Great ideas always start with someone. In the case of Community Foundations, which now hold more than 10% of all philanthropic funds in America, it was a Cleveland man named Frederick Harris Goff. Having worked as a litigator for John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil in the early 1900s, and as president of the Cleveland Trust Company, Goff was no stranger to wealth. He also advised families on estate planning and became increasingly concerned about what happened to those estates when the causes they were dedicated to no longer matched the needs of the community. “How fine it would be,” [...more...]