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Where There’s a Will…
Ginsberg's back - from Washington to a surprising new New Haven role
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Business New Haven
9/18/2000
By: BNH
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William W. Ginsberg returns to New Have after six and a half years in the Clinton administration - three years at the Commerce Department as assistant secretary and chief of staff, and the last three and a half years at the Federal Housing Finance Board. The New York native first arrived in New Haven in 1984, where at age 30 he became development administrator under Mayor Biagio DiLieto. He followed that with a stint as president of the Science Park Development Corp. Now Ginsberg is back in the City of Elms as head of the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven Inc. He spoke to BNH during his first official day on the job: September 11.
Why did you leave the Clinton administration?
The work I did as assistant secretary and chief of staff at the Commerce Department and as managing director of the finance board focused on community economic development - which was the work I was doing in New Haven when I left for Washington - and community banking, which is the work I've done at the Finance Board. That the is work I've devoted the bulk of my career to: how communities come together, how they move forward economically, what kind of institutions does it take to make that happen. I went to Washington to work in the Clinton administration, and the Clinton administration is ending. The kinds of jobs that I had in this administration have a kind of natural life to them anyway, because they tie to the political rhythms of an administration. For me, it was a good time to leave, and I left of my own volition. I also felt that coming back to New Haven made a lot of sense. The kind of work that I just described is best done at a local level.
What kind of role in economic development ought the foundation to be playing that it heretofore has not?
The process of a community moving forward is like any institution. A community needs to come together to focus on what it wants to do, set goals, allocate resources - to focus. In a business institution, that's relatively easy to do, because it's clear who's in charge, it's hierarchical. In an amorphous community like greater New Haven, it's a more difficult thing to do. The key is to set some goals that have legitimacy, that grow out of the community's own needs, desires and aspirations - to raise resources, obviously - but to focus the community on the achievement of the goals so that you have charitable institutions and business institutions and educational institutions all working toward the same set of goals. I view the Community Foundation as an indispensable institution in that process, because it has an ability because, of its resources and independence, has a unique role to play in the process of helping the community define its needs, aspirations, focus its resources and move forward.
Where does the foundation's money come from, primarily?
It's from donors, mostly individuals. Historically, many have been bequests. That's the traditional community foundation model.
Does a healthy economy mean good times for the foundation, since potential givers have more cash?
It is a good time for foundations in general today. There has been fantastic growth in overall philanthropic resources - you have things like the [Bill and Melinda] Gates Foundation emerging that impact the numbers significantly. It's also been a very good time for community foundations - both in terms of raising money on an ongoing basis and in terms of the growth of endowments' invested resources because of the equity prices, etc.
How large is the foundation's endowment today, and how much does it disburse in a typical year?
The approximate endowment is $235 million, which is a very large community foundation, particularly given the population of the area that [our] foundation serves. It disburses about $8 million to $9 million a year.
Where does that disbursement number come from?
There are certain requirements of foundations in general driven by the tax code: You have to disburse a certain percentage of your assets in order to maintain your tax status. But largely the arithmetic is a function of board policy about balancing off current expenditures to help this community meet its needs vs. the long-term goal of protecting and building the endowment for the future.
Is there a disbursement formula guiding what proportion goes to health, to education, to the arts, etc.?
Yes - there are broad principles regarding how much of the foundation's budget is going to be expended and then there's a detailed budget that the staff develops and the board approves which lays out within the focal areas of education and youth and health and regionalism/economic development that sets goals for spending and allocates resources to those goals.
How subjective are funding decisions?
I think they are subjective. But those subjective judgments are made by the board and the staff - but with input from lots of others, too. Certainly donors have input into that. There are lots of donor-advised funds; it would be typical for a gift to be [earmarked] for scholarships for low-income children from the Valley [for example]. So there's a lot of guidance on the instruments that create the funds. It's very important for an institution like this for the community to have a real sense of what the foundation is trying to do and [that decisions about] how it goes about spending its money [are] legitimate.
You have identified yourself as a 'regionalist.' The region of greater New Haven is doing very well, economically. The city of New Haven is doing poorly, relative to its neighbors. How does that reality influence where the foundation invests resources?
Because the needs tend to be in the city to a disproportionate degree, the natural flow of how these dollars - which, after all, exist to meet needs - would be where the needs are. I would certainly expect that - just as a disproportionate amount of the needs are here - a disproportionate amount of the resources would go to inner-city New Haven or other parts of the region that are particularly needy.
Public education: New Haven's Mastery Test scores are among the lowest in the state. Does that mean the foundation needs to do more in the education arena?
I think the foundation has to be active on education issues in the city. I know this has been a priority of the mayor's. The kind of role this foundation can play is to be supportive with resources and efforts to try to grapple with those problems - obviously in partnership with the school system.
There are those who criticize the foundation for playing favorites. For example, in recent years the New Haven Symphony was terribly mismanaged financially - yet its board could always count on a bailout from the foundation. What kind of message does that send, and how do you plan to address it?
Your question raises two issues: One goes back to the question of legitimacy. What I would say to someone who questioned a grant we had made over and over again over the years would be, 'This is a legitimate priority of the community. Here's why we think that; here's the process we go through to understand that.' The second issue is management: Is the money being well spent? Is the grantee using the funds in [responsible] ways? If the answer to that is no, then that's an issue that needs to get dealt with. Using the foundation's money to perpetuate problems is not what we're about.
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