Posted on December 30, 2005

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People in the News

It was a year of catastrophic disasters and eye-opening generosity. Ultimately, however, philanthropy is about people, and 2005 was no exception, as half a dozen long-time foundation leaders announced their retirements, a number of high-profile organizations either lost executives or welcomed new ones, and a handful of influential figures passed from the scene.

Organizations gaining new leadership in 2005 included the Freddie Mac Foundation, which announced the appointment of Ralph Boyd, Jr., as board chair in February; the NAACP, which named former Verizon executive Bruce S. Gordon as president and CEO; Habitat for Humanity, which named Jonathan T. M. Reckford as CEO, replacing ousted Habitat founder Millard Fuller; the Getty Museum, which announced the appointment of Michael Brand, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, as its new director; and CARE USA, which announced the appointment of Dr. Helene Gayle, a senior executive with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as its new president and CEO.

The year also was noteworthy for the number of major foundation presidents and CEOs who announced their retirements. The list included Michael Bailin of the New York City-based Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, who stepped down in June and was replaced by Nancy Roob, the foundation's chief operating officer; John E. Marshall III of the Kresge Foundation, who will be replaced, when he retires next June, by former McKnight Foundation president Richard "Rip" Rapson; Hodding Carter III, who retired in July and was replaced by Miami Herald publisher Alberto Ibargüen; William G. Bowen, who was succeeded as president of the New York City-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation by University of Chicago president Don Michael Randal; William C. Richardson, president of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, who will be succeeded when he retires at year's end by Sterling Speirn, former president of the Peninsula Community Foundation; and Sir John Templeton, who named his son, Jack, a retired surgeon, to replace him as president of the Templeton Foundation. The Council on Foundations also got a new president, selecting former congressman Steve Gunderson to succeed Dorothy Ridings, who had led the organization since 1996.

As the year came to a close, two titans of the high-tech industry were recognized for their still-young but illustrious careers as philanthropists: Intel Corp. co-founder Gordon Moore, who, with his wife Betty, unseated Bill and Melinda Gates from their usual place atop BusinessWeek's list of America's most generous philanthropists; and the Gateses themselves, who, along with U2 frontman Bono, were honored as Time magazine's 'Persons of the Year' for "being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for making mercy smarter and hope strategic, and then daring the rest of us to follow."

Finally, the year marked the passing of a number of influential figures in the field, including Amnesty International founder Peter Benenson, who died in February at the age of 83; Barbara Denning Finberg, a 38-year veteran of the Carnegie Corporation of New York who was credited with focusing the nation's attention on the need for an early childhood education policy; John T. Walton, the middle of Sam Walton's three sons and an heir to the Wal-Mart fortune; Enid Annenberg Haupt, the publishing heiress whose multi-million-dollar philanthropy benefited nature lovers, museum-goers, and cancer patients; Waldemar "Wally" Nielsen, who wrote lengthy critical analyses of American philanthropy, including The Big Foundations (1972) and The Golden Donors (1985); and management guru Peter Drucker, who died in November at the age of 95 and whose admiration for nonprofit organizations knew no bounds and led him to create the Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Innovation (now the Leader to Leader Institute).