The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven was established in 1928 and is the largest philanthropic institution in our region of twenty towns and over 600,000 people. We are among the oldest and largest of more than 700 community foundations in the United States. Our seventy-eight year record of grantmaking, financial stewardship and service to donors is at the heart of philanthropic efforts to improve the quality of life for residents in our region.

R E F L E C T I N G  T H E  C O M M U N I T Y’S 
F O U N D I N G  V I S I O N

Osborne Day, a lawyer and bank executive in New Haven, was one of a small group that publicly launched The New Haven Foundation at a dinner in February 1928. That night, New Haven banker Henry L. Galpin welcomed 53 of the city’s most prominent citizens to the President’s Room at Woolsey Hall. Galpin was a trust officer for the Union and New Haven Trust Company and was also a member of the Corporate Fiduciaries Association, whose members that night were eager to announce a new project: a community trust.

The evening’s guest speaker, New York Community Trust director Ralph Hays, explained the benefits of the community trust model to the audience of lawyers, bankers and educators. By the time the gentlemen finished their cigars, they understood how an idea conceived in Cleveland 14 years before by Judge Frederick Goff could ensure a brighter future for New Haven’s residents.

A New Haven Register reporter present that night wrote that Hays emphasized, “the wisdom of having bequests administered at the discretion of a group of competent and far-seeing men, able to take into account such exigency created by the passing of time, so that no bequest might become moribund and useless due to the short-sighted discretion of a man long since in his grave.” The “dead hand”—funds serving a legacy that no longer mattered—was the problem Judge Goff hoped to avoid when he designed the community trust model in 1914.

Goff imagined an “immortal being,” a permantly enduring organization that would act as fiscal custodian and have the responsibility of wisely distributing bequest funds for future generations. Initially, a bank seemed the best agent to administer the trust. It would act as trustee for a large fund made up of many smaller contributions. Income drawn from the bequests would benefit city residents, who would help to determine its allocation.

Goff’s “committee to distribute” was a group of Cleveland residents. It was a diverse group for the period, with no more than two members from the same religious congregation. And it was free from political entanglements: no member could hold or seek elected office. The mayor, the trustee bank, and several civic groups had the responsibility of appointing the Distribution Committee members. Judge Goff’s plan proved to be a popular favorite. It became the model for the community trusts that were later chartered in Chicago, New York, Detroit, Boston and New Haven.

Following Goff’s example, New Haven’s Distribution Committee members—Osborne Day, Charles Morris, Louis L. Hemingway and Thomas Steele —created the necessary infrastructure to support The New Haven Foundation. In 1926 they began discussing an early draft of the Resolution and Declaration of Trust, and in May of 1927 they adopted the final draft. Eleven local banks accepted the Resolution of Trust and agreed to manage the new funds. J. Dwight Dana agreed to continue formally in his previously informal role as The Foundation’s legal counsel.

The New Haven Distribution Committee maintained many of the principles followed by the Cleveland Foundation. A cardinal principle of the Foundation is that it shall be conducted in the interests of the whole community without regard to race or religion, and that to the greatest possible extent all interests, classes and creeds shall be represented in its management.

Foundation leaders altered Cleveland's pattern in their choice of organizations and authorized to nominate Distribution Committee members. Trustees appointed two members, while the Judge of the New Haven Probate Court for the District of New Haven, the Mayor of New Haven, and the Presidents of Yale, the New Haven County Bar Association and the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce each appointed one member. The New Haven Foundation promised to become an asset that could grow and meet the city’s needs.

On May 21, 1928, Day completed the Distribution Committee appointments and announced to his colleagues, “Your committee now feels that The New Haven Foundation has been definitely launched.” That September, The Foundation received its first funds of nearly $135,000 from Nettie J. Dayton’s estate.