Administration

Bradford K. Smith, President

Bradford K. Smith joined the Foundation Center as its president on October 1, 2008. Previously, Mr. Smith was president of the Oak Foundation in Geneva, Switzerland, a major family foundation with programs and grant activities in 41 countries in North America, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and South Asia. Prior to joining the Oak Foundation he developed and led the Ford Foundation's Peace and Social Justice Program, the foundation's largest program area, providing hundreds of millions of dollars during his ten-year tenure as vice president to organizations working on issues of human rights, international cooperation, governance, and civil society in the U.S. and around the world.

Mr. Smith has devoted his entire career to the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors. He first joined the Ford Foundation as a program officer in its Brazil office. Prior to that, he directed the Brazil program of the Inter-American Foundation. At the start of his career, he worked for the YMCA of the USA, both in Costa Rica and New York, where he became manager for world development at its Center for International Management Studies.

Mr. Smith holds an M.A. in economics from the New School for Social Research in New York and a B.A. in anthropology and ethnomusicology from the University of Michigan.

Research Institute

Lawrence T. McGill, Ph.D.

Lawrence T. McGill, Ph.D., is the Foundation Center’s senior vice president for research. Under Dr. McGill, the Center’s research department has significantly expanded its research capacity while continuing to produce definitive analyses of philanthropic sector trends.

Previously, Dr. McGill was director of research and planning for the Cultural Policy & the Arts National Data Archive (CPANDA) and deputy director of the Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies (CACPS).  His work with CPANDA involved identifying, evaluating, and analyzing key social science data sets for inclusion in the archive, on topics related to artists, arts audiences, arts organizations, and public support for the arts.  By the end of 2006, the archive held more than 200 such data sets. He served as director of research for the Freedom Forum from 1994 to 2001 and manager of news audience research for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) from 1989 to 1994. 

Dr. McGill has consulted on research projects with the Urban Institute; the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University; the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University; the Columbia University department of art and architectural history; the Institute of Fine Arts (NYU); the American Society of Newspaper Editors; and NBC News and CBS News, among other organizations.  He has taught in the departments of sociology and journalism at Northwestern University, where he received his Ph.D. in sociology in 1987.

Steven Lawrence

Steven Lawrence joined the Foundation Center’s research staff in 1991 and currently serves as senior director of research. He manages the publication of numerous annual and special project reports. He also develops and delivers public presentations and trainings on foundation trends; facilitates custom consulting services for external clients; and promotes Foundation Center research activities to the media, grantmakers, and the nonprofit community.

A seasoned researcher, writer, and communicator with 15 years of experience in the nonprofit sector, Mr. Lawrence is the principal author of the annual Foundation Growth and Giving Estimates and Foundation Yearbook reports and multiple special studies on the foundation field, such as California Foundations, Foundation Funding for Children’s Health, Update on Foundation Health Policy Grantmaking, and Giving in the Aftermath of the Gulf Coast Hurricanes: Update on the Foundation and Corporate Response. In addition, he is the editor and co-author of Social Justice Grantmaking: A Report on Foundation Trends.

Mr. Lawrence serves on the Giving USA advisory committee, the Grantmakers in the Arts research committee, and the board of directors of Funders for Lesbian and Gay Issues. He received a bachelor’s degree in communication arts from Cornell University and a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Chicago.