Operationalizing Trust at Our Family Foundation
Table of contents
Garvin Deters
PHILANTHROPIC FOCUS
Supporting innovative education with equity in underserved communities in Louisville, Asheville, and Denver.
HOW IT STARTED
Teaching middle- and high-school students.
HOW IT’S GOING
Using nonprofit and for-profit strategies for community development initiatives that educate, mentor and empower youth, while supporting local grassroots organizations’ infrastructure development.
Background and Evolution
Giving back has always been important in our family. I have two siblings and all three of us became teachers. To further our understanding of philanthropy from a best-in-class perspective, we worked closely with a consultant about ten years ago to update our work, and then my sister Laura Lee and I went through Forward Global’s program in 2017.
Teaching always felt like a way to make a meaningful impact, by sharing in the joy of helping students realize what they’re capable of. Guiding students through the learning process leads to skill and confidence acquisition that serves a lifetime. After teaching for ten years, I moved into a leadership role in our family foundation, Sutherland Foundation. Our mission is to support excellent, innovative education for underserved youth, ages 4 – 18.
The transition out of the classroom was challenging because it felt like giving up direct contact with students. It’s hard to recreate the bonds that flourish over the length of a school year. On the other hand, I was clear on the difference our foundation makes by supporting innovative educators fostering safe environments that inspire students to strive for excellence. We believe education unlocks opportunity, and stepping outside the classroom to support the outstanding, collective work of others is ultimately where I figured we might have the biggest impact.
How does your experience as a teacher inform your philanthropic work?
There’s magic in how really good educators create connections. When a connection with a student is established, it demonstrates safety, trust, understanding, and belief in the student’s abilities. As we assess organizations and get to know them, there’s a combination of taking into account what we can observe, and how they’re able to communicate their vision and direction. And then, of course, the evidence really lies in the students being served. That is the north star.
What was an important learning you had through Forward Global?
I loved how Forward Global felt like a university for philanthropy. For me, what made a huge difference was learning how to be intentional about our opportunities and directions, learning about strengthening the internal structure of the foundation, and having really thoughtful, meaningful conversations around being the best that we can be. The “baby in the river” analogy for going upstream always resonated in terms of thinking through what our main work is, where it’s been historically, what our achievements are, and then continuously evaluating whether we’re making the best allocation decisions, or if we should be looking somewhere else.
Laura Lee and I went to Nepal for our Forward Global Journey. One of the aspects I enjoyed most was visiting a local organization that we had read about beforehand, comparing what I noticed with what I expected, and then having conversations about what we observed afterwards. The discussions we had in the evening during the debrief were incredibly insightful and interesting. I particularly enjoyed hearing others’ viewpoints, which often altered my own—sometimes quite significantly. Thinking through how “upstream” the organizations were, where their place in the ecosystem was, and asking if that was the best use of resources was an incredibly helpful learning process to experience firsthand.
Any grantee success stories? Challenges?
A grantee of ours, the Ivy Plus Academy, helps high-achieving minority, first-generation, and low-income students find their best fit for college. It’s an incredible program started by an extraordinarily talented and experienced English teacher, Beau Baker, in a Louisville, KY public high school. Beau noticed his students “undermatching” their college placement and set out to do something about it. And has he ever! Ivy Plus Academy now works with students throughout their high school years to prepare them to gain acceptance to, and succeed at, the nation’s premier colleges and universities. The academy received seed funding from their district partners to expand the program into another school. However, the work is slow going due to administrative and bureaucratic roadblocks. While it’s thriving at the original school, it seems it’ll take longer than hoped to expand the program into other schools in the district.
What do you consider one of your family foundation leadership wins?
I view my role in terms of aiming for outstanding stewardship. My goal is to do the best for the foundation while I serve in this capacity.
My siblings and I participated in the Trust-Based Family Philanthropy Learning & Action Lab. Some trust-based philanthropy (TBP) concepts can be unfamiliar and potentially scary or threatening when thinking through traditional fiscal responsibilities and applications and communicating updates. Having my siblings join for that workshop helped spark more meaningful and nuanced discussion of TBP and how it impacts our work at our next board meeting. As a group, we were able to effectively communicate the risks and advantages to the rest of the board.
That was a favorite moment because we all participated and shared, from each of our unique perspectives, how putting TBP principles into action could benefit our grantees and their student populations. My style of leadership is not top-down; I hope to present ideas and suggestions as objectively as possible and allow board members the opportunity to make their own decisions and ask questions as necessary. It was really heartwarming to have my siblings be part of leading those conversations and sharing in that work.
What resonated about trust-based philanthropy?
At our core, we value building constructive relationships. We previously worked with a consultant who had a very formal style and focused on strict requirements, which made things difficult for grantees. Trust-based philanthropy has helped us focus on fair expectations and better support for grantees without unnecessary requirements. It actually puts more responsibility on us, the grantors, to understand the needs of those we work with. It helps bring authenticity and honesty into our relationships, even though it will never be completely equitable, just based on the fact that we’re providing money. But ideally, if we’re interested in being more supportive beyond the actual check, and interested in both the people we’re working with and the people that they serve, it’s about trying to understand how to make those processes and relationships better.
How do you grapple with the major criticisms of philanthropy?
Philanthropy is deeply personal. And it’s a loaded term. Since leaving the classroom, I’m learning to deal with constructive criticism that it’s not real work, it’s something you do on the weekends or in your spare time, and that it doesn’t require much time or investment.
Since stepping into a leadership role with our foundation, it’s been a work in progress, but also an amazing learning journey. Showing up with humility, being aware that you’re not the expert, and listening is important. For me, the best part about philanthropy is getting to work with and support incredibly smart, fascinating, and dedicated community leaders who have big ideas and do amazing work helping young people find something bigger and better within themselves.
Our world isn’t equitable and I wish that systems functioned better. I’m hopeful that they’ll continue improving, but there are real gaps, many of which are widening. Our foundation can’t solve everything, but we hope to put dollars to work in a way that supports greater exposure where it’s needed, generates interest, and ultimately creates stronger, healthier communities.
What’s your experience of the Forward Global community?
One of the cool parts about Forward Global has been taking philanthropy—which can be a loaded term—and making a community of like-minded people around it. I don’t have a peer group that uses the word “philanthropy” outside of Forward Global. It’s a taboo subject on some level. It isn’t really, but it just never comes up. Having this community that talks about the power of giving removes some of the mystique. Trying to explain what I do to people is sometimes overwhelming or awkward. Forward Global has been awesome in providing a community to thoughtfully consider ideas and to learn from each other’s experiences. And then, of course, learning from the Forward Global staff—the professionals—how to improve doing what we do. I’ve learned that having a North Star helps you think through your path, and get back on track if and when you’re off course. Overall, it has been an enriching experience.
What does the future hold for you and your philanthropy?
We’ve worked with consultants for the past year, which has enabled us to have guided conversations. My hopes for the next 5-10 years are to see our current plan through. We’re looking at ways to classify and develop relationships with a trust-based lens, and there’s always a fear of screwing things up—placing “too much trust” or not asking the right questions, for example—and how that might affect board members who weren’t as supportive of the trust-based approach. Overall, we’re in an exciting place to start new relationships and monitor them in a more thoughtful, articulated, well considered way than before.
We’re rethinking how we do multi-year gifts by putting language around what kinds of organizations our grantees are, classifying grant types, and potentially establishing a budget ahead of time. We’re starting to have those conversations with organizations as we get to know them. We’ve just begun to work with about seven new, incredible organizations in Louisville with whom we’ll try this new approach and monitor to see if it’s helping achieve our mutual goals.
Can you share more about that?
During a trip to Louisville, I learned about an initiative through the Community Foundation of Louisville called the Racial Justice Cohort (RJC), which grew in response to the police killings of George Floyd and Louisville’s own Breonna Taylor in 2020. The RJC comprises 12 Black-led organizations who received $40,000 unrestricted grants and technical assistance, renewable for three years. After researching the Cohort, I contacted the organizations that were in alignment with our mission. I had no prior relationships or mutual contacts, I just called and emailed out of the blue and offered our financial support. It took a number of efforts for them to believe that the offer was real and not a scam!
After establishing initial rapport, I invited them to make 5-minute overview presentations at our board meeting over breakfast. I kicked it off and with a presentation of our organization following the same script and timeframe and then turned it over. Seven organizations attended, presented, and then collectively we all participated in an incredible, organic round table. Along with the board, my siblings’ kids joined us, so we ranged in age from 10 to 80. We had the loveliest, most authentic exchange of ideas on education, the needs of the community, and how different organizations were already supporting each other.
The community leaders who attended are incredibly special people. With three generations of our family represented, it ended up being a special forum that included the young people. The conversations were heartfelt and everyone appreciated the cross-pollination of ideas.
What would you say to someone who’s just starting their philanthropic journey?
Philanthropy can be scary, overwhelming, and daunting. It can feel like a burden. But on the other side of that, there is joy. Finding like-minded individuals, whether in the Forward Global community or locally, helps build trust and confidence to share ideas, learn, grow, and understand the honor and privilege it is to contribute beyond the check.
When you engage with people you respect, who give of themselves to help others, and whose work you find significant, the gift and the honor becomes supporting them and their impact. It’s about finding the right relationships and being part of a learning journey where doing good is the focus.
