Carrolle Perry Devonish, Former Philadelphia Foundation Director, Community Philanthropy ...

credit: Fubiz

Carrolle Perry Devonish, the first female and black director of the Philadelphia Foundation, died Wednesday of a heart condition while traveling in Colombia, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

She was 85.

Perry Devonish started her career coordinating philanthropy in Philadelphia in the 1980s and over the next two decades, connected hundreds of philanthropists with community service organizations that addressed inequities regarding education, arts and culture, health and medicine, employment, crime, and social justice for minorities, women, and underrepresented people.

Her tenure as director of the Philadelphia Foundation, from 1991 to 1999, is called the "Perry phase" by admiring colleagues, and she focused on building long-term assets and working closely with community leaders in making hundreds of grants for millions of dollars every year.

She concentrated, she told the Association of Black Foundation Executives in 2008, on "'issues at the neighborhood level' and pointed donors to 'using their resources to have an impact on their communities.'" Perry Devonish was particularly active among Black philanthropists.

"African Americans were seen as recipients of giving and not necessarily the givers," she said in 2008.

"That is a myth that is and continues to be."

By 1997, the foundation had grown to 282 donor funds, awarded $8.8 million in grants, and was recognized by the

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