Giving Forward Podcast: ‘Head and Heart’ with Kathleen Shaw

Nina Waters   

Kathleen, thank you so much for joining us today for this podcast. 

Kathleen Shaw 

I’m happy to be here. 

Nina Waters   

A lot of people don’t know that before we work together at the Community Foundation, we worked together at PACE for 12 years. 

Kathleen Shaw 

Well, PACE was a really special place. And it had a mission to really help girls who weren’t making it in a traditional school setting. So we saw girls that had gotten in trouble with the law. We had some that had fallen behind in school. Some girls were young mothers. A lot of girls had experienced a tremendous amount of trauma in their backgrounds, some violence in their neighborhoods, in their household. And so they found PACE, which was set up like a school. They would come all day, every day. In addition to academics, they would receive counseling and the supports they needed to start building their lives – or rebuilding their lives, so to speak. So that’s where we met. And it was such a special place because it was a small, close-knit place. The girls had a 1:8 ratio of staff to students, and the staff rolled up their sleeves and worked together to really help these girls. So you found very committed people, and I think that caused us to become very close as we worked together to address some of the toughest issues that people can face. When I first started, there was only one PACE Center for Girls – it was the first one. I think there’s like 23 now, and they’re in three different states. 

Nina Waters   

You know, I came to PACE from the corporate sector. And it was a very relaxed atmosphere, to say the least. I had to put a little structure in it because I think it was important to have that. 

Kathleen Shaw 

You walked in with your suit on to interview for the position as we were in shorts and tennis shoes because, of course, we went out and played at recess and activities with the students. Many of us were 22 or 23 years old, and the oldest student was 18, so there wasn’t a huge difference in the ages. And we were building trusting relationships, so we went by first name with the students. So when you talk about relaxed, it was somewhat the opposite of what you would see in a business setting – and even in most school settings, correct?. So when you came in, very gently, not ambushing everybody, you really wanted to take it to that next level of how do we bring a little more structure? How do we lead not only building trusting, caring relationships, but lead in professional and business-like manners? I’ve heard you talk before about a concept about your head and your heart, so I’d love for you to share that a little bit. 

Nina Waters   

I think what I learned in the business sector was the importance of making sure that the business is always there. And having to make tough decisions, so not putting what is good for one person over what’s good for the future of the business. I think that was part of the challenge at PACE when I got there. It was a lot of heart, but not a lot of head. So how do you incorporate some of that without losing the heart and the spirit of the program? It took time. And I learned some things, too. I learned to relax. I learned to hula hoop in the hallways…  

Kathleen Shaw 

She is the best hula-hooper around.   

Nina Waters   

I am. And we had to put some policies in place, like what you wear to work and and things like that. It was interesting, and it was also incredibly meaningful. Every single day, you knew that you were making a difference. You don’t get that in the corporate sector, and that’s why I left – to come back and say, “I really want to do something that makes a difference.” We saw that every single day. There were days, I remember, we would lose a math teacher, and I would think how are we ever going to find a math teacher? And sure enough, that afternoon, literally, a fax would come across with a math teacher’s resume. And we hadn’t even put an ad out yet. All of these things would happen there every day that, even if you’re religious or you’re not, there was divine influence in things. And you would see that every day with the girls. 

Kathleen Shaw 

So those are great memories. Thanks for sharing. I’d love to hear your thoughts, as well, about what it was like when you made that really difficult decision to leave PACE and then go to The Community Foundation. 

Nina Waters   

When I came to The Community Foundation, there was only one other staff member at the time that had worked at a nonprofit. What was so surprising to me when I got there was that the Foundation really didn’t understand the complexity of the nonprofit organizations that we were funding. In many cases, some of the organizations we were funding were much more buttoned-up and complex than the Foundation was. That was really a big eye-opener for me. I will say, I missed direct service, and I missed the meaning that you get every day. And that was challenging for me in the beginning at the Foundation. I don’t know if it was for you, too. 

Kathleen Shaw 

It was really quiet. It was very quiet. 

Nina Waters   

And it wasn’t nearly as much fun. It was pretty serious a lot. That was the hardest part: how do you keep that momentum and that drive that you have to come to work every day and work hard when you’re not getting that instant gratification that you get with direct service? You have to really find ways to get out into the community, go do site visits, have lunch with people, and bring people in to really continue to drive you the way that we did before. 

Kathleen Shaw 

I know there have been times that people see our role as one where we should be helping nonprofits raise funding for their organization. And we’ve talked to them about how it starts with the interest of the donors – not necessarily that we’re working for the nonprofits. So I’d love to hear your thoughts about that because you’ve done so much of this. 

Nina Waters   

I do like helping donors find areas of most interest to them and then connecting them to those organizations, but I also like helping those organizations build their capacity to work more closely with individual donors or foundations. So what do they need to put in place to have a strong development team, or to be able to tell their story in a different way? But you’re right, for us…I wish it was humanly possible for me to be a development director for all of the thousand nonprofits that we have in Northeast Florida because I like doing it. But we can’t, and we can’t always approach donors with all of these ideas because donors would stop listening. For me, it’s been a strategy of what infrastructure needs to be in place in our community to be able to move our entire sector forward. That’s really where we as a community foundation, at least during my time, have spent time trying to raise dollars that are important. So it’s a much more broad strategy than organization by organization. But we also do a good job when a donor comes to us and says: “I’m really interested in deaf education. And I don’t want to call around to a bunch of places” or “I’m new to Northeast Florida.” That’s where we come into play. We can give them several different options and let them make that decision.  

Kathleen Shaw 

I think foundations as a whole have been accused of living in the ivory tower and not being closely connected to the work.  So you’ve done a really good job of maintaining that throughout your whole career and making sure you still stay grounded and listening to what’s happening. There’s a big movement in the field to really increase our ability to listen and get feedback from the community. 

Nina Waters   

You’re talking about trust-based philanthropy. So talk a little bit about that.  

Kathleen Shaw 

I think it’s really funny because it’s not a new concept. It has a new name, but it’s not a new concept. There are a lot of misconceptions, I believe, around trust-based philanthropy. There are some people who think that means just give general operating support and never ask questions about what happens with the funding. And there’s no accountability, and there’s no data. So it’s just, give away your money and give it to what other people think is important. I don’t believe that’s correct. I think it’s about being in a relationship with a grantee, and with the community, and understanding what the needs are and what the barriers are. We’ve had examples where things have happened and we’ve had to change course. So you want to create an environment where a grantee and the foundation trust one another enough to say, “Here’s what we were going to do, but something’s happened. And we’re not able to do this, and how can we work through this together?” Also, to be able to push back to a foundation is an important thing for a grantee to be able to do – to say that’s unrealistic. I’ve had times that I’ve said that to grantees –  “You’re going to do what with this money? Are you sure that’s possible?” And they’re often shocked because they’re used to having to add something new, to expand their services. And sometimes, you just really need to support good work or you need to enhance good work or you need to try something a little bit different. 

Nina Waters   

I think one thing, though, that we’re doing more of now is we’re really trying to champion the idea of general operating support grants. You’ve been a huge champion for that. We really do understand that nonprofits need that flexibility. I think that is something really good that came out of the trust-based philanthropy movement. 

Kathleen Shaw 

I do agree with that. And I think that when it became really big was when COVID hit. I remember when that happened, everybody got sent home and services got destroyed because people couldn’t go into their workplaces or the nonprofits. And they were trying to rediscover how to continue to provide services. We called every single one of our grantees for our open grants that we had and said, “What do you need? Let’s release restrictions. Don’t worry about timelines, don’t worry about reporting.” And it was an amazing response that we got back from them, and they were able to continue good work. And we saw grantee organizations working with each other, doing work they didn’t normally do. I think about Communities in Schools riding on the school buses, working with the school system, and handing out food. And that’s not in their normal service. But they were getting together and coming up with creative ways to support our community during an unprecedented time of crisis. It was just heartwarming. 

Nina Waters   

A lot of it’s still in place. You talked a little bit about COVID. But our disaster philanthropy work began before COVID. And you have been the queen of disaster philanthropy for The Community Foundation. So talk about those early days when we were crafting the First Coast Relief Fund, when the city was underwater and we were trying to figure out all of that. 

Kathleen Shaw 

We actually started the conversations before we ever had our first big hurricane. But then Hurricane Matthew came, and it tested us to, you know, walk the walk that you’re actually talking about. And I realized we knew nothing about hurricanes, I was born during Hurricane Dora – that’s my only experience really with a major hurricane. So we had to get together with the nonprofit community – they are the front line. And now we’ve got something that’s going to be so much bigger. You’re not going to be able to do it on your own, it’s going to be more than you can handle. So how can we roll up our sleeves and together handle this as a community? We also needed city government with us, and we needed to understand FEMA. And we needed to understand national resources that were going to come in because we were going in a little bit blind. We had the benefit of other communities that had been through this – that’s the beauty of the network – and that has been so helpful having those partners that had walked before us in this these circumstances. And when southwest Florida got hit last year, we were able to do the same thing. We learned that donors are generous. They want to give, but they don’t know where to give. And sometimes when a crisis hits, there’s a lot of noise. There’s a lot of different things that start popping up, and there’s a lot of good in the community that’s not organized. I know there were times we had warehouses full of water, and then we had organizations asking for money to purchase water to give out. So we didn’t have an organized effort to be able as a community to work collaboratively together to help support a community going through disaster. I think we’re a little stronger now than we were. There continues to be room for growth in that, and every disaster is a little bit different, as we learned with COVID. But a lot of the things are the same. 

Nina Waters   

You really learned where these philanthropic dollars from a relief fund fit. So what is our sweet spot with the First Coast Relief Fund?  

Kathleen Shaw 

What we learned, first of all, is that we’re not first responders. We’re not setting up the shelters to keep people safe. Those systems are in place. But then there’s this next short-term period of time before the bigger supports come in in the aftermath of a disaster. So there’s people who can’t pay their rent – it hit in the middle to end of a month. So they’ve got the next rent coming up, but they don’t have time to get the other money coming in. So they need some financial assistance. Or there’s people who lost their transportation, their car got flooded, they can’t get anywhere. So they need some help with that. That’s where the First Coast Relief Fund really comes in handy. We did find after Hurricane Irma, there needed to be an organized long-term relief effort that also included philanthropic support. And that’s where we had what was called the LTR.  

[The Northeast Florida Long Term Recovery Organization was established in December 2017, a few months after Hurricane Irma hit, as a collaborative for organizations working together to assist families impacted by the storm. The program is now under the umbrella of the Duval COAD (Community Organizations Active in Disaster) program.]   

Nina Waters   

Long Term Recovery Organization, right? And we help to stand that up. 

Kathleen Shaw 

That’s right.  

Nina Waters   

Our largest natural disaster has been Hurricane Irma, where the downtown flooded and stayed flooded for several days. We really saw the challenges of sea-level rise during that, for sure, being a coastal community. Talk a little bit about what those early hours and early days were like for us at The Community Foundation. 

Kathleen Shaw 

It begins with the hurricane approaching, so the whole community’s preparing for that. Part of our preparation is working collaboratively with the other funding organizations that we partner with for the First Coast Relief Fund. So literally, while you’re boarding up your house, you’re on the phone, you’re talking about do we activate or do we not activate, you’re finding out what the damage is. As soon as we know we need to activate that fund, a lot of work begins raising money. We keep a little bit of money in the fund – a couple hundred thousand dollars in the fund – because we know we need some immediate money to go out. But we’re simultaneously raising money at the same time. And how we’re doing that (you’re the expert because you do a lot of that) is a lot of communication. 

Nina Waters   

When a disaster hits, people want to do something. So Pulse nightclub – people wanted to give blood. For hurricanes, people want to give water and they want to give clothes and diapers. But what we know is that people need to give money. Because really what happens is that it’s so expensive for organizations to sort through clothes. Do they even have the volunteers, and how do you get things from point A to point B – especially in a hurricane when it’s flooded? So the money is important, and people I think have finally learned that. But you have to be ready to receive it and respond to the phone calls. Like you said, we’re in our own state of crisis as individuals, but you have to be there. So one thing that I’m proud of is that we never closed. We were available at all times when national foundations called, when local foundations called, individual donors. And because we had the fund in place,  everything funnels into the one fund. And then all those organizations work together to grant it out.  

Kathleen Shaw 

Yeah. And I think that’s also so important and helpful for the nonprofits because they’re on the front line. So they don’t have the time. 

Nina Waters   

Community Foundation is a collection of donors. We have this network of people that we can get that information out to quickly. We’ve built trust with them, and we’ve been able to steward their dollars very carefully through several different disasters. And indeed, that’s what happens. That’s another reason why community philanthropy is important and why a place-based foundation like us is important. 

Kathleen Shaw 

Nina, our grantmaking has grown tremendously since you have come to the Foundation. I know that about 75% of our assets are endowed. Why do you think that’s really important to a community? 

Nina Waters   

Jacksonville has traditionally been a very under-endowed community, and we also are not home to any large foundations. Endowments provide unrestricted income to organizations to be able to do important work, and in many cases, fund that general operating support. They fund things like professional development. They fund things that help an organization sustain itself and grow. And that’s not always very sexy to a donor. Donors like to fund programs. They like to fund the direct services for an organization. But somebody has to fund infrastructure. Somebody has to fund strategic planning and best practice work. That’s what endowments can do. It gives you a reliable, annual unrestricted amount of money that you can count on. I think especially in times like this, donor intent is really important. Especially with independent foundations, you sometimes see the donor intent be eroded over time as that donor has been gone, and people now running the foundation didn’t know that donor. We even ask donors, “What do you absolutely never want this fund to fund?” And we do not portray our values onto the donor. So we have donors that support gun control, and we have donors who support gun rights. We have donors that are pro-choice, we have donors that are pro-life, It is not our role at The Community Foundation to tell donors what to give to. Certainly, if it’s immoral or unethical, we would not set up an endowment. But as I said earlier, it’s important to meet donors where they are and understand that there’s a role for funding in all of these areas. 

Kathleen Shaw 

We take it so seriously, and we have really good documentation of what was important to them. And every year before we do the grantmaking, we review that and we say: what were the nuances, what was important? But we also have to balance that with what’s happening in a community. How do you keep it relevant in perpetuity? 

Kathleen Shaw 

Nina, earlier we talked about our time at PACE Center for Girls, and I was just reflecting on somebody we both met at that time. And that was Delores Barr Weaver. She’s a force for sure for good. We’ve had a long relationship with her, and you’ve been very close with her. And it has led to her moving her money, and her and Wayne’s private family foundation, to The Community Foundation. I’d love to hear your thoughts about what that relationship has meant to you and some things that you’ve learned from her. 

[ Delores Barr Weaver and Wayne Weaver were the first majority owners of the Jacksonville Jaguars, which they sold in 2016 for $770 million. The Delores Barr Weaver Fund at The Community Foundation was established in 2012 with an initial value of $50 million.] 

Nina Waters   

Gosh, that is an emotionally loaded question. So the first time that I really was with Dolores Weaver, I was invited with probably five other agencies to a meeting at the stadium to talk about the Honor Rows Program. They were building the Honors Rows Program at that time, which was a program for nonprofit agencies to be able to earn seats to attend games. So they asked about five agency directors to come and talk, to give us the idea, and get our reaction to the idea and then get our input. I was invited to that meeting, and I was 15 or 20 minutes late (I am never late, and I hate being late) – and, of course, in my first meeting with Delores Weaver. And it was a small meeting. So I walked in and sat down and sighed (and she tells the story really well). So after the meeting, Dolores came up and said, “Well, I noticed you were late.” And I said, “I was.” And she said, “And you seem to be really kind of hairy this morning.” And I said, “It was a rough morning, and I’m really sorry I was late. I had an emergency with one of the students.” And she said, “Well, if you don’t mind, tell me what happened…” And I said, “Well, we have a student that had a gun, and she was on the roof of her house. So they called PACE, and they said her mother isn’t home, she’s on the roof. And they said, she’s a PACE student – somebody needs to come. So I got to the house. And I was only one there with the police. And they had a ladder up against the roof, and they had a police officer that was trying to get behind her to tackle her on the roof. So they asked me if I would stand there and distract her and talk to her while the policeman could get behind her. So I did. And I never thought about oh, there’s a student on the roof with a gun. I mean, I just didn’t even think about it at the time. And so she got off the roof and got the help she needed at the time. And then I ran to the stadium to this meeting, and I was late.” From that moment on, we built a relationship. When I came to The Community Foundation, she was on the board, but she was ready to get off the board. And she was so excited that I was there, and she said,” I’m going to stay on for a year just because I want to make sure that they are good to you.” Most of the experiences that she and I had were when she was watching me grow in my role and find my voice in a very male-dominated world. And she was very helpful to me in helping me understand what to do, and how to be, when I was in situations where I was getting patted on the head a lot. But she knew that I had more to give. So she was a real coach for me in helping me find that strength. Certainly that first year at the Foundation when I got there and really questioned if I was in the right place, she was a rock for me that first year. Then when they sold the team, they decided to close their family foundation, and they moved all of that to The Community Foundation. But even bigger than that, she made a $50 million gift in 2012 to establish her own fund. And that changed the course, I think, of The Community Foundation. And then several years later, she endowed that fund and made it a permanent gift of the Foundation. 

Kathleen Shaw 

And she did that – I know her well, too – because she believes in people. So she did that because she believes in you and believes in the work and the leadership that you brought to The Community Foundation. 

Nina Waters   

I will say that in these roles that we are in, roles of leadership, you have to have someone that balances you. And I think that’s a role that we’ve played for each other. Because I sometimes had to be the head, and you’re truly the heart. And I think you challenge me. We’ve been together for more than 30 years working together. It’s amazing. But we balance each other, and I trust you. 

Kathleen Shaw 

When I think about us, and how long we’ve worked together at two different organizations, I realize neither of us have worked with anybody as long as we’ve worked with each other.  

Nina Waters 

That’s right. Wow.  

Kathleen Shaw 

That’s something to say, to know somebody that well professionally, to know somebody that well personally, to have so many lived experiences together. It takes a lifetime to replace something like that, and I hope I never have to. I thank you for that. 

Nina Waters   

Thank you. We’re gonna get through this…somehow… 

[Nina Waters is retiring from The Community Foundation September 1, 2023, after 22 years of service.]