Private sector must do more to help spur the economy

NEIL STEINBERG, president and CEO of The R.I. Foundation, said the state needs to market its strengths beyond its culture and tourist attractions. / COURTESY THE RHODE ISLAND FOUNDATION/STEW MILNE
NEIL STEINBERG, president and CEO of The R.I. Foundation, said the state needs to market its strengths beyond its culture and tourist attractions. / COURTESY THE RHODE ISLAND FOUNDATION/STEW MILNE

As president and CEO of The Rhode Island Foundation, Neil D. Steinberg has guided the foundation into being a proactive community and philanthropic leader, dedicated to meeting the needs of the people of the state.
He is well-equipped for the position. He’s gained fiduciary experience at the former Fleet Bank and fundraising at Brown University, and has served as an active member of the community. The foundation will host “Make It Happen RI” Sept. 7-8. The event is designed to generate ideas for stimulating economic activity in the state.

PBN: Make It Happen RI is your new effort to try to help out Rhode Islanders and the economy. What are its concepts?
STEINBERG: We’ve done something similar in the past, innovation fellowships, which seemed very popular. We solicited ideas from the general community on who had the best ideas. It’s about convening ideas and people.

PBN: The Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce brought many community members together earlier this summer, including the foundation, to help the private sector play a role in growing business. What role can a charitable foundation play?
STEINBERG: At that gathering there was a lot of intent and interest. Out of that – along with other people that approached us, we see the need to go from rhetoric to action. Panels, forums, reports and essays have been done for years, but we haven’t seen it move from talk to action. That’s the motivation; get a diverse group, get the private sector to step up and not just talk about what to do but how to do it.

PBN: Why would they look to the foundation for help?
STEINBERG: We are conveners and have a history of bringing together disparate groups. We have the ability to be honest brokers. We are not the business community, we are not the nonprofit community solely, we’re not religious or political.

PBN: Do you feel your financial background gives you some extra insight?
STEINBERG: There are a lot of people with a financial background and it’s nothing too profound. We have been in a national recession and Rhode Island seems to have suffered as much or greater that the other states.
We have not made a change in our economy from old, standard manufacturing to knowledge- or serviced-based industry. The complexion of the business community has changed, we don’t have the large corporate community headquarters that we used to have in the past. It’s created a void. We feel that collectively more entities need to step up and fill it as opposed to leaving it at the step of government. Government plays a role, but we’re saying that the private sector needs to step up.

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PBN: So this is beyond your usual grant programs?
STEINBERG: This is not about us determining where we are going to give grant money, it’s about taking on a community-leadership role on behalf of many stakeholders in the state.
We deal with a donor community that wants to help make this a better state. We want to use our abilities to push this forward. If people gather, talk and we have another forum, then we have not succeeded. … We want to help mobilize the boots on the ground, including presenting some ideas to elected officials.

PBN: How will elected officials participate in the event?
STEINBERG: We have consciously excluded elected officials, for a variety of reasons, and none malicious. … We have already talked to the governor’s office, we’ve talked to the [General Assembly] officers, to tell them we are not doing this because of something that is, or isn’t, being done. … When we’ve come up with the ideas and a cogent, optimistic and beneficial story, we will bring it to them.

PBN: Can anyone contribute?
STEINBERG: We can have only so many people attend but we are looking for ideas from people all across the state. We set up an email, makeithappenri@rifoundation.org, where everyone in the community can participate and we are committed to making it transparent.
PBN: What brought you to the foundation?
STEINBERG: A commitment to Rhode Island and to work with a great organization that has an unbelievable history. It started in 1916, and has used business and philanthropic experience, along with the foundation’s wonderful commitment to Rhode Island.

PBN: Many nonprofits lost a lot of money in 2008 due to bank and investment-firm collapses. How did the foundation fare?
STEINBERG: One of the unique things about the community foundation is that we are here forever. Our horizon is like a university, in perpetuity. We understand there will be short-term blips and that was a big one. Our endowment went down, less than most, but the endowment model gives you stability over time.
The biggest impact on us was the increase of the need. … If you went to the food pantries you would hear that families that used to be donors now utilize their services. If you talk to the shelters now, you will see working families with no housing.
Need comes from the requirement to help people get basic services but it also comes from opportunity, new things to do, and that’s what we hope to see with this effort, new ideas and innovation.

PBN: Do you have any actions in mind?
STEINBERG: We would like to creatively craft a story of Rhode Island. People might think “great shore, great restaurants,” but it’s a lot more than that, not just culturally and not just tourism. What are our strengths? We want to market the state of Rhode Island. •

INTERVIEW
Neil D. Steinberg
POSITION: President & CEO of The Rhode Island Foundation
BACKGROUND: In addition to the foundation, Steinberg has served as vice president of development and campaign director at Brown University. He also had long career with Fleet Bank, rising to chairman and CEO of Fleet Bank-Rhode Island in 2003. Steinberg is on the advisory board of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce and is a director of both the Business Development Company of Rhode Island and the Urban League. He also serves on the community advisory board of the United Way of Rhode Island and has co-chaired Rhode Island’s Race to the Top steering committee.
EDUCATION: B.A., applied math and sociology, Brown University, 1975
FIRST JOB: Newspaper boy, New Haven Register
RESIDENCE: Pawtucket
AGE: 58

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