IU’s Payton to receive 2003 Gardner Leadership Award

 

Payton

Independent Sector, the national leadership forum that fosters private initiative for the public good, has named Robert L. Payton the recipient of the John W. Gardner Leadership Award for his commitment to the study of philanthropy.

The IU professor emeritus of philanthropic studies joins a list of recipients that includes Millard Fuller, founder and president of Habitat for Humanity International, Arthur Mitchell, founder of Dance Theatre of Harlem, handgun control advocates Sarah and James Brady, Marian Wright Edeleman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund, and Father Theodore Hesburgh, former president of the University of Notre Dame.

 

Gardner

Gardner, who died in February 2002, was the founding chairperson of Independent Sector, and the award has special meaning to Payton because Gardner was a friend and a mentor to him for many decades. The award has been presented annually since 1985 and is sponsored by the William Randolph Hearst Foundations.

 

Replica of the John W. Gardner Leadership Award statuette

Gardner once served as president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare; as chairperson of the National Urban Coalition; and as founding chairman of Common Cause. In 1964, he was the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The Gardner Award will be presented to Payton at the organization’s annual meeting in November in San Francisco. He will be cited for his work to increase the understanding of the principles, ethics and professional practice of philanthropy.

Payton was an early proponent of the scholarly study of the nonprofit sector and has advocated for the creation of academic centers at colleges and universities nationwide. As a result of his leadership, the study of "philanthropics" is now taught at nearly 50 research centers, and an estimated 500 colleges offer coursework on some aspect of the sector. Additionally, 250 universities offer degree programs and as many as 50 graduate business schools and schools of public administration offer degree concentrations in nonprofit management.

During the course of his career, Payton has served as president of Exxon Education Foundation, Hofstra University and C.W. Post College, and as the U.S. ambassador to the Federal Republic of Cameroon. He has received six honorary doctoral awards, the most recent the doctor of humane letters, conferred by IU in 2000.

As one of the founders and the first full-time director of the Center on Philanthropy at IU, Payton advocated the study and teaching of philanthropy in higher education, bridging the gap between theory and practice.

"Bob Payton’s work was seminal in the study of philanthropy. Through his legendary efforts, we now have rigorous education programs and research in philanthropy and nonprofit management in the United States and around the world," said Diana Aviv, president and CEO of Independent Sector. "He is a builder of institutions, and like John Gardner, a builder of infrastructure."

Payton has long recognized the importance of research on the sector. He served as the first chair of Independent Sector’s research committee, for which he convened a diverse group of academic researchers and practitioners to lay the foundation for the organization’s work to measure the field of philanthropy.

Through his patronage, the Joseph and Matthew Payton Philanthropic Studies Library at IUPUI, where the IU Center on Philanthropy is headquartered, has an extensive collection of philanthropy materials. Payton also has worked to establish the Ruth Lilly Special Collection and Archives’ Philanthropy Archival Collections of records and papers from leading philanthropic institutions, which, together with the philanthropic studies library, comprise an important resource center for the study of the sector.

He has mentored legions of young emerging and mature leaders in the roots and traditions of philanthropy, creating the Jane Addams-Andrew Carnegie Fellowship program in 1991 and designing the first Executive Leadership Institute for the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

He encouraged the development of the International Society for Third-Sector Research, the principal international scholarly association in the field. As communism began to fall in Eastern Europe, Payton was among the first to begin initiatives there to promote philanthropy and voluntary association as an essential part of civil society and a working democracy.

Harris Wofford, chairman of America’s Promise, received the Gardner Award last year.
http://www.independentsector.org