Joel Fleishman, 1934 – 2024

From the NY Times yesterday:

Joel Fleishman, whose prominence as an expert on philanthropy was only the most public side of a man whose wide network of friends in high places, immense fund-raising talents and deep knowledge of subjects like classical music and fine wine made him an unparalleled influencer among the nation’s wealthy and powerful, died on Monday in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 90.  A close friend, Adam Abram, said he died in a hospital of complications of a fall.

Mr. Fleishman was perhaps best known as a groundbreaking scholar in the field of philanthropy studies; he was among the first to insist that foundations can and should measure the impact of their giving, and that they should be measured by it. His 2007 book, “The Foundation: A Great American Secret,” helped catalyze a wave of changes in the way private philanthropies operate. It showed both that they were integral to progress and that they often failed to achieve their promise.  “I consider foundations a major force for good in American society,” he wrote. Yet, he continued, “they operate within an insulated culture that tolerates an inappropriate level of secrecy and even arrogance in their treatment of grant-seekers, grant-receivers, the wider civic sector and the public officials charged with oversight. This needs to change.”

After arriving at Duke University in 1971 at the behest of its president, the former North Carolina governor Terry Sanford, Mr. Fleishman helped build its school of public policy, one of the first in the nation. He later became a senior vice president of the university. For decades he taught a class on philanthropy and the law, to which he invited presidents of the country’s top foundations to speak.

. . . 

After being lured back to North Carolina by Mr. Sanford, who took over as Duke’s president in 1970, Mr. Fleishman set out to build a program melding the law, social policy and public management. That was a novel idea at the time, but it has become a standard feature at many of the nation’s top universities.

darryll k. jones