A Family Foundation: Looking to the Future, Honoring the Past


 

Publication Date: January 1996

Publisher: Nathan Cummings Foundation

Author(s): Deborah S. Gardner

Research Area: Banking and finance; Social conditions

Keywords: World Jews; Fundraising/Philanthropy

Type: Report

Abstract:

In writing this essay I drew heavily on the series of oral history interviews I conducted in 1996 with members of the extended Cummings family, staff and trustees. The Cummings Foundation commissioned the interviews as part of the 100th anniversary celebration of Nathan Cummings' birth; a foundation archives will be created to preserve the history of its activities for future generations. The intent of these projects documenting the foundation's evolution from 1985 to 1996 is to better understand its own work and to glean lessons that might be of use to families contemplating, or beginning, their own foundations.