairman of the W.K. Kellogg
Foundation, at the June 21, 1991 launching of the
Michigan Community Foundations' Youth Project.
More than 300 civic leaders from throughout the
state were present for the kickoff event in Battle
Creek.)
It is a pleasure, indeed, to be
with you today for the launching of this
initiative in philanthropy, which we believe is
one of the most exciting ever undertaken in the
State of Michigan. If all of us are successful in
our efforts, the next five years will witness, in
communities across the state, a series of
activities that will help young people develop
life-long values of generosity and leadership, and
which will at the same time build stronger and
more caring communities.
If we do well, these next five
years will truly leave their mark on Michigan. It
will make our state a better place in which to be
born, and to grow up. Since the first announcement
of this initiative was made, many people asked me
why the Kellogg Foundation, which could have
directed these resources in any number of ways,
chose to commit them to youth and to Michigan's
forty-five community foundations. So, today, I
want to answer these two questions: Why Youth? Why
Community Foundations?
First, I would like to address
the question 'Why Youth?' As new, as exciting, and
as daring as it is, the Michigan Community
Foundation Youth Project has precedents in our
Foundation's history. For example, from 1931 to
1948, the Kellogg Foundation supported the
Michigan Community Health Project (MCHP) in seven
south central Michigan counties. This was a
comprehensive community development project that
consolidated rural schools, built modern
hospitals and health departments, and encouraged
volunteers to help deliver essential services.
The children served by the
Michigan Community Health Project are only now
beginning to retire. Most are still active in
their communities as volunteers, and many are
still going strong in their chosen careers. It has
been sixty years since the Kellogg Foundation
began to sup-port MCHP, and forty-three years
since our support ended. And society is still
reaping the benefits from it. So, I don't think of
MCHP as an 18-year project. I prefer to think of
it as a 60-year, 70-year, or 80-year project. If
we look at the Michigan Community Foundation Youth
Project in the same light, we realize that this is
an initiative that will still be paying social
dividends in the year 2051 and perhaps well
beyond. In fact, the direct beneficiaries of this
program will still be making contributions to
society for most of the next century.
Of course, it is not given to us
to know the long-range consequences of many of our
philanthropic actions. But we can guess that
working with youth will be like a stone thrown
into a pond; the ripples keep expanding far beyond
our time and place, far beyond our ability to
measure or per-haps even envision. The Kellogg
Foundation chooses to work with youth because we
continue to believe that our generation has an
obligation to express our gratitude to the
generations that came before by helping the
generations that will come after. We recognize no
limits on what can be achieved, what deficiencies
can be eliminated, and what good and decent things
can be accomplished, if we but give our young
people the tools to do the job the opportunities
to fulfill their potential.
WE ARE INVESTING IN THE
DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEXT GENERATION.
The Michigan Community
Foundation Youth Project gives young people the
opportunity to learn generosity in the only
practical way: by being generous. It will teach
them to meet community challenges by raising funds
for good works. It will teach them to be good
stewards by giving them opportunities to make the
hard decisions on wise giving. It will give them
the opportunity to ask, to serve, and through
serving, to lead. Tomorrow's governors, mayors,
chief executive officers, and executive directors
will be trained through the Michigan Community
Foundation Youth Project. Even more importantly,
so will tomorrow's Little League coaches, Big
Sisters, Cub Scout leaders, Sunday school
teachers, and community foundation trustees.
Perhaps here is the real
significance of working with youth. Youth grow up
to become people who work with youth. When we
invest in the development of today's young people,
we are really investing in the development of the
next generation, and the next, and the next. The
ripples spread out from our investment - and
where, they will end, we can never know. Now I
would like to turn to the next question, "Why
Community Foundations?" The shortest and most
profound answer to this question is that the most
exciting solutions to today's problems are not
those coming from Washington or from Lansing. They
are those coming from our local communities. Local
leaders are the ones who are closest to the
problems, and the ones best equipped to solve
them.
YOUTH AND COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONS
ARE A DYNAMIC COMBINATION.
Local leaders, of course, cannot
solve community problems all by themselves. They
need to have arrows in their quivers, and perhaps
the sharpest arrow is the community foundation.
Community foundations are the most community-based
of all philanthropic institutions. They are also
the most flexible; they can support a wide range
of initiatives to improve the community, from
economic development to social services, from
recreation to health care, from ecumenical church
projects to neighborhood development. But
community foundations are more than money givers.
They also serve as conveners for important
community meetings, as "honest brokers" to help
build teams of organizations to solve problems; in
short, community foundations serve as catalysts
for change. Since they serve all of the nonprofits
in the community, they can bring all of them
together to make things happen. Since the trustees
and staff of community foundations live in their
communities, they can help new initiatives with
their personal involvement, as well as with funds.
When we look at the Michigan
Community Foundation Youth Project, we can see all
of these roles of the community foundations being
called into play. In addition, we see community
foundations as manufacturers of new philanthropy
and new philanthropists. They are the generators,
if you will, turning out new givers by helping the
community to raise, manage, and disburse
charitable funds.
The Michigan Community Youth
Project combines all of these functions of the
Community Foundation: 1. Each community foundation
will raise money to meet the match with the help
of a local committee. 2. Each community foundation
will endow permanent field-of-interest funds. 3.
Each community foundation will form an advisory
committee that will involve youth, thus teaching
fund-raising and stewardship. 4. Each community
foundation will serve as the meeting place and the
think tank for new initiatives in the community.
Thus, this initiative will help
community foundations to become all that they can
be, and when this happens, it is a fair bet to say
that the communities in which they live will
become all that they can be as well.
To sum it all up, youth and
community foundations are a dynamite combination!
This initiative will help us identify young
leaders of tomorrow. It will help us recruit them.
It will give them experience in raising money and
it will give them training in the wise stewardship
of charitable funds. It will raise fresh money for
new needs in communities and permanently endow
these funds so that resources will be there for
future generations. It will help communities to
grow and to ease the pain and the suffering of
those who are hurting. It will enrich the lives of
uncounted numbers in incalculable ways. It will
enable communities to face an uncertain future
with an unshakable confidence in their own ability
to deal with their own problems.
Why Youth? Why Community
Foundations? Perhaps the most succinct answer to
these two questions comes from the eloquent pen of
Abraham Lincoln. We must remember, however, that
he wrote these words nearly a century and a half
ago, so I have had the audacity to edit Mr.
Lincoln, changing from the masculine singular to
the plural, changing "child" to "children", and
changing "he" to "they". So, to paraphrase Mr.
Lincoln:
"Children are the persons who
are going to carry on what we have started. They
are going to sit where we are sitting, and when
we are gone, attend to those things which we
think are important. We may adopt all the
policies we please, but how they are carried
out, depends on them. They will assume control
of our cities, states, and nations. They are
going to take over our churches, schools,
universities, and corporations. The fate of
humanity is in their hands".
It has been a great pleasure to
welcome you to Battle Creek today for this
launching. A mere 16 months from now, in November,
1992, the Council of Michigan Foundations will be
holding its annual conference in Battle Creek. We
look forward to seeing all of you here again at
that time to share good news of your
accomplishments in the Michigan Community
Foundation Youth Project. Thank you very much, and
all the best to you as you set out to shape a
brighter future for the young people of your
communities and our State.
THE COUNCIL OF MICHIGAN
FOUNDATIONS IS AN ASSOCIATION OF FOUNDATIONS AND
CORPORATIONS MAKING GRANTS FOR CHARITABLE
PURPOSES. CMF ASSISTS MEMBERS TO IMPROVE AND
INCREASE PHILANTHROPY IN MICHIGAN.
The Council of Michigan
Foundations provides this publication as a part of
the Michigan community foundation project jointly
supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.
Council of Michigan Foundations
One South Harbor Avenue/Suite 3
P.O. Box 599
Grand Haven, Michigan 49417
(616) 842-7080
FAX (616) 842-1760
©1992 Council of Michigan
Foundations |
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