In August, the New Hanover Community Endowment’s board announced that it had selected Dan Winslow as the fund’s next president and CEO after a national search. Winslow, who most recently led the Boston-based New England Legal Foundation, starts in the new role Oct. 1. He will head up the $1 billion-plus community endowment created from the sale of New Hanover Regional Medical Center to Novant Health in 2021.
 

Why were you interested in pursuing the job?

“This is a unique opportunity to affect meaningful change. A lot of times people can have good ideas or good initiatives, but they lack the finances to see it through.

The New Hanover Community Endowment creates an exceptional opportunity for the citizens of New Hanover County to directly benefit from the resources that the endowment can infuse into the community in the four pillars (which are education, health and social equity, public safety, and community development).”
 

What do you think you’ll bring to it, with your perspectives and past experiences?

“I bring a very broad perspective and a history of public service, as well as I’m a business executive and a nonprofit executive and basically an organizational, transformational organizational leader in every role that I’ve had.

I didn’t just have interesting roles, I actually accomplished something in each of the roles that I had that was meaningful and impactful. So, for example, when I was a judge, I invented a new way to schedule jury trials that allowed people to have jury trials almost all the time on the first scheduled date, which was revolutionary. ...

When I was the governor’s (Mitt Romney in Massachusetts) chief legal counsel in the recession following 9/11 I was able to do a whole bunch of things, resolving the Democratic National Committee’s, the risk of a labor strike by the police department at the time of the DNC convention; helping to get a new runway built at Logan Airport so flights wouldn’t be delayed.

… We also had the Big Dig being completed at that time, and the city of Boston laid claim to the land that was going to be freed up above the tunnel, as did Mass Turnpike Authority, as did the state, and we actually created a trust to allow each of the parties who had an interest to shape this, what’s now called the Greenway, into a beautiful linear garden and public park that’s probably better than any one of the entities ever could have done by themselves.

And it’s an interesting parallel here to the Community Endowment, where different interests are involved, and they’ve banded together to create something that might be better than the sum of the parts.”
 

What do you say to some of the criticism that’s been raised or concerns that have been raised about your background, that while it’s extensive, it’s not as much time in philanthropic endowment management as some of the other fields you’ve worked in?

“Well, first of all, I embrace low expectations because it makes it easier to beat them. But I’ve had extensive experience as a nonprofit executive, which by definition, puts me at the table of philanthropic efforts.

So, it’s true, I’ve not worked in-house at one or two philanthropies, but I’ve been exposed to the inner workings of dozens of philanthropies, and I’ve seen best practices and what works or what does not work from the perspective of the nonprofit, which I think is a very valuable perspective to take into this role because we don’t want to have nonprofits invest an undue amount of time if they don’t have a credible chance of winning funding.

We want to make sure that there’s a proportionality. … We do something that’s strategic, big picture, long term, we have to make sure there’s a proportionality to it.”
 

In Massachusetts, you’ve previously held political office, as a state representative, and run for office, in the Republican primary for a special U.S. Senate seat election. What role do you think politics should and should not play in spearheading the endowment and working with its governing board?

“To level set, maybe 10% of my career has been in politics; the other 90% has been in business, nonprofit, public service (and) not in politics. But the answer is, there should be no involvement. We’re a nonpartisan organization – absolutely have no fear or favor based on partisanship. We are a community resource for the entirety of New Hanover County, regardless of what walk of life or political stripe people have.”
 

Do you have any other goals, overall ideas, for the position coming into it?

“In terms of vision, my first effort is to listen for the first 90 days that I’m there. I want to meet with as many people in the community. … I truly welcome the opportunity to meet with community organizations, leaders and just folks in the neighborhoods that want to make an investment of improving the life where they live. And I think it’s important to be accessible and transparent. …

What I said to the board when I was applying for the job – and I don’t want to get too far ahead of the listening board because my views will be shaped by a lot of the input that I get – but I do think there’s movement among foundations like this of being more than a passive piggy bank to instead be a catalyst for positive change and to really take the role of a civic leader and leadership in the community.

Not just funding things that come to us, which are great, but harnessing the power of ideas.”