Biz 901: The Community Foundation

The Community Foundation has constantly evolved to uplift Memphis.

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For the largest grantmaker in Tennessee, managing money and honing good practices are almost second nature. The Community Foundation of Greater Memphis has been an indelible part of our philanthropic scene for decades, granting billions of dollars since its inception in 1969 and playing a major role in addressing issues unique to the Mid-South. Despite vast experience overseeing 1,200 grants and being a central hub for key philanthropic efforts, the well-oiled machine faced a new challenge with Covid-19. But the Community Foundation has made its name working creatively, always considering and adapting to the needs of its city. So when a public health crisis threatened so many, the Foundation was equipped to overcome this new obstacle in its ongoing journey to better Memphis.

Like many organizations in early 2020, the Community Foundation was blindsided when the pandemic hit. But there was no time to waste; people needed aid, and fast.

“We started the Covid-19 Regional Response Fund in March of 2020,” recalls Bob Fockler, the organization’s president. “And we did it at the request of the county and city government.” Many of the Community Foundation’s historical grants were very deliberate processes that followed a familiar template from inception to completion: Think a structured grant process that requires proposals, approvals, site visits, and ample time to ponder.

But with Covid changing the landscape quickly, the Community Foundation had to act just as fast. “We manage 1,200 grants here at the Community Foundation, but we didn’t have time to go through our usual procedures for the regional response fund,” says Fockler. “We had to set it up, and we started getting dollars immediately. And then we had a grant committee that was meeting every week with community advisors. So we were putting dollars out every week, and you had to be quick and you had to be very responsive. That shaped the way we did this. And it had to be that way. People were hungry, people needed shelter, people needed economic support. There was no way we could wait six weeks, let alone six months, to get that money out.”

So far, the fund has been a success. It started with zero dollars on day one, and to date has garnered around $14.9 million in funding, according to Aerial Ozuzu, the Foundation’s director of grants and initiatives. That money was dispersed via targeted funding, or sent towards operational support for specific nonprofit activities.

“We’ve supported everyone from United Housing Inc. with their mortgage assistance relief program, to River City Capital, to grants for small business owners,” says Ozuzu. “We’re currently in the middle of grant rounds for organizations, and really we’ve just had to be flexible and responsive to the needs of the different organizations in the community at large.”

For Ozuzu, joining the Community Foundation two years ago was an easy decision. Having worked her entire career in the nonprofit world, she was inspired by the charitable nature of Memphis and wanted to work with the people behind the donations. “Memphis is one of the most philanthropic cities in the world,” she says. “I wanted to get to know what drives people to give, to support these organizations. We see plenty of volunteers, but then there are those who maybe don’t have the capacity to do things that are hands-on, but still have that giving spirit and provide financial support.”

During normal times, Ozuzu’s main task is to oversee discretionary grantmaking, solicit applications for a few of the different grant programs the Foundation sponsors, and be the liaison for nonprofits and donors, making sure the former know about money and grants that they could be eligible for. But despite the unprecedented shake-up, Ozuzu says the pandemic has allowed the Community Foundation to look inward and see how it can better itself and find new ways to serve Memphis.

“It put us in a good position to start evaluating some of the ways we do things and how we can be more adaptive to the needs of the community. The Covid fund allowed us to be more involved with many of the organizations we serve, and in turn we learned more about the capacity of these organizations to serve the city. So it’s about being flexible, and those are qualities that we’ll keep at the forefront moving forward.”

But thinking outside the box isn’t a practice that the Community Foundation just recently adopted. Violin virtuoso and former Memphis Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Joy Brown Wiener remembers being asked to join the Community Foundation’s board of governors as its first female member in 1975. And while there’s a temptation to think that at the time such a decision may have ruffled a few feathers, that wasn’t the reaction.

“I’d been really interested in philanthropy, and had spent a lot of time doing work with organizations like the Junior League of Memphis and the Mid-South,” recalls Wiener. “So I’d gotten to know [businessman and philanthropist] Abe Plough, and he asked me to join the board of governors.”

But serving as the Foundation’s first female board member was no issue for Wiener; after all, she is someone who started booking professional violin performances at the age of ten. “I’ve always been someone who’s going to speak up if I feel something needs to be said. But from day one, they welcomed me with open arms, wouldn’t you know it,” she says. “They didn’t make me feel like an oddball, or anything like that. They made me feel welcome and shared their platform with me so I could contribute. While I’m not active on the board anymore, the Foundation still sends me updates on the work they’re doing. Even now, they really put in an effort to keep people involved, make them feel like they’re a part of the process.”

Wiener is impressed with the organization’s Give365 program. Even if someone interested in philanthropy doesn’t have deep pockets, they are still able to offer a dollar a day throughout the year to contribute to change in Memphis in their own way. “It lets a lot of people participate in the work, both as a donor and a volunteer,” she says. All the Give365 donors pool their money together and vote to decide on a grant recipient. Donors can also elect members to be on the initiative’s advisory team every two years.

Having all of Memphis represented is a key pillar of the Community Foundation’s work, according to Fockler. With Memphis facing unique issues, that makes it all the more important to have a focused communal response to address it.

“We’ve seen a lot of money go towards rethinking K-12 education over the last ten years, which was something people wanted to address,” says Fockler. “While a lot of that money went towards classrooms, very little went towards after-school and summer programming. So over the past couple of years we’ve allocated more money to what we call beyond the classroom initiatives. So we were able to be really targeted in our work, with our own funds.”

With that in mind, Fockler and the Community Foundation are placing a great emphasis on the recently established Forever Funds. The idea is to have a permanent endowment, with dollars invested by committees with members drawn from throughout the Mid-South. “Our personal resources before Covid were about a million dollars per year,” he says, “which sounds like a lot of money, until you try to solve a problem.” With a greater permanent source of funds for the Foundation, Fockler hopes to be able to continue making targeted advances towards hyperlocal issues.

“The advantages are twofold,” he continues. “During normal times, we’ll be able to invest in where the gaps are. And then looking at the pandemic and how we’ve had to adapt, these funds would give us immediate dollars to spend during a crisis. We wouldn’t have to wait to create relief. Our current two grant committees, comprising 15 people each, draw on members from every corner of Memphis. We’d do the same for the Forever Funds.”

Most of the donor focus over the past two years has been on Covid relief funding, but Fockler and Ozuzu say that donation habits are starting to trend back towards more traditional organizations. But the emergence of the Delta variant reaffirmed their commitment to keeping the Covid relief fund front and center, anticipating the unexpected.

And the Foundation’s ability to adapt quickly was crucial with the establishment of the recent Collierville Survivors Fund, after a gunman opened fire in a Collierville Kroger in late September. “The needs are strong and immediate with disaster relief, so you have to be nimble,” says Fockler. “And for the Survivors Fund, we had to find an outside partner since we’re restricted by federal guidelines; we can’t make contributions to individuals. But we had to be fast, thoughtful, quick; people want to respond with their generosity. But for something like this, unfortunately in today’s world, it’s not long before something else comes up.”

But no matter the cause, people are always willing to give, as evidenced by the Foundation receiving $216.6 million in gifts from donors in FY 2021. And Memphis is always touted as one of the most philanthropic cities in the country.

So what makes people here so charitably inclined? “I’ve thought about that a lot,” says Fockler. “I think we’re big enough to have world-class issues, but small enough that donors think they have a meaningful impact on these problems. And a lot of the issues we have are close to the surface. We may not be very cosmopolitan; many people here grew up in Memphis and are rooted in the community.”

“Memphis truly is a community,” agrees Ozuzu. “No matter where you go, you see somebody you know, and wanting to help I’d say is in our nature. Even if you’re not giving to your neighbor, it’s maybe a neighbor’s neighbor, or a family member. And it’s all in service of making sure that someone is able to pursue a better quality of life. So I think we’re in a really good position to keep addressing the issues right here at home. And we’ve been thinking about it a lot recently, and it’s what we’ll continue to think about: How we can position ourselves to keep living up to the name of the Community Foundation.”