By Grant Oliphant
President and CEO
The Pittsburgh Foundation

There’s a somewhat cynical assessment of America’s democratic election system that suggests we get the government we deserve. It speaks more to the all-too-frequent bouts of apathy on polling days than it does about the skills, vision and competency or otherwise of our election candidates.

But against the background of the on-going Federal investigation into Pittsburgh’s police operations, and the withdrawal of Luke Ravenstahl, the current incumbent, from our city’s mayoral elections, perhaps now is the time to be asking ourselves: What kind of future leadership do we want for our community?

History tells us that to envision the future, it helps to examine the past and Pittsburgh’s enormous advancements in recent years are unequivocal. Our city’s riverfronts are in the advanced stages of radical transformation, we are a recognized and respected leader of urban design and green building development, and we are at the forefront nationally of addressing urgent reform issues within our public school system.

We have a Cultural District that is second to none and less than two years ago, we were named America’s most liveable city. There is solid ground for optimism with an array of Downtown development projects on the drawing board and continued revitalization programs in our city neighborhoods.

But when the time comes to choose our next mayor – and The Pittsburgh Foundation is without fear or favor on whoever he or she may be – let us expect our new leader to embrace our city’s accomplishments while taking a bold and visionary stand in helping to shape Pittsburgh’s future.

Let us expect Pittsburgh’s civic leadership to nurture an atmosphere where business can thrive, where our hard-won reputation is advanced and where the vulnerable, the underprivileged and the disadvantaged are protected. Let us expect our leadership to work across all areas, including the corporate, nonprofit, academic and public sectors, in effective and inspiring partnerships that will foster innovation, entrepreneurship and creative solutions.

And let us elect a leader who will focus on Pittsburgh’s dominant critical issues, including those around race and poverty.

We should set the highest expectations for our next leader, regardless of who is elected Mayor in November. And regardless of who is elected, let us all pledge to play our part in striving to turn the big dreams we have for our community into reality.

 

Grant Oliphant, The Pittsburgh Foundation’s President and CEO, submitted the following written testimony calling for the existing charitable tax deduction to be safeguarded. His testimony was presented to a hearing on the Itemized Deduction for Charitable Contributions, House Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives in February, 2013

Congressman Camp, Ranking Member Levin, and other Committee members, thank you for this opportunity to provide written testimony on the deduction for charitable contributions as part of the Committee’s work on comprehensive tax reform.  Especially, I would like to recognize members Jim Gerlach, Mike Kelly, and Allyson Schwartz, from my home state of Pennsylvania.

For the past five years I have served as President and CEO of The Pittsburgh Foundation, the 13th largest community foundation in the United States.  During this time, we have experienced consistent growth in terms of annual fundraising and currently The Pittsburgh Foundation’s assets are approximately $900 million.  This growth would not have been possible without the generosity and commitment of our donors and in 2012 alone, our donors gave $12.7 million from their funds at the Foundation to support the vital work of over 1,100 nonprofit organizations throughout the Pittsburgh region.  This was in addition to the $44 million in grants provided by The Pittsburgh Foundation to strengthen charitable programs in our local community to improve health care services, safeguard and develop educational opportunities for our children, enhance the arts and cultural activities, and provide human services programs to support the region’s most vulnerable citizens as well as addressing key issues concerning the well-being of our environment and economic development.

I highlight this information at the start of my testimony because unlike private or corporate foundations, community foundations serve a unique and significant role in philanthropy, a role that would be endangered, I believe irrevocably, by any reduction or elimination of the charitable tax deduction, which by its very creation was designed to help facilitate community-based charitable giving that is so well represented by The Pittsburgh Foundation.

Beyond the technical definition as tax-exempt public charities, community foundations are a critical tool in promoting self-sufficiency among nonprofit organizations and our community’s overall health by providing opportunities for donors to participate in place-based initiatives through the creation of funds to meet current and potential needs in perpetuity.

Furthermore, many leading community foundations, like The Pittsburgh Foundation, take on a broader responsibility to encourage and inspire charitable giving among individuals and families in local communities, and to provide professional expertise, guidance and innovative resources that help them to do so.

The community foundation sector in the U.S., collectively with approximately $55.6 billion in assets, advances the philosophy of Pittsburgh’s own Andrew Carnegie, “a person of wealth is an agent of civilization, and philanthropy is a tool for improving civilization while at the same time substituting for radical reforms.”   This philosophy holds true today but will be seriously undermined should individuals feel that they are no longer encouraged to participate in true community-based philanthropy in seeking to make a positive impact in their communities.

Such a level of discouragement would result, I believe, if proposals are successful to amend the current code governing the charitable tax deduction.  Currently the code serves not only as an invaluable monetary incentive, but also as tangible evidence that philanthropic good work is recognized, valued and supported.

The charitable tax deduction is vitally important for community foundations to deliver their missions, especially with the growth of donor-advised funds that allow donors to be part of the philanthropic process in identifying critical community needs and recommending grantmaking support to charitable programs about which they are especially passionate. The Pittsburgh Foundation’s donors are resolute in their belief that by joining with a community foundation, they benefit greatly from a philanthropic partnership, which in turn benefits our local community.

An example of an initiative led by The Pittsburgh Foundation that leveraged individual giving on behalf of the community is the Neighbor-Aid Fund, which attracted support from many local funding partners as well as public donations.  In response to the 2008 economic crisis this emergency fund was designed to support nonprofit organizations striving to meet increased demand for essential human services, specifically, food, housing, transportation, and utilities.  Over $1 million was distributed to nonprofits providing critical “safety-net” services.

Another example of foundation work that can only be successful if our donors support it via giving is The Pittsburgh Foundation’s Day of Giving.  Launched in 2009, the on-line site’s giving events have so far raised more than $21 million for the region’s nonprofit organizations.  Last year alone, this effort raised a total of $8,540,345, an increase of over 31 percent compared with the previous year.  More importantly, 665 nonprofits received contributions from over 17,000 individual donations.

My foundation has an unwavering commitment to further developing its partnerships with donors as well as collaborative and innovative ventures with funding partners at local and national levels in order to maximize grantmaking impact and philanthropic leadership in our region. Together we have pioneered some major achievements in recent years, including reform initiatives within the Pittsburgh Public Schools, and the launch of the Pittsburgh Promise scholarship program, that provides four-year funding of up to $10,000 per year for city public school students pursuing college and university education.  Like Pittsburgh’s Day of Giving, the Pittsburgh Promise has become an acclaimed model for similar initiatives developed by other foundations across the United States.

Local, state and federal governments are fiscally constrained, severely limiting their ability to mount new programs and even sustain existing ones. This reality combined with increasing demand for assistance from our nonprofit provider community, is further witness that any action that would lead to a reduction or elimination of the charitable tax deduction would have a direct and negative impact on charities and the people they serve.

Thank you for this opportunity to share the important role donors play within the context of a community foundation and I ask that as important tax reform debates continue, the charitable tax deduction be preserved in order to safeguard an essential part of our infrastructure that serves to inspire and enable philanthropy and the great, essential work that it undertakes on behalf of us all.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette February 1, 2013 12:14 am

By Grant Oliphant

Wouldn’t we all love to respond to a disappointing performance review by changing the measuring tool to give us a better result? Many of us would joyfully toss the bathroom scale out the window in favor of one that knocked off 10 pounds. How about moving the end zone five yards closer so our favorite wide receiver could catch the game-winning throw?

Unfortunately, that’s not how things work — unless you are Pennsylvania Education Secretary Ron Tomalis and you are not pleased with the number of charter schools making Adequate Yearly Progress, the standard set by the No Child Left Behind Act.

In 2011, Mr. Tomalis allowed charter schools to use a more lenient measure to achieve AYP. The result was that 77 of the 156 charter schools in Pennsylvania whose students took the 2012 PSSA math and reading tests met the AYP standard.

Then the federal Department of Education intervened, ruling that Pennsylvania must use the same measure for charter schools as it did for all other public schools. Only 43 made AYP.

A Post-Gazette editorial published Jan. 27 (“Sub-par Options: Charter Schools as a Class Don’t Measure Up”) delivered a strongly worded rebuke to the Corbett administration for engaging in this kind of tomfoolery and thinking that Pennsylvanians were not paying attention.

I completely agree. What’s more, I am dismayed at the disservice that was perpetrated upon the charter school movement, which I believe serves an important role in contemporary public education.

In its original form, charters were designed to increase competition, foster innovation and give parents a choice when their children were not receiving an adequate education from traditional public schools. The promise of creating a vast network of laboratories for innovation remains largely unfulfilled, but much can be learned from experiments like Pittsburgh’s City Charter High School and the Environmental Charter School that might improve the quality of education for all Pennsylvania children. This will never happen, though, if decision-makers randomly re-invent the rules to justify their ideology.

I believe in charters as an idea, but our system of public education and the children it serves are not pawns to be manipulated in a political game. Charter schools should be held to the same standards as other public schools so we can tell, honestly, whether they are accomplishing the goals we hope they reach. Stacking the statistical deck in favor of charters tells us only that they have powerful political friends while obscuring the one thing we really need to know: Do they work?

Let’s not forget that charters can function without many of the organizational and operational constraints that apply to traditional public schools. They are not subject to collective bargaining agreements. Their infrastructure tends to be newer, simpler and less costly.

Charters also don’t share in the same commitment as public systems to educate each and every child who comes in the door regardless of his or her special needs. And yet they get compensated with public dollars as though their costs are the same as the school districts from which they siphon students and resources.

Those are sizeable advantages, and we need to know whether they really result in better educational outcomes. How we measure that should be determined neither by political doctrine nor by creating antipathy between charters and the public school systems they are intended to complement. What we need are clear heads and thoughtful analysis that will keep in sharp focus those who matter most — our children.

A consistent and reliable measure of student performance must be developed to assess the quality of education our children receive whether they attend charters or traditional public schools. These measures must allow us to determine where our schools are falling short and how we can improve them.

Troubled as our system of public education may sometimes be, it is a landmark achievement of American society. As we work to improve it, we should hold ourselves and our leaders accountable to be fair and truthful about the results of the reforms we explore. Our children and their families depend on this, as does the future prosperity, competitiveness and economic strength of our community and nation.

Grant Oliphant is president and CEO of The Pittsburgh Foundation (pittsburgh foundation.org). Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/no-cheating-on-charters-we-must-be-honest-about-the-performance-of-our-schools-672925/#ixzz2Jg5WhhNe

January 7, 2013

To members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly:

Pennsylvania’s community foundations are universally dedicated to improving the quality of life in communities around the Commonwealth.  Each year we distribute tens of millions of dollars in grants to organizations addressing a wide range of issues in our state.  By administering funds entrusted to us in exactly the way the donor specified, we have an enormous impact on the places where Pennsylvanians live and work.

Through that work, we collectively support a large number of organizations working to address the problems of rape, domestic violence and child abuse.  None of those organizations have resources adequate to the formidable task they undertake.

We write today, therefore, to ask that you support efforts to direct the expenditure of the fund created as a result of the settlement between Penn State and the NCAA solely within Pennsylvania.  This fund represents a unique opportunity to make a significant investment in the capacity of organizations working to prevent horrific violence—and to ease the suffering of those who experience that violence.

While we express no judgment as to the wisdom of the settlement, it is clear to us that funds generated by Penn State ought to be spent on behalf of Pennsylvanians.   If there was ever an institution built on the generosity and farsightedness of Pennsylvanians, including our donors, it is Penn State.  Penn State itself asserts that it is “an instrumentality of the state.”  As such, it is hard to understand how the residents of our state will benefit from having Pennsylvania’s funds spent in California or New Jersey.

There is clearly a need for these funds here in the Commonwealth.  Moreover these funds were clearly generated (whatever their purported source) for the benefit of the residents of the Commonwealth. Those two reasons should be sufficient for our legislature to assure that any funds generated by this settlement benefit the communities of our Commonwealth.

Grant Oliphant
President
The Pittsburgh Foundation

Kevin K. Murphy
President
Berks County Community Foundation

Michael Batchelor
President
The Erie Community Foundation

R. Andrew Swinney
President
The Philadelphia Foundation

Janice R. Black
President/CEO
The Foundation for Enhancing Communities

Charles M. Barber
President and CEO
The Luzerne Foundation

Eric Dewald
Chief Executive Officer
Central Susquehanna Community Foundation

Karen A. Simmons
President/CEO
Chester County Community Foundation

Al Jones
Executive Director
Centre County Community Foundation

Barbara B. Ernico
President
Adams County Foundation

Samuel Bressi
President & CEO
Lancaster County Community Foundation

Christian Maher
Executive Director
Crawford Heritage Community Foundation

Betsie Trew
President & CEO
Washington County Community Foundation

Trenton E. Moulin
Executive Director
Bridge Builders Community Foundations

Linda L. Goodwin
Executive Director
Bucks County Foundation

Larry Haynes
Executive Director
Community Foundation

Bettie B. Stammerjohn
Executive Director
Community Foundation of Greene County