Donate Used Car To Charity

Donate Used Car To Charity Biography

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We have a saying here that no two days at The Community Foundation are the same,” Ellen Lehman explains with a smile, attempting to describe a “typical” day at Middle Tennessee’s premier grant-making organization. From meeting with donors to planning new initiatives to signing thank-you notes, the president’s day-to-day activities are all deeply entwined with what she calls “the charitable goals and dreams” of the Middle Tennessee community. After 17 years of working to simplify the charitable giving process for both contributors and recipients, Lehman is still just as excited and passionate about her work as she was back in 1991, when she was a new mother operating a new foundation out of her garage.

“Our vision when we began,” Lehman says, “was to bring good people and good causes together in a way that had meaning for both parties. It was always our belief that philanthropy is a two-way street, that it brought joy and blessings to those who gave in addition to those who received. We knew — we know — that it’s very easy for people not to participate in charitable giving. Unless they feel good and it has meaning for them, it’s too easy for them to stop.”

Where It Began

A self-described “product of the Nashville Public Schools,” Lehman left Nashville to attend college, eventually receiving a master’s degree in public management and public enterprise. She worked in New York for a quintessential public-private partnership, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, where she helped on security at the World Trade Center and LaGuardia Airport and helped launch a satellite communications fiber optic office park called “The Teleport.” After attending business school — where she met her future husband — Lehman returned to her hometown eager to put her time spent away to use working for the community she loved.

Volunteer stints with Family & Children’s Service and the Tennessee Repertory Theatre soon led to the realization that Nashville needed something most other cities already had: an organization to handle the nuts and bolts of managing charitable giving. “My experience in moving back, having been away 13 years,” Lehman explains, “was that we were asking these phenomenal people working in the nonprofit sector in Nashville and in Middle Tennessee to not only do the social work and not only perform in theatrical presentations, and not only run nonprofit organizations, but to also become investment managers.” Created in part to remove that burden from nonprofit operations, The Community Foundation currently manages more than 660 funds with assets of more than $420 million.

A Group Effort

While she acknowledges that “Community Foundation” and “Ellen Lehman” are often considered synonymous, Lehman is quick to credit others with the organization’s success, praising the original group of civic leaders who helped found it as well as past and current members of the board. In addition, she attributes her interest in charitable giving to her parents and the “dinner table conversations” that took place when she was growing up.

“My father was involved and is involved in the corporate life of this community and in the private sector, and my mother was very involved and continues to be in the public sector and in political activity as a form of civic responsibility,” Lehman says. “My work with The Community Foundation has given me the opportunity to combine those two parts of that dinner table conversation — to run a charitable organization that combines business systems and opportunities with the heart of a charity and with the intent and the goal of public service. That is the wonderful nexus at which I find myself.”

Lehman’s children, now teenagers, have learned by example when it comes to giving back. Each Christmas they receive a set amount to be donated to the charity of their choice, and for many years have asked friends to bring items such as dog food for the Nashville Humane Society instead of gifts to birthday parties. Both teens are working this summer for nonprofit programs assisting at-risk youth. Lehman sees her family’s participation in these kinds of activities as part of the legacy all Middle Tennesseans have the opportunity to provide.

“Everyone who lives in Middle Tennessee needs to feel a sense of responsibility, a sense of gratitude, a sense of opportunity” Lehman says, “to make this community that they’ve chosen to call home the best that it can be.” The foundation that began in her garage back in 1991 has gone a long way toward making that possible, and the principles that guide it also seem to guide its leader.

“The older models [of charitable giving] sometimes focus on obligation instead of opportunity,” Lehman says. “They sometimes focus on allegiance as opposed to issues, and they’re pretty much driven by who asks. The Community Foundation represents an entirely different way of giving. It focuses on joy, it focuses on opportunity. It focuses on the ability to make a difference and have an impact.”