Nonprofits
The National Crime Prevention Council, after being under the leadership of the recently retired Jack Calhoun for more than 20 years, has hired Gen. Alfonso Lenhardt as its new CEO. The retired two-star general, who developed responses to the anthrax attack as the U.S. Senate’s sergeant at arms, also served as chief operating officer of the Washington, D.C.-based Council on Foundations from 1997 to 2001. Lenhardt serves on the boards of the Boy Scouts of America and the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance, which monitors charities. Contact: (202) 466-6272, mailto:www.ncpc.org.
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Eckerd Youth Alternatives, a Clearwater, Fla.-based nonprofit that provides 42 community and residential programs to troubled youth in seven states, hired two new executives in May. Susan Kasper was named chief financial officer, a position that had not been occupied at Eckerd for a year. Kasper comes to Eckerd from former juice magnate Lykes Bros. Inc., where she held the same post.
John Collins, a veteran of university development work (most recently at the University of South Florida) will serve as the group’s first vice president of development and communications. Eckerd recently mourned the passing of its founder, Jack Eckerd. (See Passages, below.) Contact: (727) 461-2990, www.eckerd.org.
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The D.C.-based Center for Community Change (CCC) is slowly building a standing panel of pop culture icons, dubbed the Creative Collective, to tap for the center’s various conferences and media campaigns. Among those who have committed: rappers Chuck D and Boots Riley, actor Ossie Davis, “Monster’s Ball” director Lee Daniels, and Edwidge Danticat, author of “Breath, Eyes, Memory,” a compelling novel about a Haitian youth growing up in inner-city America.
The panel should help raise the visibility of efforts by CCC Communications Director Leila McDowell, who has balanced informed lobbying with a flair for the unexpected since she arrived in 2001. One of her first stunts was to march into the offices of The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank, with some 700 protesters, many carrying old pairs of shoes, to challenge scholar and welfare reform architect Robert Rector to “walk in the shoes” of poor people, whom she said he was victimizing.
Senior Communications Specialist Germonique Jones says she hopes to get panel members involved in CCC’s plan for a voter mobilization partnership with radio disc jockeys around the country. Contact: (202) 339-9331, mailto:www.communitychange.org.
Sharon Osborne will replace the retiring Patti Lyons next year as CEO of the Consuelo Foundation, a Honolulu-based nonprofit that operates or supports programs in Hawaii and the Philippines that work with children at risk of abuse. Osborne is president of the Children’s Home Society, one of Washington state’s largest nonprofit youth agencies, where she has worked since 1984. Lyons, who took over the foundation when its namesake, Consuelo Zobel Aguilar, was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1990, will serve as a board member and plans to write a book documenting the foundation’s efforts. Contact: (808) 532-3939, mailto:www.consuelo.org.
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2003 seemed to be another year of course changes for the D.C.-based Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), headed by Marian Wright Edelman, with scores of policy veterans leaving, some of them involuntarily.
No surprise, then, that the communicators of the old mission have moved on. Former spokesman Toby Chaudhuri, a 27-year-old prodigy in the Democrat’s media machine, now heads media strategy for the Campaign for America’s Future. While mounting an attack on U.S. Education Secretary Roderick Paige for his comments equating teachers’ unions to terrorist organizations, Chaudhuri lured away former CDF senior program assistant Andrea Miller from his former boss. Contact: Campaign (202) 955-5606, mailto:www.ourfuture.org; CDF (202) 628-8787, ww.childrensdefense.org.
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The Network for Good, a three-year-old nonprofit dedicated to harnessing the Internet as a medium for attracting donors and volunteers, hired Bill Strathmann as CEO. He comes to the Vienna, Va.-based organization, whose name sounds like a legion of comic-book heroes, from a senior management position with international consulting firm BearingPoint. The Network was founded as a partnership of AOL Time Warner Foundation, Cisco Systems, and Yahoo! Ken Weber, who has been serving as president and CEO, will remain president. (See story about the network and Internet fund raising for nonprofits, this month.) Contact: (703) 265-2771, mailto:www.networkforgood.org.
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The Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA), a coalition of communications industry professionals, hired Bill McDonough to head the department at the center of its mission: consumer marketing. McDonough will serve as the primary liaison between the New York-based agency and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).
The nonprofit, with an annual budget of $10 million, works with advertising agencies to develop commercials for ONDCP’s National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. ONDCP then contracts with other firms to buy the ad space for those commercials.
Speaking of ONDCP: Dari Davis, a longtime senior staff member in the prevention division of the demand reduction office, resigned in May. Contact: ONDCP (202) 395-6618, mailto:www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov; PDFA (212) 922-1560, mailto:www.drugfreeamerica.org.
Foundations
The New York-based William T. Grant Foundation (assets: $240 million) named New York University professor Edward Seidman its senior vice president of programs. Seidman coordinated the community psychology program at NYU, and before that was dean of the research, demonstration and policy division at the Bank Street College of Education, a highly regarded New York teachers’ school. The Grant Foundation invests in research and “evidence-based” programs that seek to develop the field of youth work. Contact: (212) 752-0071, www.wtgrantfoundation.org.
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Mary Lou Makepeace, former mayor of Colorado Springs, Colo., is now executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado, which awards grants to serve gay youth and families. The fund is a local arm of the national grant maker Gill Foundation (assets: $225 million), which recently hired noted New York gay activist Rodger McFarlane to replace Claudia French as executive director. Gill also hired Linda Bush, CEO of a company in Denver that screens rental applicants, to serve as chief operating officer. Contact: (303) 292-4455, mailto:www.gillfoundation.org.
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The longtime president of the Ms. Foundation for Women (assets: $30.5 million), sponsors of the popular Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, will resign in July. Marie Wilson, who has headed the foundation for some 20 years, will keep an emeritus title and focus on placing more women in political leadership positions. Taking over for Wilson is Executive Director Sara Gould, whose current position will be eliminated. Contact: (212) 742-2300, mailto:www.ms.foundation.org.
Luba Lynch, executive director of the White Plains, N.Y.-based A.L. Mailman Family Foundation (assets: $20.2 million), was honored in April as the first recipient of the Fred Rogers Leadership Award in Philanthropy for Children, Youth and Families. Grantmakers for Children, Youth and Families created the award, named after the inimitable Mr. Rogers. While most people who win awards have to settle for the standard trophy-style tribute, the Rogers award captures the spirit of the man’s legacy with a glass-encased replica of every child’s favorite trolley car, the one that led to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Contact: (914) 683-8089, mailto:www.mailman.org.
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Muffin Clark has stepped down as executive director of the DeLay Foundation, started by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) in 1986 to serve at-risk youth. The foundation’s tax forms indicate that the group raised money through two big-ticket golf tournaments and gave money for a few projects each year. The contact address is a registered post office box.
Clark has taken the executive director position at Bo’s Place, a Houston nonprofit that helps grieving children. Contact: DeLay Foundation (713) 953-5042, mailto:www.delayfoundation.org; Bo’s Place (713) 942-8339, mailto:www.bosplace.org.
Feds
Roy Bernardi, President Bush’s nominee to be assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development, had his Senate confirmation hearing in late April. Bernardi, former mayor of Syracuse, N.Y., is assistant secretary of community planning and development for HUD. He’s moving up to fill the vacancy created by the elevation of Alphonso Jackson to HUD secretary. Although he has not been officially confirmed, HUD officials called the confirmation hearing a “respectful love fest.” Contact: (202) 708-1112, mailto:www.hud.gov.
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Having served in Congress for 12 years, Rep. Jack Quinn (R-N.Y.) announced that he will retire after his term ends in November. The former high school English teacher was among the four original sponsors of the Younger Americans Act. “He was a really good supporter of after-school programs,” says Phillip Lovell, Campfire USA policy director. “His moderate voice will be missed.”
The act, which has been introduced in years past as a stand-alone bill and as part of the No Child Left Behind Act, would authorize more than $5 billion to create and fund the nation’s first national youth policy. Because of the bulky price tag, says Lovell, advocates for the legislation are likely to wait out the current “not ripe” political climate and perhaps introduce it again as a stand-alone bill. Contact: (202) 225-3306, mailto:www.house.gov/quinn.
States
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush tapped Anthony Schembri to inherit the mess that is the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. The agency has been under fire since 17-year-old Omar Paisley died in a Miami detention facility in June 2003 after going three days without medical attention after his appendix burst. Schembri is a former New York City corrections boss whose vivacious personality was the basis for the 1990s police television drama, “The Commish.” He is also a member of the Florida Corrections Commission.
Crime
In 1990, Oregon Gov. Neil Goldschmidt announced that he would not seek a second term. Friends and staff of the hard-charging politician were surprised at the decision, but chalked it up to his impending divorce.
Now, it is clear that the decision was made partly out of fear. Goldschmidt admitted to Portland’s Oregonian last month that in the 1970s, as mayor of Portland, he carried on an affair with a 14-year-old girl. He was 35. He confessed that the affair, and certainly his fear of its becoming public, had weighed on his decision not to run.
Goldschmidt is a member of the board at Drug Strategies, a Washington, D.C.-based research group dedicated to developing approaches to the nation’s drug problems. Contact: Drug Strategies (202) 289-9070, mailto:www.drugstrategies.org.
Passages
Jack Eckerd, 91, founder of the Eckerd’s drugstore chain and noted youth work philanthropist. After developing his self-service stores in the 1950s, Eckerd and his wife in 1968 founded Eckerd Youth Alternatives (EYA), which provides therapeutic educational programs to troubled youth. The agency provides services at 42 locations in seven states.
Evelyn Murray, 98, former U.S. Labor Department official and organizer of the 1960 White House Conference on Youth and Children. Murray served as the Labor Department’s director of employment services for youth from 1956 to 1964, before becoming chief of the youth services branch. The Jackson, Miss., native retired in 1975.
