VERO BEACH — The Indian River Community Foundation successfully re-launched the once popular Foundation Forum this year with sessions focusing on Children and Youth: The New Face of Homelessness and The Indian River Lagoon: Concern or Crisis?
Paul Becker, a board member of the Indian River Community Foundation, chairs The Foundation Forum. He describes it as an opportunity for board members and employees of private foundations to learn about critical local needs while becoming better acquainted with other representatives from grantmaking organizations.
The Foundation Forum is open to any person who is a trustee or board member of a private foundation, which conservative estimates show about 200 such people living at least seasonally in Indian River County.
The concept of the Foundation Forum was developed in 1996 as the brainchild of Ellie McCabe, Chairman of the The Robert F. and Eleonora W. McCabe Foundation.
From 1996 through 2004, McCabe convened four meetings each season for foundation trustees. McCabe turned her focus elsewhere in 2005, and the Foundation Forum remained dormant until Becker revived it this year through the Indian River Community Foundation.
Becker stressed that the Foundation Forum is not a fundraiser, but rather a convening of private foundation trustees around a specific community issue for meaningful discussion.
“It could be that a representative has no interest in giving to the specific issue being discussed, but the conversation will spark ideas that can be translated to other causes.
The most important result is the opportunity to learn alongside other trustees to further philanthropic knowledge and engagement,” Becker explained.
Becker said the Foundation Forum advisory committee is already working on plans for next season.
The advisory committee includes Marcia Blackburn, RJ MacMillan, Ellie McCabe, Dick Stark, and Georgia Welles.
For more information or to be added to the invitation list for next year’s session, please contact Kerry Bartlett at (772) 492-1407 or email Kerry@IRCommunityFoundation.com.
