November 2024: News and Notes from NCFP’s Members and Partners
NCFP strives to connect its members to resources, best practices, and to peer funders. Network News highlights updates from our members and partners, showcasing accomplishments, new approaches or giving areas, innovative ideas, and staff and board transitions, and more.
We encourage our members and parters to email us with news that you would like to be shared.
Cedarmere Foundation Closes Its Doors
The Cedarmere Foundation shares its history of supporting capacity-building support as it closes its doors this year, leaving behind a legacy of strong, thriving nonprofit leadership in the Puget Sound region, and a message to philanthropy to act now and prioritize capacity-building support.
Ishiyama Family and Ishiyama Foundation Awarded the Asian Pacific Fund’s Community Legacy Champion Award
The Asian Pacific Fund (APF) honored the Ishiyama Family and Ishiyama Foundation with its inaugural Community Legacy Champion. The award recognizes longstanding partners of APF whose sustained and significant contributions have left an indelible legacy as philanthropic leaders committed to advancing the well-being of the Bay Area Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander community and was accepted by Nelson Ishiyama.
Peter Kiewet Foundation Announces Plans to Sunset
The Omaha-based family foundation has announced its plans to sunset in 2030—the foundation’s 50-year anniversary. The foundation trustees say that Peter would remind them that this work was never theirs do do alone and that, “the real work has always been, and will continue to be, in the hands of the communities and organizations we’ve supported over the years and the next generation of philanthropic leaders.”
NCFP Fellow Dimple Abichandani Pens Op-Ed in the Chronicle
“Our task now is to keep going. As grant makers, we need to be as clear as possible about our values, the world we’re trying to build, and the transformational role that resources can play in accelerating progress. The dread, the fear, the grief of these times are all real. What’s also real is that as funders we have a set of consequential choices to make,” Abichandani says in a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy article.
Inside Philanthropy Names 40 Most Powerful Families
Inside Philanthropy highlights the power that family philanthropy has to make a significant impact in their communities and names dozens of NCFP member families.
NCFP Board Member Poses Questions for Philanthropy to Ask Post-Election
NCFP Board Member and Founder and CEO of Phila Engaged Giving Stephanie Ellis-Smith challenges philanthropy to remain curious. “So rather than share advice based on my own guesses about the next four years, I will share three questions that I believe all of us — advisers, donors, nonprofit leaders, fundraisers — should be asking now,” she says.
Wynn Rosser Appointed As Texas Higher Education Commissioner
Wynn Rosser, co-chair of NCFP’s Rural Funders Peer Network and president and CEO of the T.L.L. Temple Foundation was named the next Texas commissioner of higher education by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board earlier this month. Rosser will bring his extensive experience supporting rural communities in East Texas at the foundation to his new role. NCFP is grateful to Rosser for his active engagement and wishes him the best in his next venture.
McKnight Foundations Tests AI to Improve Internal Operations
The foundation adopted Microsoft Copilot. “Microsoft’s AI assistant is relieving the burden of lower-value tasks so staff can focus on building up their partners,” says the news release. McKnight staff members credit the program with increased efficiency, security, and accessible practices.