JIM CANALES, who has overseen a more than doubling of annual giving at the Barr Foundation while presiding over its emergence as a major civic player in Greater Boston, plans to step down as the foundation’s president later this year.
The foundation, which focuses its philanthropic giving on education, climate change, and the arts, said a search for a new president will get underway with the goal of having a new leader in place by the end of the year.
Canales, who arrived in Boston in 2014 to helm the foundation after 11 years leading the James Irvine Foundation in California, said a decade-long tenure seems like the right length of time to remain in this kind of position. “I feel that the 10- or 12-year horizon gives you enough time to come in and do some consequential work and hopefully feel like you’ve moved a set of issues forward, but provide space for new ideas and new perspectives to be brought in,” he said. “You never want to overstay your welcome.”
Canales, who earned $728,000 in 2022, will move into the unpaid role of chair of Barr’s board of trustees, and will serve on the search committee to choose a successor. He said there is no expectation that the foundation will make any major changes in its focus. “There’s no intention on anyone’s part here to see Barr’s priorities shift in any significant way,” he said.
The Barr Foundation was founded in 1997 by Amos and Barbara Hostetter, using proceeds from the sale of Continental Cablevision, which Amos Hostetter co-founded in 1963 and was sold in 1996. Barr is now one of the largest foundations in New England, with more than $2.8 billion in assets.
The foundation operated for years in relative anonymity, shunning publicity and conditioning its giving on grant recipients not publicly disclosing the gifts. It began to shift into a more visible public presence in 2010, and hired Canales four years later to serve as its first president and only its third trustee. Until then, the Hostetters were the sole trustees of the foundation.
Under Canales’s leadership, Barr has increased its annual giving from $55 million to about $130 million, and expanded its staff from 19 to 48 employees. It has also taken on a far more prominent public role, staking out ground as a forceful advocate on racial justice and equity issues and in backing efforts to confront climate change.
(MassINC, the nonprofit that publishes CommonWealth Beacon, is currently the recipient of two three-year grants totaling $1.25 million to support general operating costs as well as its policy work on Gateway Cities. CommonWealth Beacon previously received a Barr grant to support reporting on arts and culture.)
Lee Pelton, the president of the Boston Foundation and member of the Barr board of trustees, said Canales has helped transform Barr into “one of our country’s leading private foundations” and has been “enormously strategic and thoughtful in his commitment to improving lives and strengthening communities.”
Barr’s efforts have included a willingness to engage directly in funding public sector efforts, including the search for a Boston school superintendent under Mayor Marty Walsh, as well as various city programming initiatives.
“For over a decade, Jim has brought his wisdom, integrity, and passion for effective philanthropy to the work of transforming the Barr Foundation into the organization it is today,” Barbara Hostetter, the chair of the foundation’s board, said in a statement. “His leadership through this crucial phase of Barr’s evolution has significantly deepened our impact, while simultaneously weaving the Barr Foundation into the civic fabric of Boston and communities across the region.”
Barr’s higher profile and the expanded reach of its giving has also made it an occasional target of criticism, especially from those with policy differences, such as groups opposed to charter schools who take issue with its willingness to fund initiatives at charter and district public schools. Canales has said the foundation is interested in supporting effective educational efforts and is “agnostic” on the issue of school governance.
Even those who have been the beneficiaries of its largesse have acknowledged Barr’s growing influence. In 2015, Joyce Linehan, who served as policy chief to then-Mayor Walsh, described Barr officials as “very active participants in the policy discussion realm.” Jason Sachs, who was director of early childhood education for the Boston Public Schools at the time and a recipient of Barr funding, called it a “virtual government.”
Phil Buchanan, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, said there is always heightened scrutiny of how foundations wield power when they look to increase their impact.
“Therein lies the risk and opportunity,” said Buchanan. While there is always the risk that foundations can wield power in a way that oversteps playing a collaborative role in civic efforts, he said “the opportunity is in providing the institutional knowledge over time that can be so helpful to policymakers and others.” Buchanan said foundations and the nonprofits they support play a vital role in helping to tackle problems that government and the private sector “haven’t been able to address.”
Under Canales, Buchanan said, Barr has shown a level of transparency and commitment to “deep listening” that reflect the best practices in philanthropy. “Not all the knowledge resides in the foundations, and they need to be in constructive dialogue with policymakers,” said Buchanan, whose organization has received funding from Barr and been contracted to carry out program evaluations for the foundation.
“Philanthropic organizations can be viewed as pretty egotistical and dictating the answers,” said Canales. “I have never wanted Barr to show up in those ways. He said there is “an unequal power dynamic in philanthropy” and he’s tried to make it “one of the core values of the foundation to act with humility.”
Canales, 58, whose mother’s family is from Nicaragua and whose father’s family is from Mexico, was raised by his great-grandmother in a lower-income household in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood. He went on to Stanford University, and taught high school English before making a career change to the world of philanthropy, where he’s worked for 31 years.
After a successor is named, Canales will take the reins from Barbara Hostetter as chair of the Barr board of trustees. He will also begin full-time work as one of four managing directors of the Hostetters’ “family office,” overseeing their personal philanthropic giving and other family matters.
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