Web Exclusives: Alumni Spotlight

July 1, 2003

A catalyst for Vermont’s needy
David Rahr ’60 brought together people and resources to attack problems

“We don’t have enough money to make a major difference in communities simply through throwing money at a problem.”

In the 16 years David Rahr ’60 was president of the Vermont Community Foundation, he didn’t just raise money and make grants to the nonprofit sector that addresses pressing needs of Vermont’s residents. He also identified emerging social, educational, and environmental problems, raised public awareness, and brought people together to confront the problems.

Rahr, who in 1987 started the V.C.F., based in Middlebury, and retired last month, realized that money would only go so far. “We don’t have enough money to make a major difference in communities simply through throwing money at a problem,” said Rahr during an interview in April. So “We watch such things as teen-pregnancy rates, substance-abuse rates, low birth-weight babies. We try to spot where indicators are going in the wrong direction and intervene where we can,” said Rahr, who remains involved with the foundation.

Rahr attracted more than $75 million, making the V.C.F. one of the 100 largest community foundations in the country. The V.C.F. distributes grants totaling about $6 million a year to benefit education, substance-abuse programs, the arts, libraries, child care, and historic preservation, among other efforts.

The foundation also runs workshops for leaders of other nonprofits to help them run their organizations more effectively. Says Charles Kireker ’72, a member of the V.C.F.’s investment committee, Rahr “sees the V.C.F. as a partner with other organizations and as a good neighbor.”

Behind each donation lies “a story of a family’s or individual’s interests or dreams,” said Rahr, who majored in religion and for 21 years worked at Princeton as assistant director of admissions, director of the Alumni Council, and director of campaign relations before moving to Middlebury College’s development office in 1982.

Rahr described one man who made a gift to the V.C.F.: When Rahr first met him at an inn in Chester, Vermont, recalled Rahr, “He got out of his pickup truck, in his T-shirt and dungarees. He said, ‘I grew up in this town and I lived in a very abusive family with a lot of violence. … So I ran away from home when I was 12. I lived in a shack in the woods.’” Two families eventually took in the man; he graduated from high school and retired from a career in excavating. In his meeting with Rahr, he reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope containing a stock certificate worth about $20,000, Rahr said. The man explained that he wanted to establish a scholarship fund on behalf of the families who had cared for him.

In his retirement, Rahr, who lives in Cornwall, Vermont, said he looks forward to “painting the garage, changing the oil in my lawnmower, and taking my grandsons to baseball games.” By K.F.G.