Reflections: CFMT's Beginning as told by Ellen Lehman, Ted Lazenby & Tommy Frist, Jr.

September 24, 1990, I went to lunch with my friend Ida Cooney. She and I had lunch about once a year for 150 years prior to that, and we were sitting at lunch and I was whining to her, moaning about sitting on the board of nonprofit organizations and having executive directors who were overworked and underpaid being responsible for things for which they had no training. I looked at, I was on the board of the Tennessee Repertory Theater and Mack Perkle, who is a wonderful artist, was negotiating employee benefit contracts and managing endowment funds. And Martin Omaker at Family Children's Service was doing the same thing, and I said it's patently ridiculous! These people aren't trained for that. It's unfair of us as a community to expect them to suddenly develop this expertise overnight. And Ida leaned across the table, this was the Cakewalk Restaurant, she leaned across the table and wagged her finger in my face and said in that incredibly gravelly voice, 'What you need to do is start a community foundation.' And I said, 'What's a community foundation?' And she proceeded to give me the, probably 30 second version of it. And I said, 'You're right. That's what we need.' She then proceeded to sort of sit back and say, 'Well, uh, okay.' We talked a little bit more about it. At the end of lunch I said, 'Do you have any information about this?' And followed her back to the then HCA Foundation where she handed me a couple books, Xeroxed some things for me and gave me enough to go home and read. Two days later I was back at her office getting more information and truly found that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. A community foundation is at its heart the community's savings account, charitable savings account. Most charities go out every year raise the money that they use to pay the light bill and raise the money they used to pay salaries. It is - they are charitable checking accounts. And what the community foundation concept brought to a community, or brings to a community is the opportunity for money to come in to be invested, to be safeguarded and to be used over the course of a long period of time to support the charitable needs of the community as they emerge. The first community foundation was created in 1914 in Cleveland, Ohio by a man named Frederick Gough who was, I have heard, a trust department person, a judge, a lawyer, and heaven only knows what else. He saw the need for there to be an opportunity for the dead hand not to control such gifts. He wanted to see that there was a group of civic leaders who were charitably inclined. Again my words, not his, that could make sure that somebody's charitable wishes became a reality. And one of the apocryphal stories, um, which I hope is true because it's wonderful, is that he had seen a couple in rural Ohio who had, had the wonderful intention of alleviating poverty in their county. They left in their will of a bequest and said, 'We want every year, we want money to go to the six poorest people in our county.' It's a wonderful idea. It's a wonderful concept. The reality was that instead of lessening poverty in the county, it increased poverty in the county, because everyone who was poor from miles around moved to that county in a race to the bottom. The wonderful story is, that despite unintended consequences that may be included in the letter of a gift like this, if it's given through a community foundation the spirit becomes just as important, if not more important, than the letter. And when you see those unintended consequences crop up, you can tweak the gift to make sure that the spirit of the gift is protected.

Well, yeah I started out as volunteer and she had been talking to wonderful people like Elizabeth Queener and like Alyne Massey, who had seen what the community foundation concept was doing in Palm Beach. Betty Brown had seen what the community foundation was doing in in Louisville. Judy Liff had seen what the community foundation was doing in other places. We were the last city of any size to get one of these, so there was plenty of wonderful success to draw on. Um, but Ida had been talking about this for years! And had gotten a lot of people interested, but no fool rushed in where angels dared not tread, and I guess I was that fool. But yes, I did start out as a volunteer for the first two and a half years, the foundation's office were in my garage. But we had our first official organizational meeting at what was then Commerce Union I guess. Barbara Chazin and Bob Shell were nice enough to have a luncheon where Ida and Alyne and Ben Rechter and George Bullard and a bunch of other people helped us coalesce a group of 40 philanthropists. 40 civic leaders who we thought we needed to bounce this idea off of. Jim Fry who was the chairman of the board of the Memphis Community Foundation, and Git Smith who was the executive director in Memphis and Alicia Phillip, who was the executive director in Atlanta, all troop to Nashville to help us just lay the idea out for people. And this was the luncheon that Ted Lazenby talked to me about? And this is the luncheon where where among the attendees was Ted Lazenby and he happened to mention to someone he was sitting next to at lunch that, uh, he had just sold his business and was looking for a project, or a new business to start and the light bulb went off. And so we sat around and said you know he'd be a great initial founding chair.

Well, partly by my lack of understanding. And by my, I'm sure she was out lobbying other support people besides Tommy Frist, but HCA, that foundation had to be a key part of it if were going to go at that particular time in the early 80s in this community. And, and, uh, I saw so many demands on the charitable dollar. It was only when it finally got through to me that really, the they're not out, The Community Foundation is not out competing with other 501c3s that have their own fundraisers. They're it's there to complement them and really be a, uh, increasingly important supporter of those others and not another competitive uh, uh charitable organization.

Well, I think not a critic, but a a, a doubting Thomas, and uh, and uh, she was she was absolutely right. Thank God that there was Ida Cooney at a particular time. She's the right woman in, the, right place at the right time. I think that that to this very day, uh, and going out into the future, it will be a, a constant, uh, opportunity, a continuous opportunity, before those of us who believe in The Community Foundation, to educate as broad a group of people within the community as we can. And that could be a new foundation, new sources of wealth. It could be, uh, the agencies themselves are frequently the beneficiaries of the largest of the, uh, The Community Foundation, and those that have contributed to it. But it also is important for people like me and others who feel they know The Community Foundation to constantly be challenging, 'How can I maximize the potential of it?' I'm finding each year that HCA Foundation, that the Frist Foundation the Frist Visual Arts Center and as an individual in my family, can find ways to be more effective in our charitable giving by working with and through The Community Foundation. And then have secondary goals and you don't even tell others, but what Alyne and the board over that Community Foundation, that early leadership, they exceeded any goals I set for it in my mind, uh, considerably, but, but I, uh, at least the ones I talked about. Maybe the ones in my mind I had some thoughts, but they've reached those two.

Yes, yes, yes! Another way of putting it also is, if we didn't have a community foundation today, I would hope Ida Cooney would come back and, and light that spark in our minds, or someone like Ida Cooney, because if you didn't have a community foundation today, you would have to form one. Uh, this community is far better off today, uh, a decade and a half later, than it would have could have possibly been if there hadn't been a community foundation formed.