Needmor Fund Records (Ms.2007.018)

Biographical note

The Needmor Fund is a family foundation established in Toledo, Ohio in December 1956 by Duane and Virginia Secor Stranahan. Virginia Stranahan came from a family deeply involved in the economic, intellectual and cultural development of Toledo. Duane Stranahan was the son of a co-founder of Champion Spark Plug Company. The Fund asserts that it is "informed by the energy, vision, and generosity" of its founders. Needmor's grantmaking was based on the concerns of individual family members until the mid-1970's when Duane Stranahan and his six children agreed to pool their resources in order to maximize the impact of their philanthropy. The Stranahans set up advisory and executive committees and hired Leeda Marting as director.

In 1984, the Needmor Fund moved its offices from Toledo to Boulder, Colorado. The offices returned to Toledo when Needmor was reorganized again in the early 21st century. The Fund now focuses on regional clusters in the South and Southwest, and makes grants ranging from $15,000 to $25,000 to community organizations working in low and moderate income communities which demonstrate the promise of creating significant social change.

The Needmor Fund records include not only material on the Fund, and the family which established it, but also many of the papers of Karl Stauber, an early executive director of the Fund, and Kathy Partridge, who was a program officer at the time of the development of the cluster system of grantmaking.

Karl Stauber was born in 1951, took his undergraduate degree in 1973 in American Studies at the University of North Carolina. He holds a certificate from the Program for Management Development from the Harvard Business School as well as a Ph.D. in public policy from the Union Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio. He managed an alternative venture capital firm in Colorado, was assistant director of the Babcock Foundation in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, then executive director of the Needmor Fund and president and CEO of the Northwest Area Foundation. He also served as Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics in the United States Department of Agriculture in the Clinton Administration. He has served on or chaired numerous charitable foundation committees and subcommittees such as the Minnesota Council on Foundations.

Kathy Partridge has been an organizer in places as diverse as Mississippi, Colorado and Europe but she has always focused on the same issues: social justice, women's rights, and peace. She has led environmental, media and human service non-profits directing the coordination of volunteer staff, management, development and communications on every level from local to international. She has been a radio host for more than twenty years at Denver-Boulder's community station KGNU. A graduate of the University of Colorado with a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies , she is working on an MA at Regis University in Social Justice, Philanthropy and Organizing. Her personal papers from 1977-1979 are housed at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her work at the Needmor Fund from 1992 to 2002 was critical for the development of the concept of clusters as focal points for grantmaking.