National Center for Family Philanthropy - December 2006, published with reprint permission.
Dana Marcus, Executive Director, Frieda C.Fox Family Foundation, CA

Alan Fox created the Frieda C. Fox Family Foundation in 1999, naming the philanthropy for his mother, a teacher, artist, and musician who was the first in her family to attend college. According to Dana Marcus, the foundation's first Executive Director hired in 2003, it began as something of "a hopeful experiment, to see if [philanthropy] was something that the family really wanted to do, long-term, as a family activity." Fox, president and founder of a real estate investment and property management company based in Los Angeles, didn't want to leave money in a bequest to a foundation with no track record, so he established the foundation as a pass-through public charity to engage the family in a sort of "trial run." Seven years later, four generations of the Fox family-from Fox's father and Frieda's husband Fred, now in his nineties, to Fox's young grandchildren-are all involved in this grand experiment designed to channel the Fox family's talents and energies for social good.

The experiment got rolling in 1999, and the foundation created the award-winning poetry magazine Rattle. Alan Fox, a poet himself, remains the editor-in-chief of the quarterly journal, and conducts published interviews with featured poets. Then, as the family thought about Frieda Fox's "love of learning, self-expression and compassion," they articulated the mission "to maximize the potential of children and youth." In 2003, the family gathered to collectively create a statement of family values, which can now be found on the foundation's website, and articulated its first funding initiative, to improve and expand learning environments for children.

The family culture of experimentation, creativity, and sharing ideas eventually led to a consideration about how the family could provide non-financial assistance, or specialized "technical assistance" to grantees in addition to providing grants.

Marcus tells the story of a fortuitous site visit in 2003 to an educational summer camp run by the Santa Clara Valley-based Diabetes Society. Marcus visited in the off-season, so camp staff presented a video and explained that the video was hopelessly outdated, and that some of the medical equipment and techniques used in the video aren't used anymore. Marcus returned to the family foundation and asked, "Is there anything anybody here can do?" Soon, the Fox board of directors was involved, networking a Los Angeles film company with Fox grantees to create short-subject documentaries for marketing and fundraising. The foundation then offered free web hosting of the videos, and help for grantees to create links on their websites to the films.

With feedback from grantees, the family learned that short multimedia presentations of three to five minutes would be better suited to nonprofit needs and viewer attention spans. Younger family members mentioned iPods, and persuaded the Board, "That's the way to go!" New Fox Family Foundation creations are produced by Rachel Fisher, who works part-time as the foundation's second staff person, as communications and media specialist. Videos are hosted on the web, downloadable to iPods or other portable media players, and viewable on any computer via the web.

The foundation is now on the cutting edge of using media technology to help grantees advance their missions and programs. Everything-from grantee needs assessments and video production to web design and hosting-is handled in-house by family, friends, staff and volunteers from the community. Marcus notes, "It really came about by just listening to what everyone in the family thought, listening to what they had to say, listening to ideas, and letting them experiment."

Younger family members, ages 8-17 are an important part of the family venture as well, taking part in the foundation's Junior Board. "If you get the kids involved in what they're interested in, instead of telling them what they have to do, you will get their participation and you will find that you get to places you never thought you'd be," says Marcus. The newly created next generation board is managed by the youngest board member, Ingrid Fox, who is twenty and attends Stanford University. Junior Board members can present requests for two $1,000 grants or one $2,000 grant every year. At their first meeting, Ingrid's nieces suggested they needed a team name and decided on "Little Foxies." The children take meeting notes, and send "professional" emails to each other about foundation business.

The Junior Board's first grant was made to Child Advocates of Silicon Valley. Marcus' daughter Katie learned on a site visit that the staff there needed educational age-appropriate toys for their young clients. The board approved her presentation to fund the purchase of specific developmental toys which she then packaged into "Developmental Kits" that can be checked out by advocates working with the agency's foster youth. "The kids got a good lesson on leveraged funds," Marcus notes, since these kits can be used and reused, weekly, for months and years to come.

"The primary goal [of the next generation board] is personal development," Marcus is quick to acknowledge. "The kids are very sensitive to what they have that others might not." Alan, and his wife, Daveen, especially, are pleased that the next generation board experience is providing an opportunity for the younger family members to discover and enhance their own talents, and to learn how they might use them to help others less fortunate.

For the Foxes, grantmaking is "fundamental and essential," but they strive to ask: what else can we do? Marcus hopes other foundations will be encouraged to be "service-providers as well as grantmakers" and ask, "What goes along with the money? What kind of expertise might you have right within your board, your family, and your staff? What else do you have to offer that might be as meaningful, or more meaningful, than a financial grant for a year?" With the foundation as a hub, it can provide low cost and effective expertise, where otherwise the grantee might have to hire expensive consultants or re-invent the wheel.

Despite the enormous rewards of engaged philanthropy, being a "service-provider" as well as a grantmaker is not without its challenges. Marcus remarks, "We're a very small family foundation. We can get stretched thin very quickly. One of our challenges is staying focused. It takes constant attention, [and] there's always challenges trying to arrange board meetings and getting everybody together."

It is for this reason that the foundation recently streamlined its grants process and is encouraging other small philanthropies to use technology to provide flexibility and focus when geography and sometimes frenetic family gatherings can scatter a philanthropy's energy. The Foxes have an online application process for grantees, for example. Information from grant applications goes into a database, and then to the family's members-only intranet called the "Fox's Den," where family members log on for all the latest foundation news, to share information and check an events calendar. The technology provides the family with both the flexibility and focus it needs. It's flexible because the information is available via the web, all the time. It provides focus because the information necessary to make the next pressing decision is all in one place.

Marcus mentions that many families can find even basic technology daunting, but shouldn't. Her advice: "Ask the next generation." She happily related, "The eighth-graders in the family can construct a basic website. Just ask - they can help."

Moreover, technology isn't all about iPods and ISPs. Take the foundation's logo, for instance. The logo on the family foundation's web site is brand-new, the creation of Kevin Fox, one of Frieda's grandchildren. Frieda Fox was known for her hand-drawn birthday and holiday cards, which Kevin collected from family and friends who had received these special tokens over the years, and, from this inspiration, drew the new logo. The cards themselves were then returned to their original recipients, but not before the logo work was displayed on the family intranet site for all to share opinions and comments. New technology can be daunting at times, but, when used with the people behind it in mind, it can also bring families closer together.

Alan Fox's experiment was as much a challenge to the Fox family as it was an opportunity: what would the family accomplish together if given the chance? What could the family accomplish if it was willing to do more? It is a challenge and an opportunity that the family has taken to heart. Marcus contends, "Every family has expertise. You just have to find out what it is. We have teachers, photographers, doctors, CPAs, real estate professionals, insurance experts, web developers, software engineers... Do an inventory of your family's talents and expertise and ask the family what they think. You'll be surprised what you'll hear."