LEGACY, LEADERSHIP AND GROWING UP THE FAMILY FOUNDATION
In honor of the Hill-Snowdon family foundation’s 50th anniversary since being established and the 10th since launching its strategic grantmaking program, the National Center for Family Philanthropy has collaborated with Ashley Snowdon Blanchard, foundation president, to produce a history of the family’s turns and transformations.
When I talked to Ashley some time ago, her view of the role and growth of the foundation was intimately allied with family matters and engagement. Her smart stewardship of the foundation’s growth provides a role model for succession and impact.
As some of us are all too keenly aware, parents and their kids don’t always think alike. And when it comes to passing on the values, mission and financial control of a family’s giving plan, things can get especially tricky.
Ashley, a philanthropy consultant in New York, seems to have jumped the hurdles of passing on a legacy through steady perseverance.
In 1959, her great-grandfather Arthur Hill established the family’s Hill-Snowdon Foundation, now based in Washington D.C. He had built up assets as an executive at Johnson & Johnson by receiving stock options in lieu of salary during World War II. Still, “we didn’t really have that much money until the enormous rise in J&J stock in the 1990s,” says Blanchard.
She recalls family members sitting around a kitchen table each year to decide where the foundation’s grants would go. “Everyone had their own particular organizations and causes. It wasn’t thought-out.”
By the turn of the century, after the rapid increase in assets, Blanchard began attending foundation meetings as a young adult. “What had worked for people around the table didn’t make sense for the next generation, and we brought a critical view to the status quo. “We could put forth ideas without dipping into anyone’s pot.”
In the meantime, Ashley had graduated from Stanford and studied nonprofit management and social welfare policy at UC-Berkeley. “I came of age when welfare reform was a hot-button social issue. The other huge issue was women’s balancing act and the ‘second shift’ they worked at home. It was clearly a myth that women could do it all. Ultimately, that led me to social change and philanthropy.”
It was time for the 40-year-old foundation to grow up.
To help with the transition, the family worked closely with consultants from the Tides Foundation, based in San Francisco, which counsels families and individuals about charitable plans. Within a few years, Blanchard had become president of the board, working, along with a small staff, to make the foundation strategic and focused on a consistent mission of social change and economic justice.
Nowadays, the Hill-Snowdon Foundation, with an endowment of roughly $30 million and annual grants of about $2 million, is on “cruise control.” Ashley works with the executive director to set agendas and keep the family informed and engaged. She has begun mentoring the next generation, including cousins who have become trustees.
“We learn by doing,” says Ashley.