The Frey Foundation invests in and partners with organizations in west and northern Michigan. It focuses on four pillars: Building community, children and families, community arts and the environment. The foundation’s current chair, Tripp Frey, spoke with Crain Currency about its work and how family foundations have evolved.
The Frey Foundation is a place-based funder. Can you talk about the foundation’s four pillars?
The four grantmaking pillars at the Frey Foundation are really secondary to the fact that we’re a place-based funder, and we’re attempting to drive systemic change. The pillars provide an easy way to organize our grantmaking and allow new grant seekers to see the broad areas that we cover.
In reality, the four pillars cover most topics. Our primary focus is on developing meaningful relationships with our grantee partners so we can deeply understand their needs and help them in any way we can. Obviously, that’s often and primarily through grants. But we also provide connections, capacity building and other resources to give them the best chance of reaching their goals.
Can you share some examples of initiatives the foundation has worked on across those four pillars?
We award more than 100 grants each year across all the program areas, and many examples can be found on our website. But a few that stand out to me are, one: Grand Rapids Whitewater. This project involves improving the Grand River by removing dams, which in turn will enhance water quality, fish passage and recreational opportunities on the river. Moreover, the GRWW movement has inspired other organizations to make the river a priority and a focus. Thus, this is more than an environmental project but a project that checks the building-community pillar, too.
Two, we recently awarded a grant to the YMCA, which is opening a new child care center at the primary hub of the Rapid, our bus system in downtown Grand Rapids. This is a really innovative solution for the problem of not enough child care slots, especially ones that are affordable. It will be very convenient — or sometimes the only feasible option — for parents who use the bus system. This certainly hits the children-and-families bucket.
How does the foundation build partnerships with its grantees?
Building partnerships is a key aspect of our work, and we do our best to approach all work with “trust-based philanthropy.” We’re not just check writers. Frey Foundation staff meet with potential grantees to understand their organizations. We do a lot of listening and, through conversations, attempt to arrive at the solutions that best help the organizations achieve their goals. That might be simply a check; but as noted above, it very well could be a variety of other value-added tools, some of which are as simple as making a new connection.
All of the foundation’s trustees are family members, and the third generation is currently at the helm: Can you share some insights into how the foundation has navigated those generational transitions?
I could spend a lot of time on this topic. Family organizations can be challenging, and the fact that all trustees are family members, as defined by our bylaws, potentially makes it even trickier. At a high level, the second generation made it a priority and had a plan. Was the plan perfect? No, but they spent time to develop and execute a plan to engage the third generation.
Some examples of the plan to bring along the third generation included the ability to sit in on board and investment committee meetings, learning sessions with our investment consultants and site visits to various grantee partners. When it came time, the actual transition to our generation has been pretty smooth. So, I think we need to credit the second generation for that.
Looking ahead, we recently developed a more detailed onboarding road map for future generations, because we have a wide span of ages in the fourth generation. My primary goal was to develop a plan that provided on-ramps for family members to engage at appropriate spots. We want to find out who is interested and to help those that are interested blossom into future leaders. We also encourage family members to gain experience on other boards and through their work and volunteer experiences.
How do you think family foundations have evolved since your grandparents started the Frey Foundation?
The world of philanthropy, including family foundations, has certainly become more sophisticated over the last 50 years. Essentially, they started as check-writing organizations but have evolved like many others into foundations that can deploy many tools. As noted above, some of these tools don’t involve money — such as making new connections or offering our office space to gather.
Other financial tools have emerged over the years as well, and they include program-related investments, loan guarantees, etc. Many foundations are taking a serious look at their endowment and are asking themselves how they can align their corpus with their mission.
What are some of the foundation’s initiatives you are most excited about in 2024?
2024 is the Frey Foundation’s 50th anniversary, and while there is no doubt we’ve done good work the past 50 years, I am beyond excited to see what the next 50 hold. It all starts in 2024, and it’s fitting that our grant pipeline is very full — so many great projects happening at this time.
One key area on which we are focused right now is housing. We’ve made an intentional effort to be out front on this topic and have been successful in lifting the visibility of this need among our community partners. We now have solid data regarding the community needs, and new and innovative solutions are popping up all the time. Housing is a need we all have, and we hope to drive real impact on this topic in the years to come.
How can impact investing help families build lasting legacies?
Impact investing is a bit of a nebulous term. It can mean many different things to many different people. In 2022, we embarked on an “impact investing” journey to understand what that means to us. It was a helpful process, and we got a few clear outcomes. But I’m not sure we have 100% clarity, even after all the time we spent.
Out of our journey, we gave ourselves some guardrails for both some mission-related investment opportunities in our endowment as well as program-related investments. At the end of the day, the foundation’s goal is to drive impact in the communities we serve. And we view our grants essentially as investments. So, hopefully, we’re doing impact investing every day.
The Frey Foundation is the family’s lasting legacy. There is no longer any significant Frey family enterprise, but we are all eternally grateful for the vision of our grandparents, that they saw how a foundation can continue to positively impact the communities they — and us now, too — love very much. We work to honor them and the other members of our family through this work.