Written by Deborah Levine, Editor of the American Diversity Report

Pete Cooper is a speaker at the June Commencement of the Global Leadership Class. Pete was chosen because of his dedication to diversity and his commitment to community building as the CEO of The Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga. Here is a reminder of his career for those who know him and an introduction to those who have yet to do so. The Community Foundation began as an all-volunteer organization in 1963 and was administered by the Benwood Foundation. Virtually dormant until hiring its first employee in 1990, the Foundation chose Pete Cooper, a Senior V.P. for SunTrust Bank in charge of the Charitable Trust Department. “I went to a foundation with no office, no telephone, no credit rating and only about $8,000 for grant making.

Today, there are 7 full time employees at the Community Foundation with many phones and 1 million dollars that can be used in the grant-making process. Planned gifts in the pipeline total hundreds of millions of dollars. Pete predicts, “At some point, the Community Foundation will be the charitable capital of Greater Chattanooga.” When Pete became the CEO, there had been little thought given to the mission or the principles of the Foundation. There were no policies governing the characteristics, accessibility and the personality of the organization. Pete took that blank slate and has written volumes on it, transforming the foundation in the process. “One of the blessings I had was to set the tone of relationships with staff, donors, board, grantees. You either do it intentionally or it gets done for you.”

The tone of those relationships resonates with Pete’s sense of social justice. He moved to Chattanooga when he was 5 years old and recalls going through public school without seeing a black face during that highly segregated time. “Social justice is the right thing to do,” Pete declares as he describes how in the 1950s, there were only 3 places in town where Blacks and White could have mixed meetings. Those places were 1.) Black churches, 2.) St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and 3.) Siskin Memorial Foundation (Siskin Children's Institute) (founded by two Jewish brothers). “One of my greatest honors was when Garrison Siskin chose me to replace Mose Siskin when he passed away. I was 26 years old and the appointment was a public announcement that I was a community leader.”

Pete has used his leadership to serve diverse populations. The Community Foundation adopted a Diversity Policy in 2001 designed to make every-day decisions point in the same direction: “The Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga’s mission is to encourage giving and inspire action to improve lives in the Chattanooga area. The foundation believes it can best achieve its mission if it is governed and staffed by individuals from diverse backgrounds, beliefs and perspectives and if it collaborates with organizations and individuals from diverse backgrounds, beliefs and perspectives. For the Community Foundation, diversity encompasses, but is not limited to, age, gender, race, national origin, religious beliefs and background, physical abilities, sexual orientation, and economic circumstances.”

Many organizations that deal with aspects of diversity have benefitted from Foundation grants. For example, race relations were listed as a program area for a decade and helped fund diversity training at the school system. The Foundation has assisted the St. Andrews Center which is at the forefront of the emerging Latino population. Its Director, Rev. Mike Feeley, was given an unsolicited grant to facilitate meeting between diverse groups in the area. By providing for the basic needs of these meetings, postage, food and other supplies, the Foundation serves as a catalyst for community building. Also, given the Foundation’s philosophy that education is a great equalizer, it’s not surprising that it provides need-based college scholarships, particularly for minority students.

The Foundation’s assistance isn’t solely financial. The Community Foundation has incubated a variety of diverse programs. The Foundation staff helped launch the local CultureFest, a leadership class project of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce, and then ran it over for many years. When I created the Women’s Council on Diversity, it was Pete Cooper and his staff who encouraged me and made the project possible. For more than four years, the Woman’s Council on Diversity provided public forums on the challenges and opportunities of a diverse community. The American Diversity Report and the Global Leadership Class are outgrowths of that project. Support for such projects is ongoing including an emerging non-profit based on the paper clip Holocaust project originating from Whitwell, Tennessee. Alison Lebovitz, the project’s part time director, is working with the Foundation to take the lessons learned in that project and the movie made about it to school systems across the country.

Pete doesn’t turn away from the difficult issues. “The diversity policy Includes sexual orientation, unusual for the South. If you get a grant from us, you have to confirm the policy. Otherwise, funding isn’t awarded. When a prominent local person came out of the closet, we were supportive of him despite accusations of my being gay.” Pete goes on to say that diversity is not only a guiding principle in grant making but is also part of the organization. “We have a very diverse board. We’ve had Black Chairs, not just tokens. This sends a significant message to the community.” The Community Foundation represents the all of the community. You can read more about the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga and its grant cycle at www.cfgc.org.