Cover Story

“Brahms.” The name pirouettes from her tongue and dances about her office. “I loved the way Brahms feels under your fingers…very pianistic.” As if cued on an imaginary piano to accompany her recollection, Anna Faith Jones’ fingers gently meter the sweeping rhythms of a piece not performed in years, yet still so familiar.

Jones scoffs at naysayers who berate funding the arts as way too esoteric if the goal is eliminating poverty. She recalls standing at the feet of the Lincoln Memorial once as a young girl. In the twilight, she listened transfixed as famed African-American contralto Marian Anderson sang under the watchful eye of Abraham Lincoln, unifying the immense audience transcending all boundaries of gender, age and ethnicity. Each note soared high above the walls of racism erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution who had barred her performance in Constitution Hall. Yes, Jones knows firsthand that the arts minister to a “poverty of spirit,” and through philanthropy, help to improve the human condition.

Back in her 24th floor corner office, Jones’ own recital upstages an otherwise impressive view of downtown Boston’s cobblestone walks, the Charles River and MIT. Its simple props—pictures of loved ones and a few, carefully placed pieces of art—symbolize what means most to this daughter of heritage. Jones’ father, the preacher son of a former slave, became the first African-American president of Howard University. He admonished her to give back. Jones’ mother taught her the importance of family in more ways than one—daring to wield quietly its economic leverage to command respect.

Jones melded those influences with a lifelong love of the arts and turned them into aspirations to teach music history that faith quietly channeled into the nurturing of her own family, a stint as a professional real estate broker, and later, into part-time directorship of a foundation, which culminated in a full-time presidency.

These days, faith is a topic on many lips—but perhaps nowhere hotter than the home of the Boston Foundation itself. There, the talk is about a particularly remarkable faith—that of Anna Faith Jones, this year’s Distinguished Grantmaker. Jones’ faith, as president and CEO, brought the conservative, 80-something foundation’s governance structure to the state attorney general’s office in the name of stewardship and accountability. That same faith increased the foundation’s asset base ten-fold over the course of a quarter century. Last year alone, the Boston Foundation distributed $53 million, making it New England’s largest grantmaker.

Jones’ tabletop concerto comes to a rest as peaceful as the gaze of her newest grandchild, smiling in its sweet repose as her screensaver. This seems a swan song of sorts, as Jones has announced plans to leave the foundation at the end of June.

The Bible says in the book of James that faith—without works—is dead. Perhaps what Anna Faith Jones has shown philanthropy is that works—without faith—are dead.

What challenges have you faced in this sector that has been historically white and male-dominated?
I never really focused on challenges in that way. The job was the challenge. I never thought about being a woman in a man’s world, or an African American in a white world. I was brought up to always do my best job every day.

Have you seen a change in the face of management in philanthropy?
There have been some remarkable breakthroughs. I think community foundations, because they are in and of the community, are much more aware of the benefit of considering a diverse pool when looking for top executives.

What would you say to those that scoff at funding the arts in relation to eliminating poverty?
They have a very narrow definition of the arts—that the arts are very elite and only for the trained and those who have money. Art is a unique form of human expression that enables us, in a very personal way, to express who we are and what’s important to us. Art expresses those feelings of joy and sadness that only human beings have. Art expresses the kind of values that really nurture our spirit as human beings.

What makes the arts such a pressing concern today?
The arts build bridges of understanding between people by providing a non-threatening way for us to get to know one another. Society is becoming increasingly technological and moving away from values that are human. Art takes us back to those values.

People who work in urban settings will tell you the arts are hugely important, particularly for people whose lives, for the most part, have been joyless. Talk to someone like Bill Strickland in Pittsburgh, who brings young people in and introduces them to themselves. Through the arts they affirm who they are and their basic value in the culture in which they’ve been raised. Then he says, look, you can do anything. The arts are central to a healthy community, and there ought to be broad access to participation in them.

You’ve seen the foundation’s asset base increase ten-fold during your tenure. What’s the advantage of having the time to grow versus sudden growth?
When the growth is gradual, you can anticipate the change. Once we really began to grow, and we reached, say, $500 million, I asked what would be the next objective that we would be working toward—$1 billion?

Well, how do you become a $1 billion organization? You equip yourself to become a $1 billion organization. You can’t keep running to catch up with growth. So, not knowing beforehand whether it would work, I decided to try and make the case to the board that if we wanted to grow, we had to invest in strengthening and expanding our infrastructure. That was just common sense. So, I hired a consultant to research and bring in all the data on comparable salaries—because if you want good people you have to pay them. Then, with board approval, I changed the organizational structure and hired three top vice presidents. I could not have gone on to lift the trust and change our investment management without Jim Pitts, our vice president for finance and administration. I knew what I wanted to do, but he carried it out.

What inspired you to want to change the foundation’s governance structure from trust to corporate form?
It was a matter of coming into the twentieth century. To be a viable and successful organization, you have to be contemporary. So we took steps to manage the foundation’s money in a contemporary way. We put managing the money out to bid, so we now have eight top Boston-based investment managers, and a diversified portfolio that has about 14 different kinds of holdings in it. Removing the trust also gave the board the ability to appoint its own directors and become more representative of the community.

What would you say about the competition community foundations are facing from financial services agencies like Fidelity?  
Competition isn’t bad. Fidelity only did what any smart financial institution would do—push the envelope. Fidelity forced us to look at ourselves. And when we focused on what we were doing, we learned that what we provide for the donor is a philanthropic relationship, a personal interaction connecting them with the community. When donors go to places like Fidelity, what they get is money management—they’re money managers. But that also made us push to be better stewards of the money. And if you look at it, there is no other way that community foundations would or could have brought in all of this money without that challenge.

When we are talking among ourselves, community foundations will admit that the charitable gift funds have been good for us. Fidelity has marketed that fund far and wide, and there’s no way community foundations could have gotten the same message out about what we do. So we say we’re just like the gift fund—but we have much more to offer donors—the professional support, information services, and whatever else they need to mold a philanthropic program that meets their interests in this community.

Last year nearly half of the foundation’s grants were donor advised. Has this caused a shift in focus from programs to asset development?
We have built our reputation on our ability to identify and support programs in the community, but we still have to raise the money. I look on donor-advised funds as the first outreach to new donors and constituents for the foundation. I tend to think of it as a circle with the heart of the foundation in the middle, and you make contact with new donors through donor-advised funds. Many of them, through planned- giving vehicles, will go on to leave permanent money to the foundation.

Are there donor-advised grants the foundation won’t make, or is it whatever the donor wants?
Donors may recommend or suggest. When the donor gives us money, legally, it belongs to the foundation. We have certain values that are rooted in and espoused by our instruments of governance and we apply them across the board. We do not make grants to organizations that actively discriminate against any group, because you can’t build a community unless there’s tolerance and the ability for everyone to participate.

How do you view the foundation’s role as a convener?
We have always been aware of the foundation’s role in civic leadership. This has been good, because it has shifted the emphasis from money to empowering people in the community to identify their own issues and come together around them. The biggest threat to philanthropy is as grantmakers to focus only on the money, rather than helping people. The basic definition of philanthropy emphasizes the ability of people to care for one another. Money has no power where there are not caring people to do something with it.

In that vein, would you describe educating society about foundations as being the most important issue facing the Council on Foundations?
Yes. The Council, too, has also always emphasized the fact that the sector needed to be self-policing, and see to it that our practices were based on certain kinds of basic, fundamental principles, working toward becoming the best that we can be.

There is a strong sense, especially as the issue of taxes comes up again, that 1969 was not the first time Congress focused on this sector—and it’s not going to be the last. In this context, it becomes clearer and clearer that there’s no full understanding of the role of philanthropy in America, and that foundations can be perceived as nothing more than tax shelters.

Is that why accountability is so important?
Yes. If you want to be completely private about your giving, then you should do so as an individual, and that accountability will be between you and the IRS. But if you set up an organization that takes advantage of our tax laws to shelter your money for charitable purposes, then you have stepped into the public arena and you need to be accountable. You can no longer say this is just my business.

But it’s bigger than the money. We really need to get back to the heart and soul of what philanthropy is all about—foundations using money to bring people together around a need, and to forge partnerships that will strengthen our democratic society.

How have you dealt with the perception of foundation arrogance—institutionally and personally?
When people thank me personally for a grant, I will say something like, ‘If the Boston Foundation gave you a grant, you earned it.’ It’s not my money.

Institutionally, something we did in the persistent poverty program, for example, was to go into the community and ask people about their condition, how they felt about themselves. No one had ever actually asked the people what their concerns were, and listened. We did that, very much on purpose. And here in this office, the protocol is that whenever a grantee comes in for a conference, the program officer goes out into the reception area and greets the person and brings them back to his or her office—not a support staff person, not the receptionist saying, ‘Go through here and turn left and go down, etc.’ And when you finish, you take the person back out into the hall. That kind of respect for people has always been a part of who we are. We also make our conference rooms open to nonprofits to use at no cost, which makes a statement to the community.

But how do you go about making grantees feel that they’re not supplicants?
We look at our conference with a grantee as an opportunity not only to ask about their project, but also to ask them about their perspective on what’s happening out there in the community, in their neighborhood. They’re the experts. Their eyes and ears are out there. So you can learn a lot, when you set up the conference as a two-way street.

Is that training part of an orientation for program officers when they come to the foundation?
It’s not only orientation. It has to be ongoing training.

Part of doing this work in philanthropy is growing personally. This is a contact sport. You must learn something about how you deal with people and how you treat them. Money is only a vehicle for bringing people together around a need.

Has anything interesting been done in terms of planning for your successor since you announced your intention to leave the foundation?
Yes. The board set up a special committee and a national search is underway.

I went about this as a plan of institutional development that was keyed into our growth. When I brought in the vice presidents, I said it was because I didn’t believe an organization that was getting this large and complex could run with only one person knowing how everything fit together.

Having also gone through a strategic planning process, this place could probably run for a year without executive leadership. And now there are three people who not only know all about their critical areas, but also know how they fit into a whole pattern.

An organization this large should staff itself in such a way that the board can also look within for new leadership.

Looking back, what hard lessons have you learned?
Communities continually grow and change, as will their needs. Therefore, you are never finished with the job.

What do you plan to do after leaving the foundation—is this really goodbye?
First, I’m going to take some time off, and at this point I don’t envision another big organizational job.

My family is expanding again. I have three grandsons, and one on the way. So, as the fourth grandchild comes in June, I want time to spend with them. Children are wonderful, and they develop so fast. It makes me remember what it was like seeing the world through the eyes of my kids as they grew up. And there’s nothing more important at this time in my life.