00:00:03:03 – 00:00:24:17

Mark

The Pursuit podcast a purely guest centric show focusing on people and organizations that advance positive change. Positivity can be anywhere and in a time of vast discord. The pursuit of is finding those who championed its causes loudest. Join us as we sit and learn about the pursuits of local leaders in their communities. Let’s go.

00:00:25:04 – 00:00:36:13

Ryan

Hello good people and welcome to the pursuit of podcast where it’s truly not us, it’s you. My name is Ryan Buck, Artist Development, New Leonard Media. With me, as always, is the Boss. Mark Wilson, New Leonard Media.

00:00:36:17 – 00:00:40:09

Mark

How are you, sir? I’m doing great. You know, I just got new ink for the printers and.

00:00:40:11 – 00:00:49:20

Ryan

Yeah, that’s enough of that. Our guest today is Dave Mengebier, President and CEO, Grand Traverse Community Foundation. How are.

00:00:49:20 – 00:00:51:08

Dave Mengebier

You? Great, Ryan. Thanks.

00:00:51:08 – 00:00:56:18

Ryan

Did I use the the long version of the name or community foundation? What’s preferable?

00:00:56:21 – 00:01:12:20

Dave Mengebier

We sort of shorthand it most of the time, but when I took the job, the board made sure I understood this is the Grand Travis Regional Community Foundation. You’re representing five counties, not Traverse City. So, yeah, but shorthand community Foundation.

00:01:13:08 – 00:01:19:08

Ryan

Well, speaking of shorthand, so for those unaware, what does the Community foundation do?

00:01:20:03 – 00:01:51:13

Dave Mengebier

Well, we do a lot of different things, but the main thing is working with donors to help them accomplish their philanthropic goals. So whether you care about the environment or education, youth and family programs, arts and culture, social welfare and health, then we work with donors to help them direct their philanthropic dollars to the nonprofits in our five county region to have impact, to actually improve the lives of the people that live, work and play here.

00:01:52:02 – 00:02:15:08

Dave Mengebier-Grand Traverse Regional Community

And kind of an amazing story. Year one, Rob Collier was the president CEO of the Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation, and last year we were approaching our 30th anniversary. He showed me a one page sheet about first year results. So we had $800,000 in gifts and commitments. And I asked Rob, I said, Wow. So that was not money in the door, right?

00:02:15:08 – 00:02:39:01

Dave Mengebier

That was pledges and gifts. And he goes, Correct. And we made three grants as a community foundation. So that was way before my time. So at the end of last year, we finished with over $100 million in assets and awarded over 800 grants to nonprofits and scholarships to students and to the tune of three and a half million dollars.

00:02:39:19 – 00:03:03:04

Dave Mengebier

And the thing about many foundations that is unique is that most of our assets are in doubt, meaning we take all of the gifts received. We invest them on behalf of our donors, and then we grant out a relatively small percentage of the overall market value of the portfolio. But we do that this year. Next year and every year thereafter.

00:03:03:04 – 00:03:20:08

Dave Mengebier

So the thing that always gives me a little bit of a chill is long after Mark and Ryan and Dave are gone, then the causes and the organizations and the people that we care about will continue to receive those grants to support that important work.

00:03:20:19 – 00:03:23:09

Mark

Wow. Real sustainability. Yeah.

00:03:23:15 – 00:03:26:22

Dave Mengebier – Grand Traverse Regional Community

Yeah. I mean, it’s really literally, we’re in the forever business.

00:03:26:23 – 00:03:40:00

Ryan

That’s a theme that comes up on the show frequently, is having a meaningful impact and legacy, for lack of a better word. But for you, this is how you’re spending your retirement, right?

00:03:40:00 – 00:04:14:04

Dave Mengebier

Right. Yeah. I was at Consumers Energy, and for the last 17 years, I was senior vice president for governmental, regulatory and public affairs. So I was one of eight as part of the senior management team there. And I worked for five CEOs when I was at Consumers Energy. And I told the last one, I said, I want to leave and time to go back to Northern Michigan because I came from Petoskey and take all of the professional development, all the experience, all the training that I was blessed to receive and give back to the community.

00:04:14:04 – 00:04:39:07

Dave Mengebier

I was sad. It was sort of sad that executives kind of at the height of their powers when they’re most experienced and most skills, decide to go off and play golf or go to the beach. And so I like this position opened up. It was like total serendipity, the perfect platform to kind of bring, you know, my experience and my skills and doing it in the place I love.

00:04:39:20 – 00:04:52:22

Dave Mengebier

So here’s what’s funny. I don’t usually tell this joke, but I’ll just I’ll just say it. So people ask me, Are you from Traverse City? Everybody asks you that, right? Like, and I think the implication is, boy, from downstate.

00:04:53:05 – 00:04:54:13

Mark

From, you know, you’re from Cleveland.

00:04:55:01 – 00:04:55:22

Ryan

Are you one of us?

00:04:55:23 – 00:04:58:23

Dave Mengebier

Right, right, right, exactly. Are you native? Right. Which has.

00:04:58:23 – 00:05:00:06

Mark

That is close enough. Yeah.

00:05:00:06 – 00:05:10:01

Dave Mengebier

No. So what I say is, well, I’m from northern Michigan and then I think to myself, but if there’s sort of a hierarchy, the more North you get, the better than I’ve gotten one up on all the Traverse City.

00:05:11:13 – 00:05:29:13

Mark

No, that’s not necessarily true. Well, right. I mean, because whenever I say that my neighbors are from New Jersey, people say, well, whereabouts in New Jersey? I don’t know. But I can tell you there are Phillies and Eagles fans and people from out East know exactly where in New Jersey they are from. So here it’s like, well, where in Michigan are they from?

00:05:29:17 – 00:05:34:00

Mark

Well, I know there are Green Bay Packers fans like, oh, they’re from like the.

00:05:34:00 – 00:05:44:06

Dave Mengebier

Bridge, right. Exactly. Above. Yeah. Or southwestern Michigan. They’re Chicago Cubs fans, not Detroit Tigers. Yes. Right. The same. Yeah. Same idea. Well, that’s.

00:05:44:06 – 00:05:49:11

Ryan

A tough road no matter what. And I’m from Chicago, and being a Cubs fan for a long time was a hard thing to be.

00:05:49:22 – 00:05:50:06

Mark

Used.

00:05:50:06 – 00:05:50:22

Dave Mengebier

Use until.

00:05:51:02 – 00:06:16:11

Ryan

But until. Yeah, but you I think what’s fascinating about what brought you to this are the aspects of your years at Consumers Energy with your title, knowing that you had to do a charitable giving. Community affairs, Community relations. Sustainability in a big bad corporation. So can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that’s fascinating for people to know.

00:06:16:11 – 00:06:19:23

Ryan

They get jaded and to know you were able to do that with consumers.

00:06:21:01 – 00:06:44:15

Dave Mengebier

It’s interesting when I think back in my career and one of my main responsibilities was trying to influence public policy on energy and the environment. But I have to say some of the biggest battles I had were internally, and I don’t want to imply that the senior management team at Consumers Energy and CMS Energy, the parent, were anything but fantastic.

00:06:44:16 – 00:07:05:15

Dave Mengebier

Actually, I have to say that was one of the great things about working at the company is the CEOs and my peers in the senior management team got along very well. They understood what their roles were and how they could be supportive of one another. As they say, we weren’t working dependently, we weren’t working independently. We were working independently.

00:07:05:22 – 00:07:32:08

Dave Mengebier

So it was a fantastic team. But there was a lot of trying to bring the rest of the management team and the company along to really focus on things like sustainability, for example. So I spoke to a class at University of Michigan at school of Environmental Sustainability a couple of years ago, and they were asking me, how do you effectuate change in a Fortune 300 company?

00:07:32:12 – 00:07:58:01

Dave Mengebier

Right? And I said, where CMS Energy, the parent and Consumers Energy finally came around was there were foreign investors that wanted to purchase CMS energy stock, but they said, we’re not going to own your stock until less than 25% of your fuel mix for your power plants is non-fossil fuels. We want to see wind. We want to see renewables, solar energy.

00:07:58:01 – 00:08:21:09

Dave Mengebier – Grand Traverse Regional Community

We want to see more of energy efficiency and energy optimization programs so that was interesting how to some extent I can’t take credit for kind of the path that consumers energy went down. Now, if you look at the company today, I would say they’re considered to be one of the most progressive, clean energy, sustainable companies in the sector.

00:08:21:18 – 00:08:31:12

Dave Mengebier

So did I have something to do with that? Yeah, maybe. But it’s interesting. What other factors go into play with the board of directors of a company like that and the senior team?

00:08:31:12 – 00:08:47:03

Mark

I was thinking that when you were talking because you had said intergovernmental affairs is what was part of your role. Right. Yeah. And so how that works when you’re also like in an organization and so large that it’s got its own internal politics consistently at play.

00:08:47:05 – 00:09:17:17

Dave Mengebier

Yeah, well, I mean, that’s true with any large organization. When I came back from Washington, D.C., I was promoted to the senior vice president position, and then I started sitting in on the senior management meetings and most of the discussion was around the business and finances. And I said, I’ll be darned if I’m going to spend the next as it turned out, 17 years not being able to participate in that part of the conversation.

00:09:18:01 – 00:09:43:04

Dave Mengebier – Grand Traverse Regional Community

So I went back to the University of Michigan in 2004 and got my MBA from the Ross School of Business, and it was really a fantastic catalyst for my career after that, and I can’t even remember exactly where I was going with that point of view other than it continued to sort of expose me to a lot of other perspectives among my classmates, among faculty, among the administration.

00:09:43:13 – 00:10:09:22

Dave Mengebier

One of the things that I saw was how interestingly bureaucratic major institutions of higher education are. Right. So in the case of the University of Michigan, you have the administration, right? The board, the president and the VP’s, and then you also have the faculty. There’s actually sort of two power centers in the university. So talk about trying to get things done in that kind of an environment.

00:10:10:05 – 00:10:15:05

Dave Mengebier

Actually, I sort of felt pretty good about it, about our company after having that experience.

00:10:15:08 – 00:10:30:08

Ryan

You have a B.A. in economics, Political Science and Public administration from MSU. You mentioned the MBA from the University of Michigan. Now, I’m not from here and I’m not a big sports person, but I know that’s a conflict, right? That’s not supposed to happen, right?

00:10:30:08 – 00:10:53:06

Dave Mengebier – Grand Traverse Regional Community

Undergrad at Michigan State, graduate degree at University of Michigan. You know, what I always say is I cheer for the University of Michigan in every game, but three the two basketball games and the football game. And you got to cheer for your undergraduate school. I mean, is that right? Yeah, right. And we lived in Ann Arbor for 16 years.

00:10:53:06 – 00:11:16:16

Dave Mengebier – Grand Traverse Regional Community

My girls grew up there, so they became huge University of Michigan fans. And we went to a lot of the University of Michigan games. We could walk to the stadium from our house and we’d go there when they were playing the non-conference teams that were not very good or, you know, basement dwellers in the Big Ten conference and try to pay as lower price for the ticket as we possibly could.

00:11:16:17 – 00:11:32:04

Dave Mengebier – Grand Traverse Regional Community

Sometimes people would even give us the tickets. They’d see me there with my young girls and we sat all over the stadium and they had such an amazing I mean, Michigan State University stadium is cool, but there’s nothing like the big house. You walk in there and you just go, Whoa!

00:11:33:01 – 00:11:40:11

Ryan

It’s something you realize how intimidating that’s supposed to sound like Prison, The big house. I didn’t think.

00:11:40:16 – 00:11:44:12

Dave Mengebier

Oh, that’s interesting. I’d never put those two together.

00:11:44:12 – 00:12:04:19

Ryan

Yeah, you’re coming to prison of loss or something, but you also have a J.D. from Thomas M Cooley Law School. You spent some time in academia. You seem obviously very passionate about what you’re doing, but what were your most valuable takeaways from your time in school, and would you have traded any of those years for professional experience?

00:12:05:07 – 00:12:24:21

Dave Mengebier, Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation

It’s so interesting. And you guys know this. You never know what direction your life and your career is going to take. I think when I finished my undergraduate degree at Michigan State, I wasn’t burned out on school and I had a social science degree and I was an okay student, but I wasn’t a great student. I said, You know what?

00:12:25:08 – 00:12:44:20

Dave Mengebier – Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation

If I want to live in the manner in which I’ve grown, accustom, I better get busy here and get serious. So that’s one of the motivations why I went to law school. But here’s the other thing that drew me to law school. I went to Washington, D.C. when I was at Michigan State and did an internship there, and a lot of the meetings I sat in.

00:12:44:21 – 00:12:46:15

Ryan

This was of the U.S. House of Representatives.

00:12:46:19 – 00:13:18:18

Dave Mengebier

Yeah, right. Well, this is before this is when I was still just an undergraduate at State. I was actually, ironically worked in the intern office at DTE Energy, the other big utility in Michigan. So I saw people sitting there talking about public policy issues and political issues and the lawyers just the reasoning process that they had, how they could kind of break down the issues, identify really what are the sort of the turning points in a particular argument and how to best articulate your position.

00:13:19:02 – 00:13:28:23

Dave Mengebier

And so it wasn’t so much that I was enamored with law. I wanted to learn that sort of reasoning, skill and those skills of logic and argument.

00:13:29:09 – 00:13:33:07

Ryan

That’s good foundational skill. Yeah. Makes sense to be inspired that way.

00:13:33:07 – 00:13:48:06

Dave Mengebier

Yeah. And as far as the other experience, I mean, when I was at Michigan State this past weekend, I was there with my wife Kelly, and we were like filling in almost a little melancholy because for those four years that were state where some of the best years we ever had in, Oh, how much fun was that?

00:13:48:09 – 00:13:51:03

Mark

Four years is a lot longer back then too, right?

00:13:51:03 – 00:13:53:21

Dave Mengebier

Yeah, right. Yeah. So.

00:13:53:22 – 00:14:07:06

Ryan

Well, your father was a pathologist and a medical director. Your mother was a county commissioner and an active volunteer. The age old story. Were you pressured into going into medicine? Did you have to kind of skirt a path that was being laid for you?

00:14:08:03 – 00:14:11:17

Dave Mengebier, Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation

Now, that’s a really interesting question. But no, I think it’s like.

00:14:11:17 – 00:14:14:05

Ryan

A stereotype, you know? Yeah. Buying into this, right?

00:14:14:13 – 00:14:45:08

Dave Mengebier, Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation

Yeah, I think that the biggest influence my parents had on me was this sense that we have an obligation to give back and we’re blessed to live comfortably. Then we really, as a human being, have an obligation to reach out and help people that are less fortunate. And I think they kind of drove that lesson into us. So I think they wanted us to pursue careers that were challenging, that we enjoyed.

00:14:45:09 – 00:15:14:11

Dave Mengebier

I say to our staff and all the people that used to work for me, we spend so much time at work, we might as well do something that we really enjoy, right? And life short. So really it’s worth it to pursue your passion. And I see that a lot in philanthropy. The people that are really committed to supporting the nonprofits or the students in our region are people that were brought up that way and were taught by their parents and grandparents.

00:15:14:17 – 00:15:18:05

Dave Mengebier

It’s really important to help people that need our help.

00:15:18:21 – 00:15:38:22

Ryan

That’s interesting because as an idea of this as a profession, at a certain point in your life, you realized it could be, but at a certain point in your life, was it something that was even an idea in how can we get young people into the idea of this? Because this isn’t the path to getting that Mercedes S-Class right away.

00:15:38:22 – 00:15:46:20

Ryan

Right, Right. In general. So for you, what inspired you and to what would you say to somebody younger looking towards this early on?

00:15:47:09 – 00:16:09:14

Dave Mengebier, Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation

Well, I saw my parents doing it. My dad wasn’t just a pathologist and a medical director. And my mom wasn’t just an Emmet County commissioner. I mean, they were actively involved in the community in the Petoskey Harbor Springs area. So really modeling the way. So I think that’s one way. If you’re a parent, sometimes you don’t even think your kids are paying any attention or you say something to them and you don’t think they hear you.

00:16:09:14 – 00:16:37:13

Dave Mengebier

And then months maybe later they come back and say, I remember when you told me this. So you really can’t underestimate how parents and other mentors, it doesn’t deserve to be. A parent can really model the way for the younger generations. We have such a cool program at the Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation. So when we were created 30 years ago, then one of the large guests we received was from the Kellogg Foundation to create a youth endowment.

00:16:38:00 – 00:16:54:04

Dave Mengebier, Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation

So what that does is we have a high school students in each of our five counties and they’re called youth advisory Councils and yes, yea, yeah, yeah, right. I was never kind of crazy about that act and.

00:16:54:08 – 00:16:58:21

Ryan

Forgoing my even asking if there’s marketing or behind that. So I guess I’ll get that out of the right.

00:16:58:22 – 00:17:30:12

Dave Mengebier, Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation

Right, right. But so these kids so this year each of those youth advisory councils will be able to grant $18,000 to nonprofits in their county focused on youth and family programs. And so if you sit in one of these sessions where the nonprofits in that county come in and basically pitch the kids right? So there’s 20 high school students sitting around the table and they’re listening to presentation after presentation from these nonprofits.

00:17:31:03 – 00:17:54:21

Dave Mengebier, Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation

It really does instill a sense of, wow, this is a big responsibility. Like we have these resources that could make a huge impact on these organizations and the people that they serve. But the other interesting thing about it is to watch how they have to figure out how to reach a consensus about which nonprofits to support and how much money to give them.

00:17:55:05 – 00:18:22:07

Dave Mengebier, Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation

And so that is another tremendous development skill. I don’t know who the Kellogg Foundation came up with that. This is a program, by the way, that community foundations have, I think, almost universally across the state, and I think it’s brilliant. So literally is helping high school students learn about introducing them to and learn about philanthropy. So this year, our backers, there’s seven of them across our five county region.

00:18:22:15 – 00:18:32:01

Dave Mengebier, Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation

And as I said, they’re going to be granting out $91,000. So they’re really having impact. And I think that’s just really, really compelling.

00:18:32:01 – 00:19:07:10

Ryan

And the website, which is JT, RC ASPHAUG Correct. There’s a really compelling video and this program and to see these young people getting that satisfaction and they comment on being able to help allocate this money and the enormity of that which I think is amazing. But you talked about antiquity a little bit. You talked about 30 years. So this puts the formation somewhere in the early nineties, which was a different time and admittedly a different level of social awareness in general in the nineties.

00:19:07:10 – 00:19:21:19

Ryan

So you could say it was very forward thinking of those who put this together even then to start thinking about this. But can you comment at all on if as an organization you look backwards to learn or does it not make sense and do you just look forward?

00:19:23:01 – 00:19:50:04

Dave Mengebier, Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation

Just one point you just made, Ryan, which I think is so important, is the people that founded this foundation 30 years ago, many of whom are still here in the Traverse City area. I don’t know that they really could have imagined what they were creating and what it would look like three decades later and the impact that the community foundation can have.

00:19:50:04 – 00:20:13:03

Dave Mengebier, Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation

So the lesson might take away from that is and when you’re thinking about doing something and you don’t exactly know how it’s going to turn out, but it’s a good idea, then it’s worth testing and it’s worth trying and it’s worth pursuing. Isn’t that kind of part of the title of this podcast? I thought so, yeah, because you never know how it’s going to work out.

00:20:13:03 – 00:20:35:23

Dave Mengebier, Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation

In my own experience in my life and my career has been I’ve tried a lot of things and in variably they worked out better than I thought. So I think this legacy that the founders of the Community Foundation here in our region had is unbelievable. And I think if you went and asked them, did you imagine 30 years later you were going to have the kind of impact that you’re having?

00:20:35:23 – 00:20:38:12

Dave Mengebier

I think they would say, wow, that’s surprising.

00:20:38:12 – 00:20:40:00

Ryan

There may be one in the groups like.

00:20:40:00 – 00:20:41:10

Dave Mengebier

Yeah, yeah, I knew.

00:20:41:15 – 00:20:45:02

Ryan

I vision board at this I scrapbook right right on the right.

00:20:45:08 – 00:20:47:22

Dave Mengebier

Got my Ouija board out It said it was going to be successful.

00:20:47:22 – 00:21:10:00

Ryan

Exactly it all point adds. But when you look at the main priorities of the organization community development, diversity, equity and inclusion, early childhood education and youth philanthropy, I’d like to first ask about the community development piece because you look at that and it can be kind of an amorphous concept, right? Community development, and that’s talked about a lot.

00:21:10:08 – 00:21:13:08

Ryan

So what does it mean to you specifically?

00:21:13:17 – 00:21:36:09

Dave Mengebier, Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation

So what happened is I kept having this déja vu experience. When I first arrived. People would come into the foundation and they say to us, Would you consider supporting this program or this initiative or this project? And we’d say, Well, you know, Santo’s already working on that. Oh, I didn’t know that. And it’s not as simple as that.

00:21:36:09 – 00:22:13:05

Dave Mengebier, Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation

But I think what it told us is that while there’s many examples of collaborative work that happens in our community here writ large, there are also more examples of people working in silos, the nonprofit sector not talking to government, not talking to the private sector. And how can we be interested in working on same or similar issues, put our resources and including our intellectual resources together to actually effectuate change and optimize resources and have even larger collective impact.

00:22:13:18 – 00:22:33:22

Dave Mengebier, Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation

So the other experience I had is I think the eighth Street corridor sort of a perfect example. There’s this huge article in the Record Eagle a couple of years ago about all of the studies that have been done on Eighth Street. So I would ask people what about Eighth Street? And they’d say, Dave, we’ve been talking about that for 20 years, right?

00:22:34:09 – 00:23:08:21

Dave Mengebier

So the question that begs is, well, how come these issues are not getting solved now? Some of them are, but a lot of these systemic issues. You look back at the grand vision or Traverse City 2020, which was developed in the nineties, and what were the issues that were identified back then. The same issues were grappling with today lack of affordable housing, not enough affordable transportation, not access to quality child care, not very good results on early childhood education.

00:23:09:05 – 00:23:32:06

Dave Mengebier

These are four year olds entering kindergarten. And do they have the early literacy ready to learn social networking skills they need to be successful in kindergarten and beyond? Right. So the question is, well, how come these things are not getting solved? So our theory was when we created this community development strategies, that decision making authority is too decentralized here.

00:23:32:14 – 00:24:02:03

Dave Mengebier

And so we have over a thousand nonprofits in Grand Traverse County alone. We don’t have any really big companies that in a lot of other areas have the deep pockets and the resources to actually move the needle. And then we have many, many local units of government, not all of whom have the capacity. And I’m not referring to the Traverse City City Commission to actually address these really difficult long term issues.

00:24:02:03 – 00:24:40:16

Dave Mengebier

So what we did is we created this coalition out of which is now 38 nonprofit government and business organizations. So think Munson Health Care, NMC Intermediate School District, Haggerty. Even small businesses like Rare Bird is one of our coalition members, and reaching a consensus on a set of 13 economic, societal, think, housing, community mobility, early childhood and environmental issues think green infrastructure, water quality, etc. And so we’ve been working on that now for a couple of years.

00:24:40:16 – 00:24:58:12

Dave Mengebier

We have some wins, we’re making some progress on some of these issues. These are long standing, long, really difficult issues. So the idea is to put the collective heft of this coalition behind a lot of really good work and try to help move it forward, move it. The sports analogy down the field.

00:24:58:14 – 00:25:09:04

Ryan

Right. Well, it sounds like one could say the problems were kicked down the field. You’re looking to do the same thing in a more positive trajectory.

00:25:09:04 – 00:25:14:14

Dave Mengebier

Yeah. This is not kicking them down the field. This is running them down the field.

00:25:14:14 – 00:25:16:03

Mark

You running into the end zone?

00:25:16:07 – 00:25:18:02

Ryan

We can do sports. Yeah, right.

00:25:18:06 – 00:25:18:13

Dave Mengebier

You guys.

00:25:18:13 – 00:25:42:10

Ryan

Do that. It doesn’t come up a lot. And we need help there. What I think is really unique within the framework of community development that you focus on is the idea of shared accountability. And I think that sounds potentially very tricky. Is that a difficult balance to achieve in a community like ours and to reach understanding even of what both sides are in this arena?

00:25:42:21 – 00:26:11:04

Dave Mengebier

Well, so we’ve put these objective eyes on a scorecard which uses a sustainability framework economic, societal, environmental. And one of the reasons we use that framework is there’s a lot of interrelationships between economic development, societal and environmental issues. Right? And then we score ourselves from if we’re going backwards on one of our objectives, we’re red. If we’re not making any progress yellow, if we are making progress, then we’re green, right?

00:26:11:17 – 00:26:42:01

Dave Mengebier

And I haven’t really experienced any pushback back from our coalition partners holding ourselves accountable for these things. You can’t do everything though. So we decided we were going to zero in on youth mental health, housing and early childhood education and access to quality child care. So we are making progress. So, by the way, I want to be clear, the coalition, the Community foundation is not taking sole credit for any of this stuff.

00:26:42:01 – 00:27:10:21

Dave Mengebier

What we are doing is trying to support other people and add the collective weight of a community behind it. Great example is last year legal North County Commission was considering Ziering out their early childhood education millage which supported quality child care in that county. And not all the coalition members weighed in on a letter to the Lenore County Commission, but probably a dozen of the largest, most influential organizations in our area did.

00:27:11:04 – 00:27:46:16

Dave Mengebier

And we just added our decibel to the voice of other people saying, What are you doing? They ended up not doing that. So another great example is this housing development up on Lafreniere Road. So it’s a combination of affordable and workforce housing that the Traverse City Housing Commission is working on with various new headquarters and transfer station. So this is a perfect combination because it’s a little bit outside of town, but they have immediate access to public transportation, so they have affordable transport to get to their jobs.

00:27:47:03 – 00:28:13:23

Dave Mengebier

So the coalition weighed in on that. That was our voice was part of many voices supporting the $6 Million appropriation that the housing project recently received. And it was really critical because Bayda has received all the funding for its project by Garfield Township, was saying, we’re not going to allow Bayda to move forward with construction on their headquarters or transfer station til we know the housing piece is going to get built.

00:28:13:23 – 00:28:21:23

Dave Mengebier

So it turned out well. So those are just a couple examples about how the Coalition is sort of putting its collective weight behind some of these things.

00:28:22:14 – 00:28:43:13

Ryan

I like just adding additional decibels to the collective voice and it can be successful doing it this way because I think a lot of people can get very cynical about this and think, Oh, this is just free love flowers in the air. And it’s not that it’s people coming together for a common purpose, but doing work, doing actual work.

00:28:44:11 – 00:28:56:20

Ryan

What would something about your day to day that would surprise somebody just the day to day? Not the flash, not the glitz, the glamor doing fantastic fancy podcasts. Yeah. What’s something that people would be surprised about that you have to deal with?

00:28:57:18 – 00:29:23:06

Dave Mengebier

I don’t know if this is much of a surprise, but when people ask me like, what do I like about my job? I say the people that I meet and get to work with. So you think about the type of people that I work with, we work with. They love Northern Michigan. They’ve had super interesting careers in many cases, and they want to give back to their community.

00:29:23:06 – 00:29:51:22

Dave Mengebier

So just think about that combination of character traits or values, right? So you meet the most awesome people. I spend a lot of time a meeting with community leaders. I’m also a northern navigator for Traverse Connect, so we’re trying to attract and retain talent here in our region, and we do that by having navigators meet with people considering moving here and they have all kinds of questions.

00:29:52:05 – 00:30:02:12

Dave Mengebier

What’s the best hiking trail? What’s your favorite restaurant? What are the schools like? Who might you introduce me to in my particular field?

00:30:02:13 – 00:30:06:21

Ryan

It’s a real person. Yeah, that’s a real. Yeah, real answers. Yeah, they can answer.

00:30:06:21 – 00:30:32:10

Dave Mengebier

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that’s really the best I said. The other thing is I love our staff, and one of the things that was super surprises to me is it looks pretty seamless on the outside, right? Donors send in a check and we send them a gift acknowledgment letter and a tax receipt, and then we invest the money and then we just grant it out and it’s no, never mind.

00:30:32:10 – 00:30:36:16

Dave Mengebier

Well, there’s a lot of work goes on behind the scenes here.

00:30:36:16 – 00:30:37:11

Ryan

Simplification.

00:30:37:13 – 00:31:03:20

Dave Mengebier

Yeah, there’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes. So we have 9.4 staff. Joanne Hughes has been with us going on 22 years. Paul, our VP for Finance 21, Alison our Chief Operating Officer 17 and our VP for program, Steve Wade. He’s been with us over ten years and then we have some junior staff that some have not been there quite as long.

00:31:04:06 – 00:31:34:02

Dave Mengebier

So it’s a fantastic combo, right? We have sort of the millennials, Gen Xers, and then we have some very seasoned staff. So the seasoned staff, they have all the institutional memory, they’re very good at running things and the younger staff brings new ideas, new energy. But as a whole, I think the team is absolutely fantastic. And when I hear feedback from donors, from community leaders, from our nonprofit partners all the time saying, You guys are really great to work with.

00:31:34:02 – 00:31:48:13

Dave Mengebier

And that’s what brings me joy, honestly, is going to work and working with these great people. And I hesitate almost to say we have a great board because that sounds like apple polishing or pandering, but we have a great board too.

00:31:48:13 – 00:32:11:22

Ryan

I’ve heard the same. Yeah. So, yeah, you know, I’ll second that when you’re looking at the sum total of the impact that you get to make every day and you think about the different aspects of leadership that you bring. Was there something about this role that stretched you as a leader and was there something that you brought to this role that you know was uniquely you and you would just kick butt?

00:32:13:07 – 00:32:25:07

Dave Mengebier

One of the things that was just interesting was when I was at Consumers Energy, then at one time I had 125 employees and a $26 billion operating budget. Okay.

00:32:25:09 – 00:32:25:17

Ryan

Yeah.

00:32:25:19 – 00:32:44:05

Dave Mengebier

So right. So when I arrived, there were five staff and we had about a half a million dollar operating budget. The other thing that was kind of surprising to me was I was the president of the Consumers Energy Foundation. That was one of the hats I wore. And so we were granting out from that foundation about $10 million a year.

00:32:44:12 – 00:33:21:13

Dave Mengebier

I went to my first grantmaking committee and Grammy committee had like they were talking about, we have $8,000 here that we can approve this round. So it should it be $500,000. That was really eye opening to me because it was just sort of an order of magnitude, a lot smaller than what I was used to. And I mean, that’s actually I would just say one of the big challenges that this community foundation has is unlike Rotary Charities, which we partner with literally every day, we don’t have a lot of discretionary grant dollars that we can direct towards what we see as gaps in the community.

00:33:22:01 – 00:33:46:15

Dave Mengebier

And that’s also really important in this community development work. If we need resources and we’re asking other people to contribute, we need to make sure we have our own contribution. So that’s been a challenge. It’s something that we’ve been working on, is trying to raise more on designated or unrestricted gifts coming to the Community Foundation so we can direct it where we think it’s most needed.

00:33:47:03 – 00:34:15:16

Dave Mengebier

And that’s been a bit of a stretch. I mean, I’m not what I found out is fundraising is a both an art and a science, right? There’s a lot more to it than just going up to Ryan or Mark and saying, Hey, would you guys mind carry me a check? And particularly if it’s an unrestricted gift. In other words, the donor is totally delegating the decision making to our board and or staff, and they always want to know, Well, what are you gonna do with the money?

00:34:15:23 – 00:34:42:07

Dave Mengebier

Right. We have a good answer for that. Now, with this community development strategy, we’re going to use it to support green infrastructure projects and improve water quality and better housing for our workforce and increase community mobility, making our communities more walkable and bikeable or increased ridership for public transportation. So we have a good answer to that. But that’s been sort of a surprise and sort of a stretch for me.

00:34:42:18 – 00:35:05:08

Dave Mengebier

You know, as I said earlier, I feel so blessed because the company invested a lot in me in strategic planning, leadership development and training, strategic planning, consumers, energy. I think one of the reasons it’s one of the top five utilities in the country is they don’t just do strategic planning once a year. They do it all the time.

00:35:05:08 – 00:35:17:21

Dave Mengebier

And so all of those skills I sort of was able to bring to this job, and that’s led to things like the community development Coalition and the scorecard, some of the other work that we’re doing.

00:35:17:21 – 00:35:43:20

Ryan

That’s fantastic. When you are in a role or you’re in an organization that interacts with the public and affects the public and benefits the public, but you have to do things like this and feel questions about the business and money and it all sounds very seamless when you talk about it. But is there kind of a stigma about like, we shouldn’t talk about money, we shouldn’t talk about business, although it’s the core of what you do?

00:35:43:20 – 00:35:46:14

Ryan

Is that something that you have to navigate at all?

00:35:47:19 – 00:36:11:20

Dave Mengebier

Yeah. I mean, I think that’s part of the whole development and fundraising process. So when you’re talking to a donor, I think donors first and foremost want to work with somebody they trust and to develop that relationship, you have to work with them over a period of time. You just can’t go up to mark walls and ask them to cut $100,000 check.

00:36:11:20 – 00:36:12:20

Ryan

I tried that.

00:36:12:20 – 00:36:17:00

Dave Mengebier

It’s just hard, right? Yeah. Even after your long relationship. Yeah.

00:36:17:00 – 00:36:19:02

Ryan

So this is a nine year process.

00:36:19:02 – 00:36:43:15

Dave Mengebier

Yeah. Yeah. So. But the other hand, you have to ask if you believe in the cause, you know that you’re going to use those resources in a way that’s really going to have impact, then that really makes it a little bit easier. And as long as you’re able to articulate what is our mission, which is improving the quality of life for the communities and the people that we serve.

00:36:43:16 – 00:37:04:09

Dave Mengebier

Right. And yeah, so it can be uncomfortable, but money stuff, the Community Foundation is actually a great deal. You know, sometimes people say, well, explain to me the community foundation, right? And one way I explain it is this. So let’s say Ryan wants to set up his own Ryan Family Foundation, right? And you care about something like the environment, right?

00:37:04:20 – 00:37:25:23

Dave Mengebier

To do that, you have to apply to the IRS four or 51c3 an annual license from the state of Michigan. You have to have a board of directors. You have to do an annual audit data data done. So instead of doing that, you set up the Ryan fund at Community Foundation and we are your foundation and we take care of all of that stuff.

00:37:25:23 – 00:37:45:04

Dave Mengebier

We just make it easy. Sounds better. Yeah. And you know, at Donors, they don’t want to have to, in a lot of cases, deal with all the administrative stuff, which is what we take care of. What they’re interested in is philanthropy, community impact, giving back to nonprofit partners or supporting scholarships or students. So we just make it make it easy for people.

00:37:45:16 – 00:38:09:14

Ryan

Well, we talked about where you’ve come from and the individuals in 1992 who would probably in hopefully be still amazed and in awe of what it’s become now, not to put you on the spot, but are you talking about what could be around the corner? Because now I think the power of prognostication and agility is probably our most valuable skill.

00:38:09:14 – 00:38:14:07

Ryan

So are you talking about that and what do you see that may be on your list?

00:38:14:15 – 00:38:44:07

Dave Mengebier

Yeah, well, something that we’ve been working on now for a couple of years that I’m super excited about is impact investing. So what that means is we take a small percentage of our endowed portfolio, in this case $2 million, and instead of investing on Wall Street, we’re going to invest it on Main Street right here in our five county service area.

00:38:44:19 – 00:39:12:03

Dave Mengebier

So we’re going to earn some kind of a return on our investments, but we’re not looking to maximize our return. We’re looking to maximize impact. So one area of our region that foundations can’t have as much impact on is the small business community. And if you have a vibrant small business community that has all kinds of benefits not just economically but societally and environmentally.

00:39:12:14 – 00:39:50:20

Dave Mengebier

And so what we’re doing is we’ve so far invested $1,000,000 with two, what they call not to get to technical community development, financial institutions venture north and northern initiatives, and they’ve committed to deploying the capital that we’ve loaned them here in our five county area, using the guidelines, the objectives in our community development scorecard. So again, think child care, housing, etc. And so we’re making low cost capital available to small business and some nonprofits in our five county region, which compounds impact we’re having with our grantmaking.

00:39:51:10 – 00:40:16:10

Dave Mengebier

So I think that is going to be that’s something that a lot of foundations are looking at. Rotary Charities sort of set the trend on that here in our community and was incredibly helpful in helping us get started there. But I’m excited about that and I think that I get frustrated because even though we’re granting out over $3 million a year, right, there is so much need out there.

00:40:16:10 – 00:40:49:02

Dave Mengebier

Sometimes I feel like we’re spreading it like peanut butter, right? So the question is, well, how can we have even more impact? So this idea of carving this out and having some financial return, but also having a social impact by making low cost financing available to these small businesses and nonprofits I think can be really key. And so just give you an example, some nonprofits have applied for a federal or state grant, but in order to actually get the money in the door, they have to finish whatever capital project that they’re committed to working on.

00:40:49:03 – 00:41:09:16

Dave Mengebier

Right. So what do they do in the interim? Through our partners at Venture North and Northern Initiatives, they can provide these organizations with bridge loans 12 to 18 months, and then once the grant dollars come in, then they can pay that back. And so that’s just one example of how this impact investing strategy is going to be put to work.

00:41:09:19 – 00:41:26:22

Ryan

We talked about having to bring the business aspect into this, but I think it’s important for people to know these things have to happen. And you are very transparent. In June, you launched a project dashboard, correct, that enables individuals to see what progress has been made on certain projects. Yep.

00:41:27:05 – 00:41:48:17

Dave Mengebier

Yep. And people can go on the web page. It’s and WMI, as in northwest Michigan community development talk and they can click on the menu and they can go and look at the scorecard and the dashboard and see. By the way, I do distinguish between a scorecard. We’re keeping score as opposed to a dashboard, which is just reporting indices.

00:41:48:17 – 00:42:22:20

Dave Mengebier

Right. Just reflecting on your last question, though, here are two other things that at Community Foundation, we’re looking really hard at. So one is the impacts of climate change. And I for one, having come from a sector that was heavily involved in this, particularly, I think, aware of the increased severity and frequency of storms, wildfires, droughts, other climate impacts over the long term.

00:42:23:09 – 00:42:58:04

Dave Mengebier

And climate change is a super challenging issue because the costs of actually reducing carbon emissions and making your communities more resilient are immediate and the benefits much longer term, right? So that imbalance between the costs and the benefits on climate is one thing that is really hard to overcome. But I would say from a philanthropy perspective, supporting nonprofits, supporting communities and helping us address climate change, reduce our carbon emissions, make our communities more climate resilient is going to be really key.

00:42:58:12 – 00:43:00:07

Ryan

It’s difficult, but not insurmountable.

00:43:00:07 – 00:43:46:22

Dave Mengebier

No, I think the key is what can we do here locally to have impact? We’re not going to solve global climate change, but we can have an impact here. The other is diversity, equity and inclusion. So we created DEI fund at the Community Foundation. So far it’s granted out $58,000 to nonprofits black indigenous people of color led LGBTQ Plus we define DEI very broadly organizations with disabilities supporting people that are on the neurodiverse spectrum, aging people from lower socioeconomic levels that are really suffering we say there’s too Northern Michigan’s here.

00:43:47:11 – 00:44:15:17

Dave Mengebier

So I think that has to be a big focus for the Community Foundation and for our region as a whole And whether you agree with that or not, I think there is really a compelling argument economically because we are heavily dependent on the hospitality and service industry in our region. And really, I think the key to long term economic strength is diversifying our economy by attracting more STEM tech, I.T. related professionals here.

00:44:16:08 – 00:44:42:18

Dave Mengebier

But to do that, we have to create a culture that everybody feels welcome no matter how they identify what race, ethnicity they’re part of. And I think that’s going to be challenging to some people. If you haven’t had that lived experience, you really don’t have a sense for why that’s an issue. But I hear from as I’m doing my Northern Navigator gig, what’s your culture like as a welcoming?

00:44:42:19 – 00:45:00:01

Dave Mengebier

And I’d say speaking, Northern Michigan is very welcoming but has not had a lot of experience. We have a pretty homogeneous population here, right? I don’t know what it is. 98% white. So we’ve had a few incidents over the last few years which show that there’s still some work to be done that could.

00:45:00:01 – 00:45:27:09

Ryan

Be done in a very almost transient population. In a way, when you have this thrust in the summer, you have folks who live here seasonally, but you’re still doing things that everybody can hopefully get behind. Whether you live here six months of the year, you live here year round and listeners can support the organization. And I think this is really interesting and maybe it’s psychological, maybe it’s marketing.

00:45:27:14 – 00:45:42:10

Ryan

But when you go to the website, which is archive.org on the right, among the list of things you can look at, the first thing is give. And I think that’s interesting because that was the first thing I was inclined to click on. So but how can listeners support.

00:45:42:17 – 00:46:17:13

Dave Mengebier

I’ll just give you great examples. So when the pandemic broke out, then couple of weeks after March 2020, we created an urgent needs fund. And the reason we were compelled to do that is that nonprofits, particularly those serving basic needs, think food, clothing, emergency transportation, counseling services. Their fundraising was cut off overnight, and at the same time, the demand for their services was skyrocketing as unemployment was going up.

00:46:17:13 – 00:46:46:23

Dave Mengebier

Right? So over a period of about 18 months, we raised and granted out $1 million, which shows the generosity of our community. And the thing that was most gratifying us and to me was that 40% of the guests that came into the Urgent Needs fund were from first time givers to the community foundation and and in smaller amounts, 50, 100, $200.

00:46:47:07 – 00:47:13:21

Dave Mengebier

We received some very large gifts. But I think what that demonstrated to me is that, one, we have an incredibly generous community here and two, that people are looking for opportunity even in a relatively small way, depending on on what they can do themselves to actually give back to the community. So we welcome gifts of any size. We put it all to work.

00:47:14:06 – 00:47:34:09

Dave Mengebier

We take our stewardship responsibilities very, very seriously. We want to make sure that every dollar that we grant out in the form of grants or scholarships has an impact in our community. And as people learn more about the Community foundation, its work we’re seeing, we’re growing and people are giving. And I find that really gratifying.

00:47:34:17 – 00:47:53:10

Ryan

You were quoted in a Traverse City business news article, and I think it’s a wonderful quote, and it’s in my experience, people are truly committed to the notion that giving is better than receiving. And I feel like just talking to you, I do feel that you exude that. And is that something that still guides you, that still keeps you inspired?

00:47:53:10 – 00:48:18:21

Dave Mengebier

There’s no question about that. I think that donors want to support a nonprofit organizations. They want to support students. But there is a very much of a satisfying feeling when you’re taking some of your resources and you’re putting it to work on behalf of these really fantastic nonprofits and students in our community. And I, I think people it gives them a really good feeling.

00:48:19:19 – 00:48:31:03

Ryan

And seeing how that makes you feel so good at a young age. You hope they hunger for it. But finally, to wrap up, I have maybe an easy question for you. What’s the best hoppy beer to go with a good cigar.

00:48:31:03 – 00:48:47:01

Dave Mengebier

I always go with two hearted bellies to heart it, and if there’s not 200, then I have to go with Short’s humor. I think those are. I mean, that is such a great thing, right? You don’t have to leave the boundaries, state lines of the state of Michigan to have two of the best IPAs.

00:48:47:01 – 00:48:47:12

Ryan

In the.

00:48:47:12 – 00:48:48:01

Dave Mengebier

World.

00:48:48:15 – 00:49:03:10

Mark

You know, it’s funny that you bring that up, too, because offline before the recording, I don’t know when this will drop, so I’ll leave the dates out. But Dave told me that he and his wife are in a little weight loss competition in and that. Okay.

00:49:03:19 – 00:49:05:02

Dave Mengebier

The Thanksgiving challenge.

00:49:05:02 – 00:49:05:20

Mark

Oh, there you go.

00:49:05:20 – 00:49:09:00

Ryan

But the thing is, hoppy beers are an enemy.

00:49:09:00 – 00:49:12:13

Mark

Yeah, that’s the first thing he said. He said, well, too hard. It kind of.

00:49:13:06 – 00:49:15:18

Ryan

Well, there’s a light version of it that. Yeah, I don’t know.

00:49:15:20 – 00:49:21:09

Dave Mengebier

I’m not. Yeah, I’m not. What is that called. Lighthearted Yeah.

00:49:21:15 – 00:49:23:02

Ryan

Okay. Yeah, I agree. I’m not.

00:49:23:02 – 00:49:40:04

Dave Mengebier

A fan. I’m not a fan. I’m just. You know what? Now you know how it is. It’s like the seed has been planted and it’s growing in my brain, Right? And now I really want to go and have one of those. But I surprised you didn’t ask me this. So my last name, Mango Beer. Guys know what that means.

00:49:40:04 – 00:49:46:12

Dave Mengebier

In German, it means lots of beer. The interesting thing about that is So were.

00:49:46:12 – 00:49:48:04

Ryan

You the most popular person in college?

00:49:48:12 – 00:49:58:12

Dave Mengebier

Yeah, right, Right. So we figured that we either were in our generations in Germany were either brewers or heavy drinkers.

00:49:58:19 – 00:49:59:06

Ryan

Right?

00:49:59:06 – 00:50:01:14

Mark

Yeah, they’re definitely mutually exclusive.

00:50:01:14 – 00:50:09:13

Dave Mengebier

I never liked that last name. I really wanted to have a name like Smith. Right, Right. You know, you got to the AMS in the first day school.

00:50:09:14 – 00:50:34:06

Ryan

Wilson Yeah, right. Pedestrian as it gets. And I had a rough time coming up too, right? But it gives you stories. It’s what defines you. Yeah. The website again is g t r c f dawg. Correct. Correct. And again, all the information that we talked about, there’s some great videos on the website and it’s very compelling. And honestly, Dave, it just takes a few moments to look at what you’re doing and you are really, really hooked.

00:50:34:06 – 00:50:45:21

Ryan

So it’s amazing to be able to talk to you and thank you so much for your pursuits and to all those who pursue along with you, working to make our communities better, more fulfilling places to live, work and play. It was awesome to have you with us. Thank you.

00:50:45:21 – 00:50:46:17

Dave Mengebier

Thank you so much.

00:50:46:17 – 00:50:56:05

Ryan

Our pleasure. And to all of you who are listening, thank you so much for listening and thank you for pursuing the positive.

00:50:56:05 – 00:51:37:06

Mark

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us for another episode on the Pursuit of podcast, The Pursuit of Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation. For more information and to get involved, visit gtrcf.org. And as always, for all things audio, video podcast production, check us out at New Lenox.