Nonprofits
David Doi is out as executive director of the Washington-based Coalition for Juvenile Justice (CJJ), a national resource provider on delinquency and juvenile justice issues. Taking over, at least in the interim, is Nancy Gannon Hornberger, CJJ’s deputy director since 1999.
CJJ’s national steering committee, chaired this year by Judge Paul Lawrence of New Hampshire’s Goffstown District Court, will conduct a national search to replace Doi, who officially resigned in January.
CJJ recently received a $400,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation to start the National Juvenile Justice Network, a collaboration that was cultivated early on by Tom McKenna and the Center for Research on Youth and Social Policy. So far it counts members in 24 states. The money is much needed, after CJJ’s federal funding fell from $669,000 in 2002 to $334,000 in 2003. Overseeing the network is Sarah Bryer, the former chief policy and planning officer at the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services. Contact: (202) 467-0864, www.juvjustice.org.
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After 15 years as president of the Jackson, Miss.-based Foundation for the Mid South (FMS), George Penick stepped down in February.
FMS is a regional development foundation serving Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi – three of the nation’s poorest states – leveraging millions of dollars from national funders and the private sector for development projects.
Penick, who was recruited to lead the foundation when it was founded in 1990 by former Mississippi Gov. William Winter (D), is one of the foremost experts on social grant making in the deep South. He leaves after preparing FMS for one its most important missions to date: helping nonprofits in the battered Gulf region get back to the business of serving people in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Penick’s work in the Gulf region is not done. He was tapped to head the RAND Corp.’s newly created RAND Gulf States Policy Institute, which plans to help the hurricane-ravaged states by providing high-quality analysis and data to lawmakers and the private sector.
The new leader at FMS, as of March 13: Ivye Allen, chief operating officer of MDC Inc., a Chapel Hill, N.C., nonprofit started in 1967 with the help of the Ford Foundation that works on equity and opportunity issues in the South. Allen is a native of Greenville, Miss. Contact: (601) 863-0483, www.fndmidsouth.org.
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Following former Executive Vice President Robbie Callaway out the door at Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s (BGCA) two-man Washington office is his senior assistant, Steve Salem, who becomes executive director of the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation.
The foundation provides baseball and softball programs for underprivileged children.
Callaway left in January, after 23 years at BGCA, to become CEO of Technology Investors Inc., which owns companies that are seeking cures for cancer.
BGCA and Ripken have some history together. Callaway, who serves on Ripken’s board, helped the foundation secure $3 million in earmarks in 2005. (Salem might be expected to do the same in fiscal 2006.) Violet Ripken, president of the foundation and widow of its namesake, helped BGCA design two clubs in Maryland’s Harford County that have become models for BGCA development in the state. Contact: Ripken (410) 823-0808, www.ripkenfoundation.org; BGCA (404) 487-5700, www.bgca.org.
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In another BGCA departure, Jennifer Sirangelo, vice president of resource development, has left to take the same position at the National 4-H Council in Chevy Chase, Md. The nonprofit council secures program funding for the nation’s nearly 90,000 4-H youth clubs. Sirangelo landed $13 million in multimillion-dollar corporate and foundation commitments at BGCA, and the bar will be raised at 4-H: Her primary focus will be the council’s goal of raising $25 million per year for its ambitious plan to provide more funding for 4-H youth development programs, most of them run through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Extension Service. Contact: (301) 961-2823, ww.fourhcouncil.edu .
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Liz Meitner is out as vice president of government affairs at the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) after 16 years there, six of them in her current position. She moves across Washington to Voices for America’s Children, a more general child advocacy group headed by Tamara Copeland that recently landed a $1.8 million grant from Atlantic Philanthropies.
Meitner will serve as Copeland’s vice president of policy and governmental affairs, a new position at Voices. The group is best known for its work on state policy, which is built on the strength of a large network of state advocates. “They’re now adding federal expertise to what they do,” Meitner says. There will be a particular focus on health care issues, such as the reauthorization of the State Child Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP) and Medicaid. Contact: CWLA (202) 638-2952, www.cwla.org; Voices (202) 289-0777, www.childadvocacy.org.
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The Washington-based Trust for America’s Health named Jeffrey Levi to replace the outgoing Shelley Hearne as executive director. The trust is a national nonprofit that seeks to make community efforts toward disease prevention a national priority.
Levi, an associate professor at George Washington University, is considered an expert on HIV policy, public health and healthcare finance. Before joining the university faculty in 1997, he served as deputy director in the White House Office of National AIDS Policy under President Clinton. Contact: (202) 530-2338, www.healthyamericans.org.
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On Feb. 14, President Bush swore in new members of the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation at the White House. Established in 2003 within the USA Freedom Corps, the council brings together leaders from business, entertainment, sports, education, government, nonprofits and the media to endorse volunteer service.
Included among the 21 council members recently appointed are Jean Case, president of the Case Foundation; Ray Chambers, philanthropist; Evern Cooper Epps, president of the UPS Foundation; Darrell Green, former National Football League star and founder of the Washington-based Darrell Green Youth Life Foundation; Michelle Nunn, executive director of the Atlanta-based Hands On Network; Wendy Spencer, director of Volunteer Florida; Roxanne Spillet, president of BGCA; Hope Taft, first lady of Ohio; and Charles Turlinski, president of Limited Stores. Each member will serve a term of two years on the council.
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The Panel on the Nonprofit Sector named four new members to replace panelists who have retired or left their jobs. Initiated by Independent Sector in 2004, the panel works to improve the general oversight of nonprofit organizations. It is made up of 24 leaders from a variety of public charities and private foundations.
The new panel members are Jonathan D. Fanton, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; former U.S. Rep. Steve Gunderson (R-Wis.), president and CEO of the Council on Foundations; Valerie S. Lies, president and CEO of the Donors Forum of Chicago; and William D. Novelli, chief executive officer of the AARP. They will replace Marsha Johnson Evans, former CEO of the American Red Cross; Kenneth L. Gladish, former national executive director of the YMCA of the USA; William C. Richardson, former CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation; and Dorothy S. Ridings, former CEO of the Council on Foundations.
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This month marks the launch of Daddy’s Spirit Moves Me Forward, a nonprofit that seeks to help youth whose fathers have died. Daddy’s Spirit is led by its founder and volunteer executive director, Ron Opher, the owner of a Pennsylvania law firm, who lost his father when he was 15. Opher’s goal is to start locally by providing recreational activities to youth and finding funding for grief counselors and college tuition, then develop satellite sites and ultimately open a national headquarters. Opher hopes to secure grants, but also seeks substantial donations from affluent people whose fathers passed away early. Contact: (610) 710-1477, www.daddysspirit.org.
Foundations
Debra Delgado, a senior associate at the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation (assets: $3 billion), left this month for New York to serve as the new program executive in charge of the disadvantaged youth division at Atlantic Philanthropies (assets: $4.3 billion). Delgado will be the grant maker’s primary liaison between management and all disadvantaged youth grantees, says Communications Director Kristen Durkin. Contact: Atlantic Philanthropies (212) 916-7300, www.atlanticphilanthropies.org; Casey Foundation (410) 547-6600, www.aecf.org.
States
Former Covenant House attorney Kevin Ryan took over last month as director of New Jersey’s Department of Human Services (DHS), and all eyes are watching to see if he can walk the walk after making a name for himself with talk. Ryan joins the administrative fray after serving as New Jersey’s child advocate, a position created for oversight under the state’s child welfare settlement with watchdog litigator Children’s Rights, based in New York. At his old post, Ryan became an outspoken critic of Jim Davy, his predecessor at DHS, who was shown the door by Gov. Jon Corzine. Contact: (609) 292-3703, www.state.nj.us/humanservices.
Crime
Vanessa Jackson was sentenced by a Camden, N.J., court to seven years in prison for child endangerment. Bruce Jackson, now 21 years old, testified on behalf of himself and his three brothers against his adoptive mother, saying she repeatedly denied the boys food and water. Bruce Jackson has gained 100 pounds and grown more than a foot since he and his brothers were removed from their home more than two years ago. The case made national headlines after a neighbor found them rummaging through garbage cans for food.
Passages
Eli Segal, 63, the first chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service and winner of the Presidential Citizens Medal for service to the nation. Segal was instrumental in creating the corporation, and later chaired the board of Boston-based City Year, the service organization that served as the model for AmeriCorps.
Helen Mary Williams, 86, a teacher and outdoorswoman who founded the popular Outward Bound Adventure program. Since the program’s launch in 1959 as the Junior Audubon Science Club, more than 45,000 youth have participated in Outward Bound’s nature trips and backpacking and whitewater rafting expeditions.
Norton Kiritz, 70, a former juvenile probation officer who founded the Grantsmanship Center. Kiritz is credited with streamlining and simplifying the grant-seeking process for the nonprofit sector. More than 100,000 nonprofit and public agency employees have received training from the Grantsmanship Center since it opened in 1972.
Stew Albert, 66, co-founder of the Youth International Party, popularly known as the Yippies. The group, which included 1960s luminaries Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, was known for such pranks as running a pig for president in 1968.
