Olaf Growald
Todd Liles, executive director of the Morris Foundation, founded more than 30 years ago by his parents, Linda and Jack Morris, calls it “activist philanthropy.”
The foundation, which has long served the city’s most vulnerable populations, is moving into an unusual new giving strategy announced in August under which subject matter experts in education, health care, and social services lead in solving critical challenges to people most in need.
The foundation's main focus in education is third-grade literacy in Fort Worth public schools; in health care, mental health; and in social services, homelessness. Each will receive 60% of the foundation's financial gifts in the three “pillars” in the future.
In education, only 32% of Fort Worth ISD third-graders read on level today, a critical workforce and economic development issue the city's thought leaders are coalescing around.
“We recognize we can add value,” says Elizabeth Brands, the Morris head of education giving who is also new executive director of Read Fort Worth, the third-grade literacy initiative launched to attack low literacy by recruiting volunteer tutors to read with children in the schools. “It’s not just the dollars anymore.”
“It’s not typical philanthropy,” Liles, who came aboard the foundation in 2015 to help ensure the continuation of his parents' vision, says. “It’s activist philanthropy.”
The foundation supports about 95 programs each year, with more than $100 million in distributions since 1986, about $11 million given annually, and more than three million people impacted each year. Jack Morris, a businessman who made his money in carpet pad, died in 2004. Linda died in 2019.
In education, charter schools have long received the bulk of the foundation's educational giving. “Elizabeth wanted to toggle over to the ISD,” Liles says.
Read Fort Worth, coming into the 2019-2020 school year, had a goal of 1,000 volunteer tutors it would send into schools. It will surpass that and has set a new goal of 2,500 heading into the fall 2020, Brands says. Outside the district, the foundation wants to help boost summer camps with reading curriculum, ensuring the continuation of reading over the long break. “Our goal is to elevate those summer camps,” Brands says. For families, the foundation wants to help reduce the number of first- and second-graders who are chronically absent — defined as absent one day every two weeks. One idea to help families whose parents work odd hours: organizing community partners such as churches to conduct “walking school buses” to school. “At schools that have a chronically high rate, it’s about doubling down.”
The foundation has identified two other pillars of its education giving strategy: developing nurturing learning environments and cultivating transformational leaders. Both have been identified by community leaders as key and necessary pieces of Fort Worth’s early childhood learning approach.
“If we create 10 outstanding teachers, we would still not transform,” says Brands, a former schoolteacher who was executive director of Reading Partners, a national nonprofit that runs reading tutoring programs in several Fort Worth ISD schools. “Teachers line up to work for principals that are transformative.”
Brands is the third executive director Read Fort Worth has had since a coalition of community and business leaders, led by Mayor Betsy Price, since-retired BNSF chairman Matt Rose, and Kent Scribner, the Fort Worth ISD superintendent, launched it in 2016. While the ISD can point to improvements on numerous fronts, the third-grade literacy rate hasn’t grown since Read Fort Worth started.
The Read Fort Worth goal is to have 100% of third-graders reading on level by 2025 — or 100x25. “I would say the 100x25 goal is ambitious and audacious,” Brands, who arrived at the foundation in 2017, says. “We are committed to growth. We see bright spots.”
In health care, the foundation has historically given most of its gifts to Cook Children’s, Texas Health Resources, and the Child Study Center, which provides diagnosis, treatment and education to children with complex development and behavioral disabilities. In social services, it’s historically supported nonprofits in food insecurity such as the Tarrant Area Food Bank; homelessness, such as the Presbyterian Night Shelter; support such as job training and Guardianship Services, which provides guardianship and supports and services for at-risk adults in Tarrant County.
Mental health and reducing homelessness will be the foundation’s primary giving focuses in health care and social services under the new strategy. The foundation wants to invest in Fort Worth’s push to become a “trauma-informed community” by 2024, with all systems addressing mental health needs from prevention to treatment. The foundation is participating in the Mental Health Connection of Tarrant County, comprising people from various organizations. Fort Worth, for one, has a high infant mortality rate. Even though that’s been long known, “the health care community is not exactly sure what's causing it or how to collectively solve the problem,” says Andy Miller, a nonprofit executive who joined the foundation in 2017 as head of health care and social services giving. “Everything is so siloed; we chose not to work with a single silo in health care.” A big part of what the foundation brings to the table: “They didn’t have a consistent funding partner.” The foundation is interested in impacting systems. “We are moving away from the more typical project-based approach [of giving] to an approach that is comprehensive and more effectively solves the problem.”
The foundation helped finish the new Northside Community Health Center in Fort Worth and helped design a wellness program.
Why mental health? “It has implications for so many other health care needs in the community,” Miller says. A significant piece the foundation wants to work with is adverse childhood experiences, which can increase risk of cancer, HIV and AIDS, diabetes, drug and alcohol abuse, and unplanned pregnancy. “The more adversity in childhood, the worse your health care outcomes,” Miller says.
In homelessness, the foundation partners with the Presbyterian Night Shelter in Clean Slate, which helps train residents and place them in jobs. Miller is a member of the Clean Slate steering committee. “We’re looking at how we can help grow that program.”
The foundation wants to help build permanent supportive housing that takes people out of homelessness. In the last three years, the foundation has also added John Peter Smith Hospital as a partner, funding an adolescent behavioral health unit. Particularly following voters’ passage of a bond package for JPS facilities, “we think this is the right time to deepen our relationship with JPS,” Miller says.