A Conversation with Ric DeVore, CEO of the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan

Last February, Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan CEO Ric DeVore attended a convening of about 40 fellow community foundation CEOs from across the country in New Orleans. DeVore, who assumed the role in April 2022 after a career in the financial services field, was struck by how many of his peers were new to philanthropy and didn’t hail from the foundation or nonprofit worlds.

“CEOs included a former college president, a member of the Biden administration and a former congressperson,” he told me in a May conversation. “I think that kind of experience allows us to look at philanthropy a little bit differently.”

DeVore’s four-decade career includes years serving as executive vice president and regional president of PNC Bank in Detroit and Southeast Michigan, where he oversaw the PNC Foundation, which supports education, community development, and arts and culture in geographic areas served by its parent banking company. That experience convinced him his next step would be fully in the direction of philanthropy leadership. “When the opportunity to lead the community foundation came up, I thought, ‘Wow, this is like a lifetime achievement award, because I enjoyed the philanthropic part of the job at PNC more than the corporate sales part,’” he said with a chuckle.

Two years later, DeVore oversees the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan, a foundation with $1.3 billion in assets under management that runs more than 240 endowments for regional nonprofits and oversees the New Economy Initiative working to foster entrepreneurship in Southeast Michigan.

In 2023, the foundation awarded $7.4 million in discretionary grants from fields of interest and unrestricted funds, plus $14.4 million in grants from initiatives. Support flowed to organizations in areas like arts and culture, children and youth, and the environment. In April, the community foundation and the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation announced $288,000 in grants to 15 youth sports organizations through Project Play: Southeast Michigan, an initiative the community foundation manages.

When I caught up with DeVore, he was also in the process of formalizing the foundation’s new strategic plan and ramping up efforts to increase voter turnout this fall. “I think it's a pretty exciting time to be here,” the Dearborn native said.

Here are some excerpts from our discussion, edited for clarity.

How did your experience in the financial services field prepare you for the world of philanthropy?

I started at PNC Bank out of Pittsburgh and went on to work in Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Cleveland, focusing on due diligence for bank mergers. When you think about mergers, it’s all about bringing people together. It’s about culture — and culture trumps strategy. So I think that work prepared me well for this task.

In 2010, you became the president of PNC’s Southeast Michigan and Ohio operations. What are some key takeaways from that role?

PNC has an interesting mousetrap, in that the regional president is responsible for sales and the delivery of philanthropy, so I also ran the PNC Foundation. It gave me a lot of insight into the world of philanthropy and enabled me to develop relationships with folks at the Skillman, Kresge and W.K. Kellogg foundations, as well as the Max and Marjorie Fisher Foundation.

Even though I returned to Michigan after a long absence, I have an understanding of the lay of the land, which helped a lot. And while my parents have since passed, it was nice to return home and care for them as they were getting older. I remember my dad saying, ‘It’s great they bought the bank [in Cleveland] so you could come back home.”

Who is the most influential mentor in your life?

His name is [PVS Chemicals Chair] Jim Nicholson. He’s the community foundation’s former board chair, and he’s on our board until June.

After I was back in Michigan and working for PNC, I sought out advice from people who had similar jobs within the company in Cincinnati and Washington, D.C. But I also wanted someone who was based in Michigan. I knew Jim because we served on some of the same nonprofit boards, so I approached him about being my advisor-slash-mentor.

The reason why I did is because I got to know his moral fiber — you could see the way philanthropy was in his family’s DNA. He has four sons, and all of them are involved in their communities; in fact, his son Tim just joined our board.

The foundation partnered with the Ralph C. Wilson Foundation on a program, Project Play: Southeast Michigan. Can you talk about CFSM’s relationship with the foundation?

Mr. Wilson was the owner of the Buffalo Bills. When he passed he made a $1.2 billion gift to be split between Buffalo and Detroit and called for a 20-year spend-down. They’re 10 years into it, so to use a sports analogy, you could say they’re at halftime.

We have a deep relationship with the foundation. It established endowed Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Legacy Funds at the community foundation, which focus on areas like caregiving, design and access, and youth sports, as well as the Grosse Pointe community. The Project Play grants will come from the Legacy Funds, and the idea here is to give children access to sports so that it sparks a passion within them.

The Wilson Foundation also made a $100 million commitment to Southeast Michigan’s arts and culture sector through the establishment of an endowment at the community foundation in December 2021, and we administer those grants to the 11 different anchor organizations. As part of its arts commitment, we also launched the Inclusive Arts Fund, which is an open grant opportunity for small grassroots organizations, and all of the funding is unrestricted.

I feel obligated to mention that endowment and general operating support are the gold standard for funding nonprofits.

Exactly. [The Wilson Legacy Funds and the Inclusive Arts Fund] are endowed so they will be able to go on for perpetuity. I talk with peers in other cities all the time, and they tell me they wish they were the beneficiaries of a spend-down foundation [Laughs].

What book would you suggest our readers check out?

It's called “Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America,” which is an issue I’m very passionate about. It’s by Barbara McQuade, who is on our board and teaches at the University of Michigan Law School.

In February, when it was my turn to host a quarterly meeting of local foundation CEOs, I had Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson discuss challenges and opportunities she sees leading up to November. So to give you a potential concern I have, let’s say you’re a senior in Detroit. We changed our voting rules so you can do early voting in any precinct. But my guess is that there's going to be robocalls to seniors saying, “You can only vote in your precinct,” which will obviously repress turnout.

In 2020, 67.5% of eligible Michigan voters cast a ballot. That means that one out of three people who could vote didn’t. We have to do better. The choices we make at the polls impact everyone, so everyone who can should ensure their voices are heard through voting.

I'm already in conversation with a number of foundations in Southeast Michigan on how to increase voter participation such as registering and casting a ballot, support voter engagement such as volunteering and hosting events, and most importantly, how to combat election misinformation. We are still thinking through how to best operationalize this, but we really hope that Michiganders will take up these calls to action.

Where do things stand with the foundation’s new strategic plan?

We started the process right before Labor Day in 2022. We solicited input from key stakeholders, partnered with the Center for Effective Philanthropy to conduct surveys, and synthesized data reflecting regional needs to inform the development of the plan, "Thriving Together."

We’ve published our new vision, mission, values and roles on our site, and our board has approved a strategic vision framework that will guide the development of the full plan throughout the rest of the year.

The way I describe it is that we’re shifting from being a philanthropic bank — even though we’re not abandoning that — towards more of a change agent. The old model meant quietly operating behind the scenes, and while that was clearly important work, we decided, and I think most community foundations are deciding, that it’s probably not going to move the needle.

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to clarify that the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan manages Project Play: Southeast Michigan, and that the Wilson Legacy Funds and the Inclusive Arts Fund are endowed, not Project Play: Southeast Michigan.

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