WWW.CFSJC.ORG • (574) 232-0041 • 205 W. JEFFERSON BLVD., SUITE 610 • SOUTH BEND, IN 46601

FEBRUARY 2014 CONNECTING PEOPLE WHO CARE WITH CAUSES THAT MATTER

Group Violence Intervention: Collaborating to Reduce HomicidesThe Community Foundation, the City of South Bend, and more than 30 other key stakeholders in the community come together to tackle one of our biggest challenges.

There’s nothing more wonderful than a proven model. It changes the question from “What should we do about this problem?” to “How can we do what they’re doing, only better?”

That’s why the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County is helping to fund and coordinate the South Bend Group Violence Intervention (GVI), a promising new partnership among representatives from the Mayor’s Anti-Violence Coalition, local law enforcement, government, education, health care, and social service agencies.

The problem: gun violence. Each year, somewhere in the range of eight to 16 people are shot dead in our community.

Scores more are injured by gunfire, often permanently. Most of the victims and the perpetrators are young black men who are involved in groups or gangs. Only a very small percentage of our community’s young black men are engaged in violent behavior, and law enforcement and community members generally know who they are.

The cost of this violence is devastating. Lives are wasted, either through death or prison. Hearts are broken. Mothers are deprived of their sons, and children are deprived of their fathers. All young black men are stigmatized because of the crimes of a few. Entire neighborhoods fall into steep decline because they are deemed unsafe.

David Kennedy speaks with a group of 12 African-American community leaders, including (from left) Bobbie Woods, Marion Fulce, Gladys Muhammad, and Lynn Coleman.

HIGHLIGHTS

Please join all of us at the Community Foundation in congratulating Chris Nanni, our VP, Program, who has accepted an exciting professional opportunity with the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham, Alabama.

Starting February 17, Chris will be taking over as the president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham. The organization has assets of approximately $175 million and a staff of 18.

“Working at the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County for the past 10 years has been the best preparation I could have had,” Chris says. “Our foundation is unique in our willingness to take on complex, challenging community issues, as opposed to simply passing dollars through to nonprofits. That’s the future of community foundations—having a bigger impact.”

He and Allie and their three children will be moving to Birmingham in the next few weeks. If you would like to wish Chris well, you can email him at nanni.chris@gmail.com. Our community will miss him.

continued on p. 3Chris Nanni speaks at the dedication of the Pfeil Pfountain at Potawatomi Park, 2013.

The problem: gun violence. Each year, somewhere in the range of eight to 16 people are shot dead in our community.

COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY • PAGE 2

Greg and Mary Downes met in the early ‘70s, when both were teaching—Mary in the Elkhart schools, and Greg at South Bend’s St. Casimir school, on the city’s West side. They married the same year they met.

“Our second date was our rehearsal dinner,” Mary says, laughing.

For more than a decade, Mary taught with the Elkhart, Oregon-Davis, and Warsaw school corporations, and then her career took a turn into politics. After working with South Bend’s Mayor Joe Kernan on youth programs, Mary became Joe’s Chief of Staff when he was elected Lieutenant Governor of Indiana in 1996. She remained in that role until 2002. When Governor Frank O’Bannon died and Joe became Governor the following year, Mary left her position as principal of South Bend’s Adams High School to rejoin him as Chief of Staff.

Greg’s career path led from education

into insurance. Previously President and CEO, Greg is now Chairman of the Board with Gibson Insurance, where he’s been for more than 30 years.

In the early 1990s, Dave Gibson—Greg’s business partner and mentor—asked Greg to become a founding member of the Marshall County Community Foundation. (The Downeses were living in Plymouth at the time.) Through his service there, Greg became a staunch proponent of the community foundation concept of geographically-defined endowed philanthropy.

Their involvement with the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County began around 2005, after Mary had left the state capitol and returned to South Bend. She and Greg heard good things about the organization from their attorney, Greta Roemer Lewis, as well as friends Tom Varga and Karl King.

“I think Rose asked me to have coffee,” Mary says, with a smile, “and it just grew from there.”

Mary’s relationship with the Community Foundation includes service on the grants committee,

Focusing on Our Donors: Greg and Mary DownesGreg and Mary partner with the Community Foundation to further their commitment to this community.

leadership roles with the Lilly and the Laidig scholarship committees, and eight years (and counting) on the Foundation’s Board.

“My time on the grants committee really reinforced how many great nonprofits our community has,” Mary says. “The big ones, of course”—together, she and Greg tick through a list that includes the YWCA, the Center for the Homeless, REAL Services, the Boys and Girls Club, the United Way, and South Bend Heritage, all of which the Downeses have been personally involved with—“but there are also so many excellent smaller organizations that are less known, like Stone Soup and La Casa de Amistad.”

The two of them created the Greg and Mary Downes Fund, a donor-advised fund with the Community Foundation, in 2009. With Greg’s encouragement, Gibson Insurance started a donor-advised fund three years later.

Both funds are very broad in focus, reflecting Greg and Mary’s personal commitment to supporting the community wherever the need is greatest—both now and into the future.

“Over time, needs change,” Greg says, “and we like that the Community Foundation has the flexibility to respond to those changes. “

Both Greg and Mary appreciate the Foundation’s role as a convener, bringing representatives of local nonprofits together to sit down, develop relationships, and—through programs like the Community Foundation’s Nonprofit Executive Leadership Program, created in partnership with Notre Dame—learn new skills that

continued on back cover

“My time on the grants committee really reinforced how many great nonprofits our community has,” Mary says.

WWW.CFSJC.ORG • (574) 232-0041 • 205 W. JEFFERSON BLVD., SUITE 610 • SOUTH BEND, IN 46601

PAGE 3

The solution: the Group Violence Intervention developed by David Kennedy, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City and co-chair of the National Network for Safe Communities.

Because most community violence is caused by a very small number of people, it’s possible to intervene. According to Kennedy, “The cities that recognize this fact are creating community-based interventions with a laser-like focus on the people and places driving violence.”

The GVI relies on direct communication with the people who are most likely to shoot or get shot.

This communication happens through a “call-in” during which law enforcement representatives, influential community members, and social service providers deliver a clear message: The violence is hurting our community and has to stop. Help will be offered to those who choose to stop the violence. Local law enforcement agencies will work together to ensure consequences are severe for those who don’t. As Chief of Police Ron Teachman describes it, “We will help you if you let us. We will stop you if you make us.”

When GVI is properly implemented, violence is dramatically reduced. To help ensure South Bend achieves the same results as cities such as Chicago and Cincinnati, a group of local funders has retained David Kennedy and his team at John Jay College to provide intensive training, technical assistance, and peer-learning exchanges. In

Collaborators in the South Bend Group Violence Intervention—pictured here in a recent meeting with David Kennedy and his team—include representatives from the Mayor’s Anti-Violence Coalition, local law enforcement, government, education, healthcare, and social service agencies.

addition to the Community Foundation and the African American Community Fund, funders include Memorial Hospital, Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center, the Judd Leighton Foundation, and the University of Notre Dame.

“One priority of the African American Community Fund is to address the special challenges facing young black males,” says AACF Chair Dr. Virginia Calvin. “This effort will help the people and neighborhoods most affected by gun violence.”

These funders value the Group Violence Intervention approach because it is a not a short-term program but rather a long-term strategy that will change South Bend’s approach to reducing community violence from now on.

For more information on how you can support the Group Violence Intervention and other important initiatives like it, visit www.cfsjc.org or call Rose Meissner, president of the Community Foundation, at (574) 232-0041.

Because most community violence is caused by a very small number of people, it’s possible to intervene.

continued from p. 1

WHY DOES GVI WORK?

The strategy has three key elements that address what really drives violence on the street, including the dynamics between and within groups:

1. It communicates to street groups the community’s strong desire that the violence stop, and it tells group members that they are valued and the community wants them to succeed.

2. It creates certain, credible, group-wide consequences for homicides and shootings. Because groups drive violence, a group focus for legal consequences is more meaningful than an individual focus.

3. It offers help to group members who want to change.

(From Group Violence Intervention FAQs, National Network for Safe Communities)

P.O. BOX 837SOUTH BEND, IN 46624

Non Profit Org.

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South Bend, IN

Permit No. 360

ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED

JOB OPPORTUNITY

The Community Foundation of St. Joseph County is seeking a talented individual to provide administrative support to all departments and to ensure that the office operations of the Foundation are managed in a professional, efficient, and timely manner. Candidates should have at least two years relevant experience providing administrative support, and have excellent administrative and secretarial skills, as well as advanced organizational and project management skills. Salary commensurate with experience.

A full position description is available under “About Us” at www.cfsjc.org.

increase their organizations’ capacity.

Also, Mary is very enthusiastic about the Foundation’s current work with the Group Violence Intervention, an initiative developed with the City of South Bend and more than 30 other stakeholders to reduce violence in our community (see full story on page 1).

“I was really glad to see the Community Foundation jump in on this,” says Mary. “Having the Foundation lead this effort takes the ‘politics’ out of it.”

In the future, Greg hopes to see the Community Foundation extend its work in education, building on its successes in early childhood education to address some of the challenges facing middle

schools and high schools—particularly, the low number of girls who pursue STEM education.

Both feel that the Foundation has been an ideal partner for furthering their commitment to the community.

“When the Community Foundation gets behind something, it adds tremendous credibility to the project. It provides a voice, as well as money and expertise,” Mary says. “It’s a real force.”

“No organization in our community is more trusted,” says Greg, “than the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County.”

Like Greg and Mary Downes, you can create a fund that will strength our community forever. Visit www.cfsjc.org or call Rose Meissner, president of the Foundation, at (574) 232-0041.

continued from p. 2

“Over time, needs change,” Greg says, “and we like that the Community Foundation has the flexibility to respond.”