A True Spirit of Giving

It’s the season for zestful holiday flair. Nearly everywhere you go, there’s bedazzling glitz and glitter, garland and bows, and abundant expressions of holiday “spirit.”

The Latin root of spirit means “to breathe.” As humans, we breathe in air, which is our Creator’s gift of life-sustaining substance. During this season of gift-giving, we can also share a life-sustaining substance when we offer our gifts of time, talent and treasure, including life’s most precious gifts—the gifts of caring, affection, appreciation, and love. This is the true spirit of giving, a twinkling expression of the spiritual Law of Giving, which is cyclical in nature and encompasses both giving and receiving.

Have you ever wondered how North Carolina’s communities benefit from the true spirit of giving and prosper at all times, in spite of economic downturns and hostile environmental influences?

NCCF President, Liz Fentress

The North Carolina Community Foundation (NCCF) is a 24-hours-a-day, 365-days-a-year economic engine tending fertile philanthropic fields in our state’s rural communities. The Foundation’s mission is to enable North Carolinians, of all means, to make significant and lasting gifts for the benefit of their community. Currently, NCCF has a network of 53 affiliates serving 59 counties with assets of just over seventy-five and a half million dollars. In fiscal year 2003-2004, funds granted by the Foundation to improve the lives of North Carolina’s citizens exceeded three and a half million dollars.

At the leadership helm of this community-focused economic engine is the Foundation’s President, Liz Fentress. She says her work at the Foundation is the culmination of all the jobs she’s ever held. Liz’s career background is a goldmine of diverse career opportunities, including

• journalist at the Saturday Evening Post and Ladies Home Journal,
• mother of two children,
• editor of the News and Observer’s Women’s Section,
• first Director of North Carolina’s Museum of History,
• a procession of Development Director responsibilities for statewide organizations, and
• Development Officer at the North Carolina Center for Public Policy.

Along her career journey, Liz’s various positions provided opportunities to travel to all 100 counties in North Carolina, to meet many people in many different circumstances, and to develop an understanding of the ways public policy governs how we live together. “I think the flexibility from some of the positions that I’ve had in the past has been one of the keys to this Foundation. You cannot expect everybody to operate in exactly the same way or to think in the same way. If you insist on that kind of homogenized view, you will not be successful. At the Foundation, without buy-in and leadership at the local level, nothing happens.”

To discover the special gifts Liz brings to her leadership role and to learn specific tips she shared so you can enhance your leadership skills, you’ll want to read on. Here’s more from our one-on-one, woman-to-woman conversation with Liz.

NCJW: Where did you first identify your strengths?

LF: I was privileged to go to a girl’s school, and I’m a believer in same sex education. In that context, we were always expected to be the best that we could be. No one ever told me that I couldn’t do anything. I was always encouraged to excel and not to worry about what anybody else thought. So, in the times in my life that I have been given something to do that I didn’t really know what it was that I was supposed to do, some uncharted project, I always looked on that as a real challenge instead of being afraid of it because I did not grow up in a context of fear of succeeding.

NCJW: What specific gifts do you bring to the management of the Foundation?

LF: I believe in people power. What I bring to the management dimension is teamwork and a complementary management style. I surround myself with people that I know are the best at what they do, so that the end result is the Foundation is the best that it can be.

NCCF Staff seated left to right: Dayna Clendinen, Elizabeth Fentress, Esther Hall, Deborah Fox Standing left to right: Erin Hensley, Karen Bullock, Sarah Taylor, Cherry Ballard, Melinda Allen, Barbara Friend, Marilyn Goehl

Also, I think it is very important that you not be interested in trying to appear as though all of your success is your own success, as that is never the case. It doesn’t bother me at all to extol the virtues of an employee who has done something wonderful for the Foundation and to acknowledge the contributions that each and every person that works here makes. In that regard, I think of myself as an orchestra leader, a symphony conductor, somebody that makes all the disparate pieces work.

NCJW: North Carolina’s economy is in transition. How do you see the Foundation being a vital partner in that transition?

LF: The Foundation has been privileged to be a part of the Aspen Financial Institute, which is seeking to encourage rural populations to develop charitable dollars and to spend them in a less traditional way, to place charitable dollars where they can cause jobs and to support non-profit organizations that are seeking solutions for rural challenges.

One of the most important aspects of the Community Foundation is to act as a catalyst to bring people together in a neutral environment to talk about things that are of interest to their community. We try to get people in our counties to understand that even if their disposable income is not large, that everyone’s charitable dollars, working with everyone else’s charitable dollars, can add up to a considerable resource.

NCJW: How do you see this impacting the lives of women in rural communities?

LF: Women and children are often the beneficiaries of charitable dollars through support given to schools, libraries, hospitals and health programs.

The Community Foundation is also a wonderful way for women to participate in the community. In the most successful community foundations we have across the state, there are major roles being played by women. I think that women of the boards give them heart and soul that they might not otherwise have.

Many times, women are more in touch with the social needs in the community,
so they can speak to the challenge.

Then, in concert with men on the board, they can arrive at a solution.

Also, their gift to whatever it is they are interested in can compound and that their money is working 365 days a year. It’s always on my mind that the money that I give is going to be giving in perpetuity and I think women that are careful with money and have to operate within a household budget find that appealing, too.

NCJW: What specific tips can you give to women to enhance their leadership skills?

LF:• Whatever you are involved in, try to know the most about that which you can. You can never know everything—shouldn’t know everything as it wouldn’t be a challenge if you did—but be as informed about whatever it is you are trying to accomplish as it is possible.
• Train yourself to think in a flexible fashion, then you will attract the best and the brightest.
• Be focused on the outcome and have a vision about what it is you want to achieve for the organization that you serve. Everyday, make a step in that direction.
• If you want to be taken seriously as a female, look businesslike. There are still rules of dress that are important. When you are trying to chart a course in a previously male situation, or you are in a room with gentlemen who in the past have been used to working with themselves, and particularly when you are bringing in a new idea, it pays to comport yourself in a way which you want to be perceived.
• Be the person that follows through. Don’t make promises that you can’t keep. If you tell somebody that you are going to do something, do it!

Liz Fentress can be contacted at:
North Carolina Community Foundation
P.O. Box 2828
410 South Wilmington Street
Raleigh, NC 27602-2828

Phone: 919/828-4387
E-mail: efentress@nccommf.org

As we immerse ourselves in this holiday season, take time to remember that the true gift is you. You are in the perfect place, right where you are, to deliver life’s most precious gifts of caring, affection, appreciation and love. Like the work Liz and her team of community foundation professionals are doing through the North Carolina Community Foundation, you’ll be expressing the cyclical Law of Giving and being a wise steward of your resources.

Happy Holidays!