For Immediate Release

INDIANAPOLIS—The Wilbur and Hilda Glenn Family Foundation will give the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University a $1.5 million endowment to create the Glenn Family Innovation Fund, Gene Tempel, executive director of the Center on Philanthropy, announced today.

“We are grateful to the foundation’s president, Thomas K. Glenn, II, and the Glenn family for their generosity and leadership,” Tempel said. “Through their foundation, by creating the Wilbur and Hilda Glenn Institute for Philanthropy and Service Learning at The Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia, and in other endeavors, they have long demonstrated their commitment to personal philanthropy, to philanthropy education, and to ensuring that philanthropy is enriched, sustained and expanded.”

“Tom is a tremendous role model for teaching others to understand philanthropy and helping them to think about and implement philanthropic actions in their own lives,” Tempel added. “The Glenn Family Innovation Fund will allow the Center to further strengthen these traditions and practices in this country and internationally, pushing the boundaries of knowledge and practice of philanthropy.”

The fund will create a permanent stream of infrastructure support that will allow the Center on Philanthropy to respond rapidly to new opportunities, needs and challenges in the nonprofit sector. By providing seed money for experimentation, new ideas and innovative programs, it will enable the Center to remain on the cutting edge, ensuring that philanthropy educators, students and nonprofits have the knowledge, leadership and training they need.

“We are grateful for the opportunity to provide support in this manner,” Glenn said. “The Center is a primary force in philanthropy’s emergence as a new academic discipline. Sophisticated scholarship, combined with altruism of this nature, is a rare combination, and I believe that much will come of the Center’s work. I have great faith in the people involved.”

By establishing this fund at the Center on Philanthropy now, Glenn said, the Wilbur and Hilda Glenn Family Foundation achieves a multiplier effect in two respects. First, the foundation is able to avail itself of generous matching funds from a Lilly Endowment grant for infrastructure endowment and from a grant of endowment made by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which allow the Center to expand the Glenn Family Innovation Fund’s impact. And second, it is able to contribute to a philanthropy-nurturing entity that spurs future philanthropic acts.

Glenn has a strong history of philanthropy both personally and through his foundation. He has been recognized repeatedly for his outstanding philanthropic work, and received the 2004 Philanthropist of the Year award from the Greater Atlanta Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. He led his family’s establishment of the Glenn Institute at The Westminster Schools in Atlanta, which encourages students to grow in their understanding of community service. Working in tandem with the Center on Philanthropy, the Glenn Institute developed The History and Economics of Philanthropy, a for-credit course for high school seniors, one of the first such courses in secondary education.

“Tom’s ongoing support of our work, his leadership on our Board of Visitors and his continued partnership in philanthropy education help nurture and advance the Center’s mission in countless ways,” Tempel said. “We are honored now also to have his family’s name linked with the Center’s future through this visionary fund.”

The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, a part of the IU School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), is a leading academic center dedicated to increasing the understanding of philanthropy, improving its practice, and enhancing participation in philanthropy through research, teaching, public service and public affairs programs in philanthropy, fundraising, and management of nonprofit organizations. It operates programs on the IUPUI and IU Bloomington campuses. More information about the Center on Philanthropy is available at www.philanthropy.iupui.edu.