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About Us
Our Philosophy
“High-engagement funding is first and foremost a performance-centered strategy where alignment, reliable money, and strategic coaching are used together to convent 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.
CVF expects results. The Foundation's philosophy regarding funding is best captured by the term “high-engagement philanthropy.” Basically, CVF 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, CVF is able to achieve the tangible, lasting results required to truly change lives for the better.
Cultivating small projects with the potential to make a big impact.
Charitable Venture Foundation (CVF) works to address the problems of society and education through innovative and entrepreneurial means, which emphasize individual responsibility. In order to achieve this goal, CVF awards grants, loans, and technical assistance to legally incorporated, IRS 501(c)(3) charitable organizations for a broad range of projects and programs related to its mission.
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Improving quality of life through innovation, excellence, and a commitment to service.
Charitable Venture 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) was born in 1992. Since its inception, CVF has supported an array of programs intended to accomplish these goals. CVF has worked cooperatively with many notable not-for-profit entities in the Albany area, including Council of Community Services of NYS, Inc., SUNY Albany, College of Saint Rose and Albany Law School. It has also funded programs with Equinox, Inc., Regional Food Bank of NENY, Capital Region Sponsor-A-Scholar, and Senior Services of Albany, among others.
While CVF has effectively identified, supported, and implemented creative ideas through short-term grants, in 1996 Liebich 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. For more information on CLF, visit the foundation’s Web site at www.charitableleadership.org.
Charitable Leadership Foundation
www. charitableleadership.org
Charitable Leadership Foundation (CLF) is a related entity that focuses on innovative programs and organizations that address problems in three key areas: Education, Housing and Medical Affairs.