Where a gift gives forever

In 1958, another giant in the Community Foundation’s history arrived on the scene when Addison M. White joined the board. So began a 34-year association during which his name became synonymous with the Foundation and its ever growing good work in the community.

A descendent of the area’s early settlers, White was a Korean War veteran pursuing his career at The Savings Bank of Utica when he “accepted” an appointment to the Foundation’s board by President Roy C. Van Denbergh, who also happened to be White’s boss at the bank.

“I didn’t know much about the Foundation at the time,” he later recounted, “so I took the assignment out of a sense of duty. As I read the reports of other foundations… I realized what a good thing this would be for our community. So I stuck with it.”
It was fortunate for the community that he did.

He went on to become president of both the Savings Bank and the Foundation, retiring from the bank in 1977 but continuing to lead the Foundation until 1992.

While the Foundation was the focal point of his community activity, he also made time to provide leadership to a host of other civic causes, ranging from college foundations to United Way, health institutions to economic development groups, the Christmas Seal campaign to the Oneida County Historical Society.

During his tenure, the Foundation’s assets grew from $68,000 to over $18 million and it awarded $4.2 million in grants. As president, White always sought to apply the highest degree of stewardship over funds entrusted to the Foundation, realizing that the public’s confidence was paramount to its future. It was during his presidency that the Foundation’s first staff was hired. Until that time, White personally devoted countless hours to maintaining records in a meticulous and organized style.

He was a man of deep compassion who saw The Community Foundation as a means of helping the less fortunate and addressing critical human needs. His leadership style reflected the conviction that consensus-building, respect for differences of opinion and listening to others were still the keys to working effectively with people.

While maintaining the Foundation’s stability and high credibility, White was not afraid of change or innovation. Under his leadership in 1991, for example, the Foundation stepped up to provide $100,000 in funding to replace Regents, Nursing and Empire State college scholarships that area high school graduates had earned but were to be denied due to a cutback in State spending.

Precedent-setting at the time, White called the action “very much in keeping with the Foundation’s charter, which makes the promotion and encouragement of education and the advancement of human knowledge as high a priority as supporting general charitable causes.”

He believed that the Foundation’s role would continue to increase in importance. At his retirement in 1992, looking back at the Foundation’s first 40 years, he characterized it as having moved from “the diaper stage, to short pants, to long pants,” adding that its work had “just begun.”

In typical fashion, even as he stepped down from active service with The Community Foundation, he was looking ahead to its future.