2008 Koshland Connect - The San Francisco Foundation

In Conversation
with Bob Friedman
Recently Koshland Program Director Retha Robinson sat
down with Koshland Committee Member Bob Friedman
to discuss his family, philanthropy, and the direction of
the Koshland Program.
Greetings, Bob. Thanks for taking the time to have this conversation.
It’s great to have our Committee members open up
before the public in forums like this newsletter. I’d like to start
by asking you to give us a brief rundown on your background.
First of all, Retha, it’s a pleasure to have this conversation. I am a
fourth generation native of the Bay Area. After growing up here I
heeded the call to go east for university. I spent the next 20 years
on the east coast, completing my undergraduate degree before
continuing on to law school. After graduating I was fortunate
to work with Jimmy Carter, when he was governor of Georgia,
on environmental issues. Then I began my economic development
work and founded the nonprofit Corporation for Enterprise
Development to open up pathways to the mainstream economy
for low-income, and often marginalized, communities.
For readers who aren’t aware, Dan Koshland, one of the founders
of The San Francisco Foundation and the inspiration for and
namesake of the Koshland Program, was your grandfather. So I
see this entrepreneurial spirit of philanthropy runs in the family.
Any philanthropic values I have really begin with my grandfather’s
example, and then were sustained through the influence
of my parents. My grandfather was a tremendous person – he
often described himself as an abnormally normal human being.
You only had to meet him to appreciate who he was and his devotion
to the Bay Area. I revered him. He was a very funny guy and
believed having a good sense of humor meant you had the ability
to laugh at yourself.
Did you get to spend a lot of time with your grandfather?
I was in my twenties when he died. When I was growing up we
lived close to him, so he was a big influence. After I graduated
from college I wasn’t sure what to do with my career. I went to
see my grandfather and asked for his advice. He said to go speak
with his good friend Lew Butler. I asked him, “What does Lew
Butler do?” He said, “I don’t know, but he’s just like you, he wants
to change the world.”
After meeting Lew and realizing what an incredible person he
was, I decided the job I wanted was to work for him, which I did
for a year. So in the end I followed my grandfather’s advice. He
loved people in all their diversity, he really saw across racial and
class lines. Of his own philanthropy, he said others may see it as
altruistic, but he saw it as extremely selfish because it gave him
so much pleasure. After he passed away, Lew Butler and other
leaders of the community were key proponents of establishing
the Koshland Program to honor him.
It must have been a special honor for the family, having him
recognized like that.
My grandfather felt blessed by the Bay Area community. He
believed in government, civic unity, community, and social services.
I think it is telling that he was so instrumental in setting up
a community foundation, not a private one.
The Koshland Program gets his spirit right. It is a neighborhoodbased
program that embraces diverse communities, believes in
the power of civic unity, and focuses on unsung heroes who are
entrusted with granting money as they see fit within their own
neighborhood. The original Koshland Committee had these concepts
grafted into the DNA of the program.
Was this a great influence on you when you created the
Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED)?
When I founded CFED 30 years ago, the basic belief driving the
work was that low-income people have much more capacity than
they have opportunity. Fundamentally, the approach to relieving
poverty in the 20th century was creating social safety nets like
welfare and the Social Security program. While these may take
care of people, they don’t provide a way out of poverty and often
inadvertently trap families in a cycle of poverty. So what I’ve been
interested in is opening up paths to economic independence and
creating opportunities for these individuals to be producers and
creators of wealth, not just consumers. I thought I was doing
something new in promoting this idea of self-sufficiency, then I
realized it was all a part of my grandfather’s legacy.
It’s interesting how the circle connects. After living on the East
Coast, you returned to the Bay Area. How long have you been
involved with the Koshland Committee, and how did you get
involved?
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