Dr Laurie Paarlberg is to become the first permanent holder of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation Chair on Community Foundations at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. She will take up her appointment on 1 July 2018.

Dr Laurie Paarlberg.

The chair, first created in 2014 to commemorate the centennial of community foundations in the US, signals a recognition of the growing status of community philanthropy, the key role that the Mott Foundation has played in supporting the field and the increased appetite for need for the formal study of philanthropy.

A press release from the Lilly School suggests that it is the first chair in the US focused specifically on studying and teaching about community foundations.

Prior to Dr Paarlberg’s appointment the chair has been held on a visiting basis, initially by Dr Mark Sidel of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and more recently by Dr Emmet Carson, founding CEO of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

For more, see Alliance’s March 2017 issue on the growth of philanthropy scholarship.