Giving Compass' Take:

•  The Nathan Cummings Foundation shares its experience adding non-family member board members to the family foundation and the benefits of more diverse perspectives. 

• What are the challenges with including non-family members at a family foundation? 

• Read about the best practices for board diversity in family foundations from BoardSource. 

It’s no secret that family foundations must navigate family dynamics. But while it may seem counterintuitive, opening up governance structures and decision-making processes to non-family members can actually make it easier to do so. Barr Foundation’s Jim Canales and Barbara Hostetter talked about their own experiences with sharing governance power in an earlier piece in this series. Here’s how it has worked for us at the Nathan Cummings Foundation.

Our first staff president, Charlie Halpern, and board chair, Nathan’s daughter Beatrice “Buddy” Cummings Mayer, decided to open up the board to non-family members, believing it would bring in governance and subject matter expertise, and help fill in important knowledge gaps. The addition of non-family trustees also helped reshape board dynamics.

These experts and community leaders have also helped bridge the gaps between generations, sometimes serving as mentors to the younger generation as they have taken on more board leadership.  Independent trustees help the board integrate next-gen family members smoothly so that we can keep forward momentum.

We wanted to ensure that we were aligning the foundation’s practice to its values of democracy, social justice, fairness, diversity, and community—all rooted in the Jewish tradition. So early on, we looked beyond the racial and ethnic profile that reflected our family make up when considering independent trustees.

There was strong agreement among the family to intentionally seek out diverse perspectives and expand our network for board candidates, and we hired search firms to get results. Our board has since included women, people of color, Native Americans, people who identify as LGBTQ, and other under-represented perspectives in philanthropic boardrooms. These individuals offer deep knowledge of and experience with the communities and issues we focus on.

Read the full article about sharing power at a family foundation by Ruth Cummings and Sharon Alpert at Stanford Social Innovation Review.