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February 26, 1999/10 Adar 5759, Vol. 51, No. 22
Idealist charts new frontiers for Arizona Community Foundation
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
Sandy Kravitz
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In the 1960s, Sandy Kravitz was inspired by the idealism of President John F. Kennedy and the promise of a new frontier.
Today, Kravitz, 74, is trading on his nearly four decades in public service and academia to chart new frontiers in Arizona. As senior vice president of programming at the Arizona Community Foundation, Kravitz's job involves finding creative ways to solve social problems in the state.
"He's a creative guy with a thousand ideas - all good," says Cliff Harris, a retired physician who works closely with Kravitz as chairman of the foundation's distribution/planning committee.
The 20-year-old Arizona foundation, one of 450 similar entities nationally, deals in creative ideas to further the public good, building endowments for charitable purposes and using investment income to fund a vast array of philanthropic projects. Some are designated by individual donors, corporations, private foundations and other non-profit and civic organizations; others are chosen through a competitive grant process, which Kravitz directs. The foundation's endowments currently total $250 million.
Kravitz joined the organization in 1997.
A native of Connecticut, with a bachelor's degree from the state university there and a masters in social work from New York's Columbia University, he spent the first 10 years of his career working in social service in the New York area. In 1960, he returned to graduate school, at Brandeis, to earn a doctorate.
At that point, says Kravitz, he was considering teaching, but a professor passed his resume on to colleagues in Washington, D.C., sending his life in a different direction.
Kravitz was drafted to work in the Kennedy Administration for the Department of Justice, developing initiatives to curb juvenile delinquency. Subsequently, in 1964, he was recruited to design community action programs for President Lyndon Johnson's Task Force on Poverty, overseeing a $65 million budget for projects to fight poverty through community action. That budget was doubled the next year.
Proudly, Kravitz ticks off some of the programs developed during his tenure, and still in existence today: the foster grandparent program; Upward Bound, which brings inner-city high school students to college campuses for summer programs; legal aid to indigent citizens; and a variety of innovative housing programs.
"It was a wonderful opportunity to be thrust in the middle of the new frontier," he enthuses, his eyes sparkling as he reminisces some 30 years later.
Kravitz was enticed to leave the hectic pace in Washington after five years to move into academia, first as a professor at Brandeis, then as dean of the School of Social Welfare at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and later at Florida International University in Miami, where he designed the school's master's degree program in social work. He currently serves as a faculty mentor for Walden University, a virtual school.
In 1993, he moved to Arizona and settled in Sedona. He had spent several weeks in the state earlier in his life, visiting a colleague on the Navajo reservation, and says he was "intrigued" with the area. This "retirement" turned out to be merely a segue into new and creative endeavors making valuable use of his time and talents.
Invited to serve on the advisory committee of the new Sedona Cultural Park, Kravitz "ended up chairing the committee" by the end of his first meeting, he recalls. In that capacity he developed a partnership between the cultural park and the state university's vast cultural resources, providing a beautiful venue for the local fine arts groups and a wealth of cultural experiences for local audiences. He ultimately was hired as a consultant, then co-director of what became the Center for Education and the Arts of the Sedona Cultural Park.
A chance encounter with the annual report of the Arizona Community Foundation led to his next career move. Looking through the brochure, Kravitz noticed the name of Jean Fairfax. He recalled working with a woman by that name when he was with the American Friends Service Committee in New York in the early 1950s. He later learned that it was indeed the same person, and his connection with the foundation was forged.
He signed on first as a consultant, working closely with foundation director Steve Mittenthal, whose path had also crossed Kravitz's in New York years before. When the director of programming resigned in the fall of 1997, Mittenthal prevailed on Kravitz to take the job.
Kravitz's responsibilities include setting grant criteria, then soliciting and reviewing proposals. Under his leadership, the foundation is moving away from funding "boutique projects," as Kravitz calls them, toward developing broader initiatives, responsive to perceived community needs, and actively soliciting proposals to meet those needs.
Last year, the foundation awarded some 120 competitive grants totaling $2.5 million. This year, Kravitz predicts that the amount allocated to individual projects will be reduced, to earmark additional funds for collaborative projects that can cause fundamental change.
"It's hard to discern social change if you are just doing lots of (small) projects," he says.
Priority areas for this year are education, programs for children ages 5 and under, and programs for the hearing impaired. Kravitz is also pushing for partnerships between public and private entities to fund the projects.
"I'm in the business of creating change," he says. "I'm trying to give the system a shake."
One such collaboration initiated by the foundation is a $1 million program to train middle-school science and math teachers, funded by the federal government, corporations and the foundation. The program addresses mediocre performance by students in grades 4-8 in these disciplines and the need to inspire interest and achievement.
"Teachers are key," says Kravitz, explaining the rationale for the program.
Another venture partners the foundation with the Arizona Department of Economic Security and Arizona Children's Association to fund a program aimed at reducing the time children removed from abusive or neglectful home situations spend in foster care before being placed in permanent homes.
"Our goal is to reduce (the time) from six years to two years," says Kravitz, bemoaning the deleterious effects of keeping children in foster care for long periods of time.
"The general public has no idea how much damage is done to kids," he says. Shortening the time spent in foster care would decrease state dollars spent later for mental health treatment, he says.
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