Just about a year ago, The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee (CFMT) announced Hal Cato would become their new CEO effective November 2022.
Cato is a highly regarded visionary who previously served as the CEO of Thistle Farms. His footprints are visible across Nashville from his work to establish and expand Hands on Nashville early in his career, to leading and growing Oasis Center. In between his multiple nonprofit ventures, Cato garnered corporate experience, for example as the founder and CEO of Zeumo, a healthcare communications company.
The Contributor interviewed Cato as part of our A Few Questions With series where we interview local leaders about their experiences in Nashville.
How were your first few months at CFMT?
The first eight months have been to listen, to learn, and to get to know my team, get to know our board and get a sense for where the community needs us to go right now. I wanted to come in and meet as many people as I possibly could to hear [about] their experiences with the Community Foundation. Where we disappointed them, where we’ve confused them — really just understand how they see us, how they would like to see us, and what they would like the Community Foundation to do better. And it’s going to be very different from where we’ve been.
Do you already have an idea what direction CFMT will take?
I think the role of a community foundation — and this is going to sound funny — is to make a community more of a community. The most important word in the name is Community and not Foundation. It is to operate less like a charitable bank where we are managing donor dollars and just sending [those dollars] to where they want. [We need to be] much more of a community leader where we step humbly into spaces where we can start weaving together providers, especially those who are newer and have ideas that are overlooked because they are not in one of the big powerful organizations. How can we match their energy and ideas with our donor dollars? And then what are the most pressing issues the community is facing? That’s where this foundation should stand, and that hasn’t always been the case. I don’t have a specific [plan that says] we’re going to fix this or that. We’re now building a new strategic framework that will establish our priorities. But I’m not ready to say what they are yet.
What is the one goal you’d like to have achieved through CFMT?
Whenever there is a disaster, CFMT has always been that first responder that stepped up, that identified the needs, that mobilized the dollars that got people thinking how I can help. Why do we have to wait for a disaster to be that responder? We have disasters every day in this community, looking at our unhoused population, looking at early childhood,…. How can we mobilize the community to meet those needs in a way that they feel good about and that is transparent? That’s what I want to do, create better partnerships with nonprofit organizations. I don’t like the word grantee. Changing that language where they truly are a partner, and where we understand what they’re trying to do and how we can come up alongside and support that agenda and not the other way around. It’s really democratizing philanthropy as best we can that’s not happening now.
There seems to be a lot of change in community organizations including CFMT, Hands on Nashville, the Center for Nonprofit Management (CNM), a new mayoral administration, etc. What are the opportunities for Nashville you see in these leadership shifts?
For the last few years, each of these organizations have operated in silos. Yes, we may come together and have lunch or breakfast now and then, but there hasn’t been a true spirit of collaboration between all of us. And knowing our new Mayor like I do, seeing CNM having really been humbled and now redefining where they want to go, Community Foundation the same — we have an opportunity to come together. I think the most powerful question any community can ask is, “What do we want to do together that none of us can do on our own?” And bringing that group together, putting that question on the table, and answering it in a way that’s honest, could be transformative for this community.
I went and met with the United Way Board months ago, and I talked about this new spirit of collaboration between United Way and The Community Foundation that I am really committed to. I described what I call the golden triangle of collaboration, and it’s a shared vision, trust, and humility. If you have all those three in place, there is no limit to what can be done. You take any issue in this town, and you put trust, a shared vision, and humility in the room, and things will happen. Though we haven’t had those three things between the Mayor’s Office, The Community Foundation, CNM, and United Way. We’ve just been doing our own thing. So, I really see the leadership transition as an opportunity to start fresh.
And you have to be in dialogue. You have to be in community. You don’t just get together once a quarter and check in. You really have to invest in the relationship piece, and that’s what I’m committed to doing and I hope the others will be as well.
Do we have enough accountability built in for what we’re funding in Nashville?
That’s a really interesting question. It starts with defining accountability and making sure that we’re on the same page there. I’ll just speak for philanthropy. Philanthropy traditionally has been mostly accountable to the donor and the board, whether that’s the family whose money we’re giving away or the folks we’ve collected money from. The community may have been secondary.
How do we change that model?
I think The Community Foundation, just by the nature of our name, has to be more accountable to the community first. That means being very deliberate and understanding the problems first, and that comes from sitting with those who have the lived experience and the expertise who know what works and what’s not working now and then building funding systems and streams that address those [issues] — and not the other way around.
So, do we have enough accountability now? I don’t think we do. And it’s going to take a real shift to get there. Now, for government and other institutions, it’s a different thing. [Whom] are they accountable to? Is it the taxpayer? Is it the department head? I don’t know. It’s a fascinating question.
I do see a lot more transparency in government, obviously, than I do in philanthropy. It would be great if we were all playing from the same playbook. I really want to have a report that we’re issuing every few years that really is Nashville’s vital signs. How are we doing as a city? So that we’re all looking at the same data and what data means for business, for government, for philanthropy, for the private sector. We kind of write our own viewpoints, and it’s confusing a lot of people. Donors don’t know anymore what to believe or [whom] to believe.
What do you see CFMT’s role is in addressing homelessness?
I’ve been thinking about our engagement and funding in our community in three ways. What are we doing downstream, midstream and upstream?
Downstream is how and where we serve those who need help today and tonight. Upstream is where we lean in on practice and policy level changes that address some of the bigger issues driving community conditions. Midstream, to me, is how we’re bringing people together to collaborate and connect policy change and direct services.
So, [in regard to homelessness] downstream I see that we need to be more involved in Housing First … and making sure that those organizations that are doing the best job of it are getting the funding that they need. Since most of our funding is donor-directed, I want to make sure fund holders know what’s working and what’s not in regard to helping our unhoused neighbors. We need to be a lot more communicative with them, help them understand the problem and see how they could be a part of the solution.
At midstream I would love to see how we come together with other foundations and pool funding. The philanthropic community in Nashville has historically not collaborated on big issues and there are big things we could do together that none of us can do on our own.
Upstream, it’s more housing, preserving housing, and preventing people from losing existing housing. The question is how we are doing it faster.
Foundations obsess over their 5-percent payout each year. We have these big endowments, and we give away 5 percent each year. What about the other 95 percent, and how that’s invested? And how we’re investing has an impact on the community as well. So, I would like to see a lot more program-related investments. For example, The Community Foundation is getting ready to lean into a new catalyst fund that we’re setting up that will invest in mission-oriented developers who want to preserve naturally occurring housing and then build affordable housing. We’ll do that by making low-interest loans. That’s a lot cheaper capital than they could get from financial institutions. But we’re leveraging our endowment to do that. It still creates a return for us. It’s a smaller return than in the market, [but] it gives developers part of the capital that they need to build affordable housing. I think it’s direct service. It’s how we’re collaborating and coming together, and it’s how we fund more housing.
Also, take a stand, too – a moral stand for this issue [of homelessness] and speak out. And when we’re looking at public policy and advocacy, [let’s make sure] that we’re there speaking about it and not being silent. Historically, philanthropy has been silent.
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