Black History Month: Emmett D. Carson, a Leader in the Nonprofit Community

Dr. Emmett D. Carson has a modest corner office at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation in Mountain View.

Below the window, on a shelf to the right of his desk, rest pictures of his family. On the far wall, across his desk, a rainbow of books fill his shelves, including his first book A Hand Up: Black Philanthropy and Self-Help in America.

Philanthropy is something the San Jose resident does for a living, and has done very successfully as a chief executive officer for almost 20 years. However, it was something Carson, 53, fell into.

Born and raised on the  southside of Chicago, Carson grew up in a neighborhood where he saw the influence of gangs and violence. In the fourth grade his family moved further south to a middle-class community, and the transition from one neighborhood to another had a large impact on him.

"It struck me how one day I was in one life and the next I was in another," Carson said.

He recalled the friends he'd left behind and how different his trajectory had been "by luck and because of his parents."

"I thought it was unfair," he said.

Considered one of the most influential nonprofit leaders in the nation, Carson graduated from Morehouse College in 1980 and then received his masters degree in public administration and a doctorate from Princeton University, in 1983 and 1985 respectively. He then joined the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and began to research the charitable giving behavior of ethnic minorities, in particular the Black community.

His work caught the attention of the Ford Foundation, and they hired him away in 1989 to work as a grantmaker to Black churches, civil rights organizations and youth programs. In time, his responsibilities grew to managing $10 million in grants to the nonprofit sector.

"I didn't go to Ford thinking I would stay," Carson said, but then he thought, "It wouldn't be a bad thing for a scholar to learn how a foundation works."

With a 10-point sized font, his curriculum vitae now runs ten pages long, and includes other impressive opportunities like his appointment by Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco in 2005 to create a statewide foundation weeks after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

That's a position he held for several months while he still served as the president and chief executive officer of the Minneapolis Foundation, where from 1994 until 2006 he increased the foundation's total assets from $186 million to $655 million.

In 2006 Carson transitioned over to the Peninsula Community Foundation, and led the successful merger with Community Foundation Silicon Valley. As the founding CEO and President of the SVCF, he now manages a fund with more than $2.9 billion. In 2012 Silicon Valley Community Foundation gave $292 million to 10,500 grantees.

In December 2012, Carson accomplished a significant feat—the SVCF received almost $500 million worth of Facebook stock from company Co-Founder Mark Zuckerberg.

But Carson just doesn't give away foundation money. He also donates his own. He started a scholarship program at his Chicago high school, Emil G. Hirsch Metropolitan High School.

"I wanted to say to the kids, 'I came from this neighborhood. I sat in these chairs and walked these halls,'" Carson said, remembering the influence math teacher Richard Murray and civics teacher Camila Scopelight had on him.

"They believed in my education," he said.

Carson also believed he could be anything he wanted. Every night as a boy, his father used to read him a book of the greatest "negroes" in history that included inventors, scientists, civil rights leaders, musicians even artists.

"I loved the stories," he said. "They were compelling and they filled my head with possibilities."

And perhaps as he dreamed big, Carson realized that giving back was something he already had some practice doing.

After snowfalls in Chicago, as a young boy, his father would tell him to shovel the snow—and that of the neighbors to their left and to their right. "His philosophy is that you always help people who can't help themselves," he said.

In running a foundation, he applies a similar philosophy.

"As adults we ought to make things work," he said. "This is where foundations come in. It's our job to make the system work."

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