At the annual Indian River Community Foundation Cocktail Reception last February, board chairman Scott Alexander announced the institution of a new Chairman’s Nonprofit Leadership Award, stating that the honor of selecting its first recipient would be granted to Bob Puff in recognition of his superb leadership as board chairman, 2013 through 2015. Puff has selected Shannon Bowman, executive director of Childcare Resources of Indian River, as the inaugural recipient of the $2,500 grant, to be used for her own personal development.
“The role of the Community Foundation is to build a better community through donor-directed philanthropy. Certainly our view as an organization, and my view as an individual, is that leadership is important,” says Puff. “As we’ve looked out there around the community, I had always been impressed with Shannon personally. I think she certainly handles herself extremely well; she’s very gracious and warm in her manner.”
He explains that in addition to her formal education, which includes a master’s in philanthropy and development, Bowman is committed to both her own leadership development and that of others in the field. “She’s what they call a lifelong learner. Beyond that, though, we were aware that Childcare Resources is somewhat of a unique organization in our community.”
Childcare Resources provides quality, affordable early education to the children of low-income parents who live between 150 percent and 200 percent of the federal poverty level and are employed full time, attend school full time, or are engaged in a combination of the two.
“Their mission, and the way they go about it, is unique and appealing. Shannon led it through a successful capital campaign,” says Puff, referencing the $1.8 million Bright Futures Capital Campaign which enabled a move into a more spacious location. “I think that’s a sign of good, strong leadership; that they could declare the need and then go out and make it happen.”
Bowman says she was surprised and honored to be chosen, adding, “I’m so grateful because I would have never had discretionary funds to engage in an opportunity like this. I wanted to do something that would benefit my personal development but that would also help benefit the organization and the work we do here in the community.”
After thoughtful consideration, she has engaged a leadership coach and says, “We’re just getting started. We created some goals and she’s going to try to help me meet those goals and help me be a better leader for my organization. I’m really looking forward to it.”
In a similar vein, Childcare Resources was also one of three organizations awarded grants from the Community Foundation’s Unrestricted Fund toward programs aligned with the Moonshot Moment goal of 90 percent of third graders reading at grade level by 2018. The $68,675 grant they received is being applied to the professional development of educators of children 6 weeks to 5 years at childcare centers throughout the county.
“In the case of Childcare Resources, that was an interesting grant,” says Jeff Pickering, IRCF’s CEO. “We had funded them in the past to do preschool teacher development. We gave them the first grant a few years ago to do that, and then they’ve continued that practice. What they’ve learned over the last three or four years is that it’s one thing to give these seminars, but it’s another to be able to offer those teachers who show up some additional coaching. So we added some funding to be able to help them hire a coach.”
Childcare Resources now hosts four seminars a year, taught by nationwide experts, which draw up to 200 attendees. The full-time coach will assist teachers and directors to implement strategies learned and to develop and achieve their own goals.
“We open it up to any childcare center in Indian River County free of charge; the workshop and the coaching are funded by the grant,” says Bowman. “It’s really, really exciting that we are going to be able to do this and give these teachers the tools they need to inspire the children they’re working with every day. We want to have them ready for kindergarten and life – that’s our goal.”
Pickering said that in addition to programmatic grants, he would like to assist nonprofit organizations to improve their organizational capacity by building on their sustainability.
“The key to that is leadership,” says Pickering of the idea behind the Leadership award. “If there is a singular characteristic that makes us comfortable with making a discretionary grant, we’re actually making it a habit now to contemplate a leader. I think the types of people who are going to be selected from this effort are going to use it wisely.”
Pickering says Puff has an innate sense of recognizing the leadership qualities of others, adding, “so I thought it was kind of cool that this first award, we gave that privilege to him. We do make the connection between our mission of building a better community and this concept of funding leadership. Shannon’s leadership is good; hopefully with this grant it will become even better for herself and the organization.”
Puff, who with wife Nancy became a Vero Beach resident in 2007, was familiar with the community foundation donor-advised concept, having been a contributor to the substantially larger Greater Kansas City Community Foundation.
“I saw the Indian River Community Foundation at that point as a startup organization, and I had always been a sort of a small company guy. In my career I liked the challenge and the excitement of building something rather than joining something that was fully established. I saw in the community foundation a way for me to put into practice some of what I had learned in close to 40 years in the investment management business,” says Puff.
“To some degree I think the community foundation is trying to think about some unique ways that we can contribute to the improvement of the community. What better way to do that than to invest in the leadership of nonprofits that are worthy? There’s a uniqueness to this that we hope will be resonant and perhaps other organizations in time will find a way to fund leadership development for other worthy candidates in Indian River County. You’ll never find a classroom or a monument or anything relative to what we’re trying to do with this application, but we think it’s very important nonetheless.”