Rhode Island Foundation makes staffing changes

Philanthropy

January 3, 2007 6:03:29 PM

Although the Rhode Island Foundation rarely makes the 6 o’clock news, the financial powerhouse touches every corner of the state. It manages more than $509 million in endowments and makes $22 million in annual grants, to organizations ranging from the Rhode Island Tree Council and the Providence Gay Men’s Chorus to the American Red Cross and the Westerly Land Trust.

Given the foundation’s importance to the nonprofit community, it’s understandable that rumors spread wildly when it makes changes. The latest stories have had 16 of the foundation’s 37 staffers being shown the door.

The actual developments appear quite different. Rather than losing staff overall, the foundation is planning to grow, with a hiring push that could add a net of eight employees.

But as with most rumors, there are kernels of fact. An organizational shakeup has eliminated two high-level positions, whose occupants left last month. In an apparent coincidence, two other high-profile staffers also left.

One person whose position was eliminated is Karen Voci, senior vice president for program. Her biography on the foundation’s Web site says she arrived in 1990 after 20 years’ experience with national and regional foundations. The other is David Karoff, vice president for grantmaking. He joined in 1998 after helping found the Rhode Island Service Alliance and serving earlier as executive director of Stop Wasting Abandoned Property (SWAP). Neither could be reached for comment.

The other departing staffers are Claude Elliott, a program officer since 2000, focusing on the arts, who said he’s moving to the Washington, DC, area for personal reasons and to become deputy director of a dance group, Step Afrika; and Rick Schwartz, vice president of communications for 13 years, who is starting his own consulting business, Rick Schwartz/StraightTalk, providing public relations and strategic planning services to nonprofit organizations. (Disclosure: I’ve done one freelance writing job for the foundation.)

Still at work when this article was being reported, Schwartz answered some questions, but none he deemed involving “personnel” issues, such as why he or the others left.

Schwartz says a recent round of “strategic planning” produced a reorganization. Two departments have been combined: “Philanthropic Services,” which dealt with donors, and “Program,” which provided grants. Officials felt one department would better address the related tasks of attracting donors and funding community needs. Carol Golden, formerly chief operating officer, will head the new group.

Another change may be the creation of a statewide “nonprofit center,” to help nonprofits with fund-raising, staff development, and recruitment of board members.

As with most corporate and nonprofit strategic planning, exercises that consume months of meetings and mountains of flip charts, it may, or may never, be known whether these changes will: (a) help; (b) hurt; or (c) none of the above.

Presumably what won’t change is the Rhode Island Foundation’s actual work: providing funds to 1268 organizations; and stepping in with critical help during crises such as the Station nightclub disaster and the statewide shortage of affordable housing.