Results List
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A Foundation Confronts Its Final Priorities
In 2014, preparing for its final burst of expansive, long-vision grants, Atlantic drew its core programs to a close, downsized its staff, ramped up a final communications strategy, and became, in all respects, an institution in the final stages of work. The Atlantic Philanthropies, the largest…
Author: Tony Proscio, Duke University Center for Strategic Philanthropy & Civil Society
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Scanning the Skyline: Lessons From 30 Years of Capital Grantmaking
Buildings have a special allure for philanthropy—their mass, their unambiguous reality, their durability, their promise of sheltering great transformative enterprise—that few other achievements can match. They also conjure a cloud of distinctive risks: the possibility of inadequate maintenance, financial drain, premature obsolescence, the danger that…
Author: Tony Proscio, Duke University Center for Strategic Philanthropy & Civil Society
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Mapping a Finite Highway
Almost a decade ago, Joel Fleishman, director of the Center for Strategic Philanthropy, got a call from a foundation that had recently decided to expend its endowment and complete its grantmaking within 12-15 years. The foundation was asking for his help in collecting and synthesizing…
Author: Tony Proscio, Duke University Center for Strategic Philanthropy & Civil Society
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Climbing toward the finish line
The newest installment in our ongoing chronicle tells about the year The Atlantic Philanthropies defined how it was going to end, and what its final goals would be. Several weeks ago, Chris Oechsli, The Atlantic Philanthropies’ CEO, posted an online essay whose headline declared that Atlantic is…
Author: Tony Proscio, Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society
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Why Should Your Foundation Continue to Exist?
Bruce S. Trachtenberg, Advisor, Communications Network By Bruce S. Trachtenberg The idea of time-limiting foundations seems to be gaining more traction. As counterpoint, a recent Philanthropy New York program asked: “What Is the Case for Foundations Living in Perpetuity?” PNY gathered a group of three…
Author: Smart Assets
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More On Time, Value, and Time Limits
By Tony Proscio A while ago, we collected some thoughts from careful observers of philanthropy — people who either make decisions about how to use charitable wealth or advise those who do — on the value of time-limited giving. Specifically, we asked: Under what conditions…
Author: Intrepid Philanthropist
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The Atlantic Philanthropies and Its Archives: Limited Life, Enduring Legacy
By Joanne Volpe Florino Editors’ Note: Joanne Volpe Florino continues HistPhil’s forum on archives and knowledge management with a post detailing the archival strategy of The Atlantic Philanthropies. The Carl A. Kroch Library at Cornell, the underground library where the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections is…
Author: HistPhil
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Retaining an Engaged Staff to the End
This post by Maria Pignataro Nielsen, Atlantic’s Chief Human Resources Officer, is part of GrantCraft’s “Making Change by Spending Down” series. Although Atlantic is often referred to as a “spend down” foundation, we think of ourselves as a limited life foundation, with our final years…
Author: GrantCraft
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Atlantic’s Culminating Grants: Cultivating Change
In his latest instalment in a series chronicling Atlantic’s limited life, Tony Proscio at the Duke University Center for Strategic Philanthropy & Civil Society conjures the image of a harvest to describe our work in Atlantic’s final years. The metaphor is apt. We want to…
Author: Christopher G. Oechsli, President and CEO, The Atlantic Philanthropies
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Philanthropy Without End
Illustration: Flickr user Martin Feemster By Tony Proscio The idea of limiting the lifetime of a foundation has become so popular (at least in the financial media, and evidently among many newer philanthropists) that the foundation trade group Philanthropy New York recently felt it worthwhile to hold…
Author: The Intrepid Philanthropist
