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Our Philosophy

“High-engagement funding is first and foremost a performance-centered strategy where alignment, reliable money and strategic coaching are used together to convert a grant-making relationship into an accountability relationship that uses power to improve performance.”

Excerpted with permission from “Filling the Performance Gap, High-Engagement Philanthropy,” by Christine W. Letts and William P. Ryan, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Spring 2003.

CLF expects results. CLF's philosophy regarding funding is best captured by the term “high-engagement philanthropy.” Basically, CLF believes that the key to success—and the best way to achieve permanent, positive social change—is through improving the performance of the organizations and projects it funds.

High-engagement philanthropy demands a tremendous investment from both the “funder”—the foundation granting the funds—and the “grantee” or organization on the receiving end. While the funder delivers financial and strategic support, the grantee is required to meet certain performance goals and standards.

This partnership approach to grant funding adds accountability into the philanthropy equation, which translates into a greater likelihood for success.

In “Filling the Performance Gap, High-Engagement Philanthropy,” by Christine W. Letts and William P. Ryan (Stanford Social Innovation Review, Spring 2003), the authors noted three essential elements of High-Engagement Philanthropy:

• Alignment of Interests—To justify and maintain a long-term, highly interactive relationship, the funder and grantee have to share the same goals and interests.

• Reliable Grant Money—To enable grantees to initiate long-term planning and expand programs, a commitment to provide sustained, flexible, reliable funding is required.

• Strategy Coaching—To convert strategy into performance that has true social impact, grantees need ongoing access to and input from funders to discuss ideas, receive support, and evaluate performance.

Through its High-Engagement philosophy, CLF is able to achieve the tangible, lasting results required to truly change lives for the better.

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Our Mission

Funding ideas that fundamentally change lives.

Charitable Leadership Foundation (CLF) supports programs with the power to positively change lives, especially those of low-income individuals and families. To achieve optimum impact, CLF supports innovative programs and organizations that address problems in three key areas:

Education

Goal: Improve early childhood literacy and reading skills through eighth grade; K-12 science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills; and the management, involvement, and engagement of public school students.

Housing

Goal: Support moderate and middle-income homeownership; innovative low-income rental models; volunteer-built and community-developed housing; and long-term supported housing programs.

Medical Affairs

Goal: Explore viable and sustainable options related to healthcare costs for the uninsured, healthcare worker shortages, and healthcare technology, as well as support medical research.

CLF also provides Mini-Grants to charitable organizations for projects and programs that focus on:

• Education (language arts, history, recreation)
• Volunteerism
• Job skills
• Food banks

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Our History

Improving quality of life through innovation, excellence, and a commitment to service.

Charitable Leadership Foundation embodies the vision of the late Herbert Liebich, one of the founding members of Sysco Foods, Inc., a $29.3 billion food service supplier headquartered in Houston, Texas. Before helping launch Sysco, Liebich, an Albany, New York native, founded the former Albany Frosted Foods, Inc.

Liebich lived the classic American Dream. His parents immigrated to New York State from Germany and Liebich and his siblings were raised in humble surroundings on a dirt-poor farm. The family's precarious financial situation got even worse when Liebich's father, a minister, passed away.

From these modest beginnings, Liebich grew to become a powerful and wealthy business man. But he never forgot where he came from and what it was like to grow up poor. He wanted to find a meaningful way to give back to the community, especially to low-income families who lacked adequate housing, medical care, and educational opportunities.

Instead of simply donating money to charities, Liebich wanted to leave a legacy that addressed core issues in the fields of medicine, health, education, literacy, housing for underserved populations, and the enhancement of economic opportunities for low-income people.

He also felt strongly that there had to be a new and better way of funding such noble endeavors. To Liebich, it seemed that foundations traditionally funded the same programs and people over and over again. He wanted to cast a wider net and look for new and innovative projects that normally wouldn't receive funds from other sources. His idea was to create a foundation with no restrictions on grant amounts or types of projects funded. The only requirement was that the proposed ideas had to be innovative solutions to real problems.

From Liebich's vision, Charitable Venture Foundation (CVF), www.charitableventure.org, was born in 1992. While CVF effectively identified, supported, and implemented creative ideas through short-term grants, Herbert Liebich soon determined that a second foundation should be established that would focus on the defined core areas of education, housing, and medical affairs and award larger, longer-term grants designed to bring about systemic change.

In 1996, this second foundation, Charitable Leadership Foundation (CLF) was created. Since its inception, CLF has supported an array of programs intended to accomplish these goals. CLF has worked cooperatively with many notable not-for-profit entities in the Albany area, including Albany Medical Center, College of Saint Rose, Empire State College, Capital Region Food Bank, and Equinox, Inc. It has also funded programs with Rochester Institute of Technology, Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the University of Utah, and New England Medical Center, among others.

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Related Sites

Charitable Venture Foundation

www.charitableventure.org

Charitable Venture Foundation is a related entity that focuses on innovative and entrepreneurial grants that emphasize individual responsibility.