In March, National Public Radio’s “Planet Money” aired a story about the financial crisis facing the City of Reading.   You can access the story (and listen to the full podcast) here.

While not a flattering portrait of the financial management of the city, it’s a fair characterization of what we’ve seen in over a decade of working to help the community understand the nature of Reading’s financial crisis.

Tags: city management | city finances | Berks County | Reading PA | NPR

At Berks County Community Foundation, we see more great ideas than we can fund or pursue.   So every now and again, I use this blog as a spot to share some of those “extra ideas” in case there’s someone out there who’d like to take one and run with it—or help us find the resources to do that.

This one struck me while sitting at a funeral a couple of years ago.   As I sat in the church, both the beauty of the architecture and the small size of the congregation struck me.

This isn’t a post about the decline of traditional churches and the rise of “mega-churches.”   That’s somebody else’s department.  It’s about architecture.

Many of our area’s older churches were built during an era of grand public spaces.  Some of them are simply breathtaking in their beauty.   And many of these churches are in danger of going away.  Dwindling congregations and shifting demographics conspire to threaten the existence of many of these sanctuaries.

We think there’s a cool project in putting together a team of photographers to capture the architectural heritage of these churches in a coffee table book while there’s still time.  It’s a unique opportunity to preserve a part of our community’s heritage.

We’ve never priced this out, but we could if somebody was interested. 

It’s just one of those ideas we may sometime get to….but probably won’t.  It would be a great opportunity for a philanthropist with an interest in historic preservation, religion and art to create a signature gift to the community.

Just an idea…………

Tags: photography | historical churches | Berks County | history | architecture | sanctuary | church | Reading PA

Any of our community partners who have received grants from Berks County Community Foundation can probably tell you that we’re big believers in the idea of term limits for boards of nonprofits.   The need for new ideas, and the difficulty of removing volunteers in a public benefit organization make this proven policy a valuable part of assuring good governance.  In fact, a few years ago—along with the United Way of Berks County and the Reading Musical Foundation we became among the first community foundations in the country to require most of our grantees to have term limits—an idea that has not always made us popular!

This month, the Community Foundation learned (though not for the first time) how hard this policy can sometimes be. 

On April 30, the terms of three long-time Community Foundation directors came to an end when Jerry Johnson, Mike Ehlerman and Sam McCullough came to an end.

Jerry Johnson first became involved with the Community Foundation around the time of his retirement as CFO of VF Corporation, one of our most important corporate donors.  Jerry has been active in so many ways, it’s hard to recount them all.  For a time, he lead the Berks County Conservancy, positioning it to be an important partner in our efforts to preserve the environmental assets of our community.

Not only has Jerry served on our board, he co-chaired the region’s first comprehensive economic development planning effort, the Initiative for a Competitive Greater Reading, sponsored by the Community Foundation.  Jerry has served as chair of both our investment committee and our audit committee and has generously consulted with our team on business planning.

It would be hard to find anybody more active in Berks County than Mike Ehlerman.   So many organizations from Alvernia University to  the Reading Public Museum have benefited from his leadership.   Separate from his role as a director of the Community Foundation, we worked closely with Mike when we ran and administered the capital campaign to restore and renovate the Sovereign Performing Arts Center.

Mike was involved at one time or another in virtually every major project the Community Foundation has undertaken.   He played a special role in the organization, serving as a kind of informal connection to dozens of other organizations, helping us create partnerships to benefit the community.

Both Mike and Jerry have left our board, but continue their service by serving as our elected representatives to the board of the Reading Eagle Company (the Hawley and Myrtle Quier Fund is the largest shareholder in the company).

An era ended when Sam McCullough left our board.  Sam was an original director of the Community Foundation.   While Sam joined the board in 1994, he left for about a year while serving as the Commonwealth’s Secretary of Community and Economic Development during the Ridge administration.  Sam, who is currently supporting economic development through his role at Griffin Financial Advisors will be most remembered for building one of the region’s greatest financial institutions, Meridian Bancorp.

Sam not only served as an original director, he served as chairman of the board during his second tenure on the board.  No one has served more time as a director of the Community Foundation than Sam.  His advice and counsel can only be described as “invaluable” and his support “unwavering.”

On a personal note, Sam, Jerry and Mike have been friends, mentors and trusted advisors to our team.   I was once asked why I studied for a Master’s  in Community Leadership rather than an MBA.   I told the reporter interviewing me that “if you’ve worked for Sam McCullough, Jerry Johnson and Mike Ehlerman….an MBA is redundant.”

Term limits are a good idea.  And they’re eminently survivable.  If you can lose Sam McCullough, Jerry Johnson and Mike Ehlerman and still survive.....you can lose any director and still survive.  Their service to the community and the Community Foundation has been invaluable.

We will miss them AND value their continued involvement.

Tags: nonprofit board | nonprofit board term limits | term limits | new ideas | fresh ideas | Berks County | saying goodbye to board members

All of us at the Community Foundation were saddened to learn of the death of Col. Harry D. Yoder this week.  Col. Yoder was a great friend of the Community Foundation and a great American hero.

Col. Yoder served with distinction on our board of directors for nine years.   He was the Chairman of the Board of Boyertown Area Community Trust when they joined Berks County Community Foundation and, until recently, served on our Boyertown Area Advisory Committee.

Col. Yoder's leadership role in the Community Foundation was critical to the success we’ve had.  His vision for the future played an integral role in guiding the Boyertown Area Community Trust to agreeing to merge with us.   This laid the groundwork for one of our longest and most successful community partnerships—our work in the Boyertown Area.  As a board member, he faithfully attended meetings, contributed valuable insights and was an unwavering ambassador in the community for our work.  The members of our team regularly looked to him for guidance on matters of interest to the Boyertown area and for the wisdom of a man who had served our community for so long.

On a personal level, he was a great friend and mentor.   It was truly an honor to know a man whose service to our nation was so distinguished and whose commitment to public service never diminished.

All of us join with his widow, Ardath and her family in mourning the loss of a great friend and leader.  Here is a link to the obituary: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/pottsmerc/obituary.aspx?n=harry-david-yoder&pid=150923205

Tags: hero | World War II | WWII | veteran | Berlin | air lift | civic leader | Berks County | bomber pilot

Last month, I had a chance to visit what might be America’s most devastated city, Detroit, Michigan.  Scarred by industrial abandonment, devastated by population loss, the situation looks grim for people living in Detroit.

At first glance, Detroit and Reading would look to have little in common.  The past decade saw Detroit’s population drop by 25% while Reading’s grew by 10%.   Detroit’s sheer size (about 140 square miles) makes Reading’s 10 square miles look like small potatoes.

Still, the challenges both face are instructive.   Reading, at least according to the folks at bizjournals, now ranks as America’s least wealth city. And its population growth may disguise the fact that it is becoming increasingly poorer.

At the core of the problem, both Detroit and Reading where built for purposes that no longer exist.   Their design, like those of many American cities was create to house a large number of people in close proximity to extremely labor-intensive manufacturing plants.   The challenge that both Detroit and Reading face today is that manufacturing simply doesn’t require anywhere near the number of employees they used to and, with greater mobility (thanks to the folks in Detroit), those employees don’t need to live nearby.

While Reading has grown recently, it’s important to note that the city’s population in the 1930s hovered around 120,000.

So both Reading and Detroit are faced with a similar set of circumstances—they’re much larger than they need to be to support the current level of commercial and residential activity that exists, or is likely to exist.

And while Detroit’s excess housing capacity grows, Reading’s unique position geographically means that our population grows with poor people seeking cheap housing.

The solution for both cities (and for cities that have already headed down this road like Youngstown, Ohio)  is to find ways to shrink themselves back to a size that’s more commensurate with real market demand.

In Reading’s case, this requires a couple of steps (beyond accepting the reality of the situation).  The city should develop a careful comprehensive plan to determine which housing areas can be turned back into natural preserve, essentially backing off the river, and coming back down from Neversink Mountain and Mt. Penn.    In some cases, reusing land through innovative urban agriculture strategies will make sense.  In still other cases (most obviously in the “Buttonwood Gateway” area) the city should demolish and bank land for future industrial use.

The flip side of this strategy is identifying where redevelopment to strengthen existing neighborhoods will make sense.  But the current pattern of scattered site redevelopment doesn’t make much sense—something they’ve already realized in Detroit.

Reading’s future need not be one of endless despair, but it will take leadership to accept the realities that the city faces—realities that have hit Detroit  in ways that are too hard to ignore.

Tags: Berks County | housing policy | depopulation | city planning | Reading PA | Detroit

Last month, the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities ( a mouthful, but a great organization of funders who work on community issues) had its annual conference in Detroit, which I was able to attend.

The first reaction of most readers is likely to be “Detroit in March…..lots of glamor there.”   But for funders working on the issues of America’s failing cities –like Reading- there is no better classroom than Detroit.  No American city has gone into such massive decline.   The scale of the place creates unimaginable challenges—and opportunities.

The city’s population has plummeted from a peak of around 2,000,000 people in the 1950s to about 713,000 today.   In fact, while we were there, our colleagues from Detroit were stunned by the release of U.S. Census data showing that the population had dropped by 25% just in the past decade.

The city’s physical size is enormous.   There are almost 140 square miles in Detroit’s landmass.   The shrinking population and enormous land mass results in a startling sense of abandonment.  Everywhere we looked buildings, homes, whole neighborhoods were abandoned.  The city estimates that there are 46 square miles of abandoned property within the City limits.

Even for a group of die-hard believers in the resilience of cities, the effect was shocking.  It is hard to imagine that any industry or group of industries would ever need the amount of empty floor space we saw in the downtown area.   Whole blocks of abandoned housing, punctuated occasionally by a single occupied house were more the norm than the exception as we drove around—it’s simply unfathomable that a city would repopulate these areas—and the conditions of the buildings made many of them past the point of no return.

We saw some amazing assets.   The Detroit Institute of Arts houses a world-class art collection.  Stunningly beautiful architecture throughout the community serves as a reminder of Detroit’s aspirations to mimic Paris in grandeur.    Some small arts colonies have popped up.  Pretty clearly, the folks at Wayne State University have taken their community role seriously and helped stabilize the neighborhood surrounding them.   

Led by our colleagues at the Kresge Foundation, there’s a major effort underway to create urban rail connections.  The city has an extraordinary mayor, Dave Bing, who has promoted the idea of downsizing Detroit by creating urban farms and abandoning neighborhoods that can’t be saved.  

You can’t help but feel that the task ahead of them is overwhelming.  In my next post—the future that Reading and Detroit have (or should have) in common.

Tags: DIA | Berks County | census | Reading PA | Detroit | failing cities

My wife and I, along with what my friend Senator David Argall called "half of Berks County" attended the swearing-in ceremony today of Senator Judy Schwank.   What actually looked like a couple of hundred of Judy's friends and family attended the ceremony in the majestic senate chamber, one of the most visually stunning legislative chambers in the world.

Today, like all swearing-in days was one of good feeling, good humor and bipartisanship.    And now the real work begins.  

Many of the challenges that we face in Berks County are the direct result of badly flawed state policies.    A fractured local government system, outdated education policy and a set of tax policies better suited to the nineteenth century than the twenty-first create a playing field that puts the Commonwealth at a tremendous economic disadvantage.

The Community Foundation has always counted Judy as a friend.  We worked closely with her during her term as County Commissioner on important issues like farmland preservation and efforts to regionalize service delivery to make it more rational.    And our team has spent thousands of hours with Judy looking for solutions to the economic collapse in the City of Reading.

During her time as President of 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania, we worked together to seek statewide solutions to the challenges facing all of Pennsylvania's communities.  Along with our colleagues at the William Penn Foundation and the Heinz  Endowments, we worked with Judy to encourage a coordinated philanthropic response to Pennsylvania's growing crisis of economic failure.

So, Judy's an old friend and it was great to be with her today to celebrate a great day for her and her family.   And now, as with the other members of our legislative delegation, we need to work together to find ways to encourage state policy that works better to position Pennsylvania, and Berks County for the future.

Tags: PA Capitol | Judy Schwank | Berks County | swearing in | ceremony | 10000 Friends

On May 6, Berks County Intermediate Unit will once again sponsor a conference for educators on developing and implementing Asian studies programs in local schools.   A copy of the registration brochure can be obtained here.

This conference is one of the key components of the Asian Studies collaborative funded by Berks County Community Foundation.   Our grant, along with a $1 million federal grant and generous support from the University of Pittsburgh Confucius Institute has allowed a majority of Berks County school districts to offer Chinese language and Asian studies to their students at very little cost to the taxpayer.

It promises to be a great conference (always is) and we encourage interested educators to attend.

Tags: Berks County | Chinese | China | language instruction

The feeder goes back today.

I’m amazed at how many people have asked me about the Cooper’s Hawk and the birds.   More people read this blog than I imagined.

The continued carnage outside our windows was upsetting to some of the team at the Community Foundation.   I reminded folks that we were still “feeding birds,” just going a little higher  up the food chain.   To be fair, looking out your window at blood and dead bird parts isn’t quite the same as enjoying the activity at the feeder.

Fortunately, we have access to experts.  The Community Foundation has a long relationship with Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, located right here in Berks County.  Hawk Mountain is the world’s premiere raptor sanctuary and everyone who works there is an expert on…well…hawks.

They suggested that we could take the  bird feeder off the roof for about a week.    Apparently, that’s enough time for the hawk to decide that this is no longer a fertile hunting ground and move on.

So we did.

Today, the birdfeeder goes back on the roof and another great story about our building enters the books (hopefully).

We’ll let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, we learned that the urban hawk story is happening other places.  Here’s a Philly.com story about hawks moving into Philadelphia!!

Tags: Berks County | migration | feed the birds | bird feeder

The bctv.org 11th Senatorial District debate will appear on BCTV at the following times:

Friday, 2/25, 4:00PM

Sunday, 2/27, 12 Noon

Tuesday, 3/1, 8:00AM

Wednesday, 3/9, 10:00PM

It will be archived on our website, www.bctv.org, as “11^th District Debate.”

Tags: PA 11th Senatorial debate | Berks County

On Thursday, February 24, Dr. Jodi Radosh of Alvernia University and I will co-host a BCTV candidates forum for the upcoming special election in the 11th Pennsylvania Senatorial District, the seat formerly held by the late Mike O'Pake.   The two candidates in the race are the Democratic nominee Judy Schwank and Republican nominee Larry Medaglia.

This forum will be taped and, unlike other formats, only Jodi and I will be responsible for developing the questions and there will be no "call-in" participation.

So here's your chance to suggest questions to us.   We'd love to know what you'd like to have asked.  We probably won't be able to get all of your suggestions into the one hour time format, but we'll do our best to make sure that this forum covers issues that are important to the residents of our community.

So if you have a suggested question, send me an email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or post it below.

Tags: ask the candidate | Berks County

The happy story of the birds on our building’s green roof has taken a sudden and violent turn.

As readers of this blog would know, our green roof has become home to a very successful bird-feeding operation.   Last week, we counted over fifty house finches and mourning doves.  

And then it happened.  On Tuesday during the storm our staff noticed the presence of a Cooper’s Hawk on the ledge of the roof.   And a pile of bloody feathers nearby.   Over the past week, we’ve seen the Cooper’s Hawk swoop in and kill several of the smaller birds.

The running joke in the office is that I’m going to make everyone watch “The Lion King” at the next staff meeting. While the Cooper’s Hawk is a majestic creature, I must say we all kind of miss the little birds, who have learned (apparently) to stay away from the feeder. 

More as it develops.

Tags: bird feeder | Berks County | hawk | migration

A new governor and a new legislature bring hope that Pennsylvania will deal with the financial crisis facing its cities—and spreading quickly to its townships and boroughs.

And it is a crisis. The City of Harrisburg teeters on the edge of what looks like an inevitable bankruptcy. The City of Reading is not far behind, as even Act 47 protection has proven to be an inadequate tool to staunch its financial tailspin. Deep financial distress, growing poverty, failing infrastructure and a declining employment base plague nearly all of Pennsylvania’s cities.

The crisis imposes real costs on citizens outside of the cities as well. At least one municipality recently found its costs to borrow money had increased simply because it was in the “same county as Harrisburg.”  It’s a difficult issue because while Pennsylvanians may understand the difference between, say, the City of Bethlehem and the Township of Bethlehem, outsiders—including businesses thinking about moving here—will just see a state that can’t pay its bills.  And that will cost us jobs.

Pennsylvania’s cities have entered a death spiral and there appears to be no mechanism available to pull them out of it.  It’s time for all of us – the legislature, the business community, the labor unions, and the residents – to stop ignoring the problem and deal with it head on.

For years, business groups have blocked almost every legislative attempt to find new sources of revenue, arguing that reforming pensions and contract arbitration rules have to come first—though these acts alone won’t come close to solving the problem.  Intonations like “cut the fat” (which doesn’t exist in city budgets) and “run city government more like a business” are nonsensical in our current environment and don’t substitute for thoughtful policy.

Municipal union leaders defend the mathematically unsustainable—insisting on the preservation of state-mandated antiquated work rules and benefit packages that cities can no longer afford.  As painful as those realities may be to hard working city employees—they are still realities.

The cities themselves engage in a series of convoluted—and often bizarre—financial transactions to temporarily stave off the day of reckoning. Much of the borrowing we’ve seen these cities do can only be described as reckless.

While that’s going on, Pennsylvania’s legislature has simply averted its gaze, believing that hard choices aren’t popular and that somehow “this will all go away.”

Well it’s not going away.  And somebody must break the stalemate.

The fact is that most cities studied in a recent Pennsylvania Economy League report did not generate enough tax money (from all sources of taxation) to pay for their fire department and their police department, let alone any other services.

Most people find that statistic staggering, but it’s true. Easton, Lancaster, Reading and York don’t generate enough tax revenues to cover the cost of their public safety departments, let alone provide parks, libraries or snowplowing.

That’s the kind of impossible position our cities are in.

So, what is a city to do? Cutting police and fire aren’t really options. I suspect that even the most fervent anti-government folks wouldn’t think that Reading has too many police officers on duty at any time (in fact, most experts think the 161-officer force is short by about ninety officers for a city this size).  And I don’t see a huge groundswell in York or Lancaster for letting fires burn out of control.

And does anyone think it makes sense to require state arbitrators to interpret labor agreements without any regard for a city’s ability to pay the costs associated with their rulings?

It is clear that the current rules don’t allow Pennsylvania’s cities to look forward to a future of anything except rapid decline.

It’s time to change the rules.

The new state legislature must quickly enact a comprehensive package of reforms to stabilize our cities and return them to prosperity.

The reforms must include removing burdensome state-imposed pension and arbitration requirements. They must include giving cities the ability to generate new revenue at the regional level to support city services.  But that alone won’t solve the problem.

A package of reforms must include serious incentives for regional cooperation so that cities don’t bear a disproportionate share of the cost of regional services.

It’s time for cities and their employees to adjust to the new normal.  The business community must recognize that this is a time for action, not ideology.  And the legislature and the governor must realize that we can’t put real municipal reform off any longer.

Tags: Tom Corbett | municipal reform | Harrisburg | legislation | Berks County | city crisis | Reading PA

Working at a community foundation gives you what a friend of mine called “an interesting perch from which to see things.”    And it’s true.   Every day we meet with or talk to lots of people living and working in this community, and sometimes it allows us to see potential connections that other people might not.  So from time to time, I’ll use this blog to share ideas that have hit us during our work in the community.

I’ll put them out there just to see if anyone takes the bait and is interested in following through.  And incidentally, if you find yourself asking:  “Well, if he thinks that’s such a good idea, why doesn’t the Community Foundation just do it?”—my answer would be that we can come up with a far larger number of good ideas than we could ever execute.

But who knows, maybe some donor or some agency will read one of these ideas and it will strike a chord.  And who knows—maybe someday we’ll even have the resources to pursue some of them at the Community Foundation.

One thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is food (yeah, hold the jokes).   The public benefit sector in Berks County produces a lot of meals each day.  Imagine how many meals a day are served in our schools, day care centers, emergency shelters, senior centers, youth centers, colleges and nursing homes.  It would be a big number.

And for almost all of these organizations, food preparation and food service is not the reason they exist.   Serving meals is an ancillary service to support their mission.

The other thing that you have to know about food service is that to a greater extent than almost anything else done in the public benefit sector, the preparation of food benefits (at least economically) from economies of scale.   The more meals you need to prepare, the lower the cost of the ingredients that you need to purchase.  The labor costs of preparing meals decrease as well (that’s why companies like Aramark can be so profitable).  And the cost per meal of supporting the expensive kitchen drops as the facility becomes more fully utilized.

So what if someday we hired a consulting firm to analyze all of the food service needs of our local public benefit organizations?   We could tally up the number and type of meals, analyze the sources of funding for them and develop a workable database.

With that information in hand, the consultants (maybe in conjunction with a group of local experts) could analyze whether any of these operations could be consolidated to create a lower cost (or higher quality) meal service.

Maybe we’d even find that we could create a large central community kitchen to prepare and ship the meals.  And maybe we could use that as a job training program.   And maybe the organizations that weren’t able to participate could at least benefit from the purchasing capacity and lower the price they pay for ingredients and supplies.

It’s just a thought.  Just an idea.  Might work, might not.   But it’s not patented—so if anyone wants to try it—good luck.

By the way, it’s not entirely original.   An Israeli organization called Meir Panim is developing a very similar idea—and they got the idea from Berks County’s own Michael Fromm, CEO of Fromm Electric.

Tags: food service | Berks County | food banks

All of us at Berks County Community Foundation join in mourning the loss of Senator Michael A. O'Pake. Mike was truly Berks County's "favorite son."

He was a tireless advocate for the residents of Berks County, but held a special place for children facing adversity. Mike and his mother established the Patrick D. O'Pake Fund at the Community Foundation, in memory of his brother. The fund benefits students at St. Margaret's Elementary School and children living in the Glenside area, where Mike grew up. His commitment to education and opportunity for children was both professional and personal.

He was a leader not just here, but in Pennsylvania. As Minority Whip, he took courageous positions on the need to reform state government. His encyclopedic knowledge of state government made him a powerful force on issues confronting the entire state.

The loss of Mike O'Pake will be felt deeply here in Berks County and across the Commonwealth.

Our thoughts will be with Mike's friends, family and staff during this difficult time.

Tags: Berks County

Lest anyone think I'm the only one fretting about the state of nonprofit boards, Dan Pallotta (who spoke at our annual meeting last month) has written on  a different challenge:  Micromanagement by boards.   Dan's Harvard Business Review blog post can be seen here.

Tags: board of directors | micromanagement | Dan Pallotta

I was at a meeting recently planning the upcoming class year for Leadership Berks.  Leadership Berks, which is now a part of Alvernia University, is celebrating its 25^th year this year.   For the past quarter of a century, they’ve trained emerging Berks County leaders to be effective members of non profit boards.

While I was there, I was struck by a thought:   I’m impressed (perhaps surprised is a better word) by how little local nonprofit boards have changed over the past decade in spite of the amazing changes in their environment and accountability.

Just the other day, I was listening to several members of a prominent nonprofit board decrying the difficulty they were having in getting their organization to adopt term limits.  Term limits! In 2010!  Really?   And there are many organizations who haven’t adopted that simple governance reform—one which is nearly universally recognized to be of value.

I still see boards of as many as fifty people.   How can fifty people  effectively work together to identify and manage risk, evaluate corporate strategy, have deep conversations with the CEO about performance and give meaningful feedback about the impact an organization is having in the community?  It’s lost on me.  My college group dynamics class taught that any group larger than eight began to diminish in effectiveness.

At the other end of the spectrum, we see small boards with multiple family members and in some cases, family members of employees on the board.  On one form 990 (the IRS tax form that nonprofits file) listed the wife of the CEO as the board chair!

The environment that boards are operating in has changed dramatically.   Increased regulatory scrutiny, increased demands for public accountability and increased liability for individual board members have changed the rules of the game for nonprofit organizations, and yet so few boards have made meaningful changes to accommodate those new realities.

We’re not perfect by a long shot at Berks County Community Foundation.   We work hard at governance.  As painful as it sometimes is, we enforce a nine year term limit.  We make sure that the majority—the vast majority—of our directors are independent.  We’ve shrunk our board from thirty to fourteen.   We make sure that the chair of our audit committee is a qualified financial expert under the Sarbanes-Oxley rule.  We do regular “director education” sessions.

We think that good stewardship of the assets entrusted to us begins with being as well governed as we can be.  Under the leadership of Mary Ann Campbell, our governance chair, we’re constantly striving to do better.

Still, from the lack of change we see out there, there must be people who don’t agree.  We’d love to hear your viewpoint.    Why haven’t we seen more change?   What would it take—or isn’t change needed?  Post your comments.  Let’s discuss.

Tags: board service | board of directors | board change | Berks County

We've had a huge reaction to the speech at our annual meeting by Dan Pallotta.   He clearly challenged people to rethink their assumptions about charitable work.  Not everyone agreed with everything he said, but I've heard a lot of people say "he got me thinking."   

We also had a lot of requests for a video of Dan's speech, which we were not able to make under our contract with him.  There is a good video of an interview with Dan that covers much of the same ground available here. Dan's book, Uncharitable is a well written, easy to read explanation of his thesis as well.

We'd love to hear:  What did YOU think?

Tags: annual meeting | fundraising | fundraiser | charity | Dan Pallotta | Berks County

As we did ten years ago, Berks County Community Foundation made a grant to a committee working to encourage participation in the U.S. Census completed earlier this year.  The results of the census will be released on December 31.

It's awfully important to get everyone counted as millions of dollars in federal and state fund are allocated each year based on census data.   Getting people to voluntarily fill out the form is the best thing a community can do to assure a complete and accurate counting of our population.   

In the United States, about 74% of people filled out their forms and sent them in on time.   Pennsylvania did slightly better with 77% of our residents getting the form in.   As a result of the community pulling together, Berks Countians had an 81% completion rate, which is absolutely phenomenal!   The committee paid special attention to the City of Reading, which had a 69% completion rate,  much higher than other cities.

Thanks  to everyone in Berks County who stood up to be counted (or at least filled in the form!)

Tags: US Census | census | Berks County | census results

The group was too small for anyone to notice.  Only about 15 people were here.  But for part of last week, the Greater Reading area hosted representatives from some of America's largest and most influential foundations.  The occasion was a meeting of the board of directors of the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities.   They met in our building for two days and took a walking tour of the Penn Corridor from their hotel at the Courtyard Marriott and through downtown Reading with stops at Goggleworks and the Peanut Bar.

So, why Reading?   Well, Berks County Community Foundation has been a member of the network for almost a decade. Our team has learned a lot about smart land-use and community redevelopment from our colleagues there.   In March, I wrapped up a two year term as chair of the board, an honor that I will always cherish.   So, we have some pretty deep ties with the group.

But mostly, they were eager to see the results of some exciting grantmaking by the Community Foundation and our colleague funders in the community.   The story of Berks County's success in agricultural land preservation has become sort of a national legend.   The revitalization of West Reading's Penn Avenue is another example of how small grants from the Community Foundation have lead to big results.   Of course, our LEED Platinum building was a highlight for a group focused on sustainable community development.

Too often, we focus on the challenges we face in our community.   What my friends saw when they came here were some challenges, but also some successes that have attracted national attention.   Seeing our community through their eyes (they just loved West Reading) helped remind me that we've done a lot of things right in Berks County.

And no, I didn't miss the opportunity to engage a couple of them in conversations about opportunities to help support a couple of our institutions.  There's much follow-up to do!

Tags: smart growth | green building | giving back | Berks County | Reading PA