PBS Foundation

News & Information

1 | 2 | 3

"PBS Foundation's Path and Progress Toward Success"

Cheri Carter
PBS Foundation: What Next?
October 4, 2007

Thank you, Beth, and good morning to all of you.

Every year I look forward to Development Conference, so thank you once again to the PBS Development department for your hard work in organizing another great conference – and thanks for inviting me to be part of it.

It hardly seems like it’s been a year since I was introducing the Foundation and our goals for the future.

Well, that future is here already, and I have so many exciting accomplishments and plans to share with you today.

It’s been an exhilarating year of growth for all of us

We’ve been building our organization, securing new funding, and getting the word out about our mission to help PBS: BE MORE.

Our message is catching on and spreading throughout the PBS community, the philanthropic community and beyond.

Last year, I posed the question WHAT IF, and challenged us all to dream big for PBS

I could never have imagined how quickly those dreams would start coming true

Getting to this point has involved the hard work, the dedication, the generosity and the vision of so many people. And I want to share my time this morning with a few of them

They’ve helped get us to where we are today and they will take us to where we want to go tomorrow.

They represent many perspectives and many voices, but they are united in a shared vision for PBS.

Let’s hear what some of them have to say.

[Videos]

John Morris: “We as a system…Public Broadcasting service as a whole we have a duty and a responsibility to offer the opportunity to the leading philanthropists because the return on their investment with us will be greater than other investment they can make. Public television deserves to ask for this level of philanthropy and there’s no question that it will elevate the quality of the programs that we get and the affordability of those programs to the stations.”

Peter deCourcy Hero: “So I see the foundation as building a long-term savings account for PBS, first of all, secondly creating a venture fund that can be used for particular opportunities that come along and third begin to endow a national resource so that it isn’t so dependent on the money that it has to raise year-in and year-out, and I think we’re moving well in all those directions.”

[Cheri]

And indeed we are making progress in all of these directions. Let me share some of the highlights with you.

We’re building our team of advisors, completing our Board of Directors and expanding our Station Advisory Council.

The PBS Foundation recruited THREE new Board Members this past year.

We welcomed public television’s own Henry Becton from WGBH in Boston, …. Linda Brown, President of the Ridgestone Foundation in Santa Monica,

….and Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe Systems in San Jose, California.

They join all of our other Board members and I’m honored to be working with this accomplished and dedicated group.

In addition, we have continued our great work with the PBS Foundation Station Advisory Council to stay connected to all of you.

We are planning to expand the council in the near future, and I’m pleased to welcome our newest council members:

… Tom Axtell of KLVX in Las Vegas,

… Ted Krichels of Pennsylvania State Public Broadcasting,

… Michele Ripley of Kentucky Educational Television,

… And Rick Schneider of WPBT in South Florida.

We are also making great strides in our fundraising efforts and in meeting our financial commitments to PBS:

… We provided over four million dollars to PBS this past year, including nearly three point four million dollars to the National Programming Service.

… And I am happy to report we have renewed the commitments of the Knight and Ford Foundations, representing six million dollars in support for PBS Engage, PBS World, and the PBS Leadership Development and Diversity Initiative, as well as another year of support for our foundation operations.

1 | 2 | 3