VENICE – When Phillip Lanham walked into the Venice office on his first day as president and CEO of the Gulf Coast Community Foundation, he found the staff had decorated his desk with a fluorescent palm tree, a fluorescent flamingo, a Bearcats Boulevard sign – homage to his alma mater and its mascot, the University of Cincinnati Bearcats – as well as a nod to the “Queen City” staple Skyline Chili.
Lanham was born and raised in the Cincinnati area, got a taste of philanthropy while working in the University of Cincinnati alumni office, and spent the past 12 years at the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, which had a total of nearly $1 billion in assets – 52% of that endowed.
He served as chief philanthropy officer before being tapped as the fifth person to ever lead Gulf Coast, a 28-year-old foundation, created in 1995 as the Venice Foundation with seed money from the sale of the community’s Venice Hospital to Bon Secours Health Systems.
Since then, Gulf Coast and its donors have invested more than $510 million in the community.
Lanham, 47, formally started June 1, and succeeded Mark Pritchett, who served as CEO for about half of his 14-year tenure in Venice.
Lanham is renting an apartment on Golden Gate Point in Sarasota while he gets to know the area, and traveling frequently to Cincinnati, where his wife Tami and their youngest son Chase will remain until Chase finishes his senior year in high school.
Their older son, Grant, is at the University of Virginia, where he is an offensive lineman on the football team.
Lanham said so far it’s been easy to fly back to Cincinnati, but will also have to fit in trips to Charlottesville to attend home football games.
The family knows the area somewhat – they were vacationing on Anna Maria Island when he signed his contract with Gulf Coast – and Chase has already given two thumbs up to the Skyline Chili restaurant in Lakewood Ranch.
The Herald-Tribune spoke with Lanham about his new role at the Gulf Coast Community Foundation. The questions and responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.
What attracted you to the Gulf Coast Community Foundation job?
“I knew a little bit through Kirstin (Fulkerson, Gulf Coast’s senior vice president for philanthropy) because we were in the same networking group for community foundations,” Lanham said, adding that “the warmth and support I felt from the search committee was the thing that made me take it seriously.
“The leadership approach that this community foundation takes in creating change in the community and partnership with donors is what I think is the power of a community foundation.
“I don’t think the power of a community foundation is just to do transactions – it’s to lead with information from the community on what are the greatest opportunities in that community and that is what this community foundation values.
“It comes back to the people,” he added. “Those are the people on the board, on the staff, the community leaders I met during the recruiting process and the culture of philanthropy that they cherish is what attracted me to the region. The beaches are nice, the climate was nice – all those things – but it was really the people who sealed the deal for me.”
What has the transition been like, working with Mark Pritchett?
“He is one of the nicest human beings, very supportive – it wasn’t anything technical, it was all issue-based and relationship in the community” Lahham said, noting that he has also been able to talk with Pritchett’s predecessor, Teri Hansen, the president and CEO of the Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation.
“I have spent some time with Teri; she’s been nothing but gracious and supportive,” Lanham said. “ She comes from Cleveland Foundation so we both have that in common, coming from Ohio foundations.”
While one of Lanham’s roles involved networking with other foundations, he noted that the array of larger foundations in the Sarasota-Manatee area – including Barancik, the Community Foundation of Sarasota County, Manatee Community Foundation, Selby Foundation and The Patterson Foundation – creates a unique situation.
“There’s a lot of foundations in Cincinnati as well but not the size of these,” Lanham said. “”Barancik is just massive compared to foundations in Cincinnati.
“When I talked about the culture of philanthropy having other foundations are part of that, not just the individuals behind them.
“It speaks to how charitable this community is and wants to invest its assets,” Lanham said. “I really believe this entire region punches above its weight class because of that investment – both from the government and philanthropists investing in it.
“That’s why we have the arts scene that we have, things like Selby Gardens and other great anchors that I”m getting to know better, is because of philanthropy.”
What was your signature accomplishment with the Greater Cincinnati Foundation?
“I had been there for almost 12 years, I was responsible for our relationships with our donors, private foundations, professional advisors and some key nonprofits,” Lanham said. “The thing I’m most proud of that is unique is the impact investment program, which is similar to taking a portion of the corpus of the endowment and deploying it into the community through low-interest loans to nonprofits so they can accelerate their missions.
“We were successful in creating an impact investment pool for affordable housing which created, since 2020, over 900 units of affordable housing,” he added. “It’s not just the money we put in, it’s the money donors put in, corporate foundations put in and then the Fed matched some of it, so our $1 million at GCF turned into $13.5 million of additional investment into the community because of the leveraging effect.”
Why low-interest loans instead of grants?
“Grants follow a spending policy,” Lanham said. “We’re prudent in how the resources are deployed because the donors who left the resources for us wanted to create an endowment, which means it will last forever.
“When you are able to make the low-interest loans it’s going to come back and be recycled again or put in the market and create grants again,” he added. “ So you’re still being prudent and following the donor’s wishes without it being gone from the corpus of the endowment.”
What made the Impact Investment Program successful?
“A lot of things made it successful,” Lanham said. “The first and foremost was we had research that showed the issue in the community. It’s an issue across this country, it’s an issue in this community was the need for more affordable housing units and having good partners in the community who knew what they were doing and could leverage and know where to go to get federal money
“So we had proof of concept with our first million,” he added. “And once we started proving it out the money kept flowing and flowing and flowing until it grew into that $13.5 million.”
What do you see as the core mission of the Gulf Coast Community Foundation in the foreseeable future?
“Every community foundation is created to create a better region,” Lanham said. “We’ve taken it a little further than that and really want to focus on creating opportunities for everyone who wants to call this place home and that is what our mission is. What really touches me is to make this a better place for my family now that we call this place home.”
‘Our three core areas from a community investment perspective are affordable housing, environment with a focus on water quality and mental health,” he added. “Those are key areas where we want to focus. We still support the arts, we still support other things but those are the areas where we spend a lot of time and attention.”
What programs do you want to bring to Gulf Coast?
“I am still in learner mode and being a sponge and try to absorb everything until I make a direct recommendation or plan with the board,” Lanham said. “I do want us to explore the possibility of doing impact investing here – it’s just a great way of leveraging endowment and creating a large impact and staying true to the endowment.
“My understanding is Gulf Coast has done it in the past on a smaller scale,” he added. “In Cincinnati there was a full-fledged community impact investment program and it was the first community foundation in the nation to invite donors to join them in their impact investment program – that was in 2011.
“Affordable housing is near and dear to my heart both in Cincinnati and knowing that there are tools and experiences I had that could help bring tools to our tool belt, like the impact investing that I mentioned earlier,” Lanham said. “I just could see how I could add value to the conversation here in Sarasota County.”
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