About George

Born a brand name

I was born the son of Minnesotans George Sturgis Pillsbury and Sally Lucille (Whitney) Pillsbury in 1949, entering the world with a brand name passed down by my great grandfather Charles A. Pillsbury and his uncle, John S. Pillsbury. John was the first to leave the family homestead of Sutton, New Hampshire in search of new opportunities. In 1855, John first traveled to San Francisco, then backtracked to visit the settlement of Saint Anthony Falls along the Mississippi because it reminded him of the Merrimack River he had left behind in New England. He found opportunity in establishing a hardware store and later a flour mill in what would become Minneapolis.

Once the hardware store was up and running, he encouraged my grandfather Charles, who had studied the mills of Montreal, to join him. His nephew's assignment was to start and manage what became the first Pillsbury mill. Overcoming any number of challenges, from fires to finance, Charles always gave priority to investing in the health and education of the company’s employees. The fledgling enterprise found its way. What was originally the A-Mill is still marked by its landmark neon sign on the skyline of Minneapolis.

Growing up with this legacy, there was no way I could hide from the brand and all that came with it. This became more true when the Pillsbury company adopted the Dough Boy as its mascot, which left me with more than my share of "Are you related?" at the check-out counter and Dough Boy pokes and jokes.

Along with my family’s eventual success in Minnesota came the expectation of civic and community engagement, built on the values they brought with them from their life in New Hampshire and ancestors before. Values I was taught by my family and carried into my career in philanthropy and voter engagement - starting with a grant-making foundation for people of my generation to support social action and community organizing of the era. It was no surprise that my ventures into philanthropy soon came with the nickname the “Dough Boy.”

My other brand was my parents, George and Sally Pillsbury. In their 56-year marriage as political and civic activists, they were hard to miss at any venue or gathering for community service or on the campaign trail. Except for two years in New York, they lived in and devoted their whole 90+ years to Minnesota.

My father (1922-2012), was born in his parents’ house west of Minneapolis on Lake Minnetonka. A graduate of Yale University and a U.S. Marine, he was the last in the family to work for the Pillsbury company, later serving 12 years in the Minnesota State Senate.

My mother (1924-2018), grew up in St. Cloud, a small city northwest of the Twin Cities. Having moved with her family to Lake Minnetonka not far from my father, she graduated Smith College and made a name for herself in community service and politics.

They both strived at every opportunity to promote the moderate Lincoln wing of the Republican party and its values. My father, well into his 80s at the time, was banned by the state party for supporting an Independent candidate.

Early years

My first memory of politics was joining my mother at the 1958 Minnesota Republican convention where teen entertainment was a hula hoop contest. Embarrassing but fun. It was the start of a steady flow of state and county conventions and campaigns run out of our basement or featured at the political booths of the state fair.

I joined her at the 1964 GOP national convention in San Francisco on behalf of moderate Pennsylvania Governor Bill Scranton against Barry Goldwater. At the time, his campaign helped move the far right to center stage. Then in 1968, in the wake of the explosive protests at Chicago's Democratic Convention, I went with a youth group to Miami to support New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller against Richard Nixon. The busload of young Republicans included my sister Sarah. In distress of the party's choice, on our bus ride home our youth group issued a press release picked up (to our parents’ surprise) by the local papers endorsing the Democratic nominee, Senator Hubert Humphrey (MN).

I still had opportunities to work for Republican moderates. I wasn’t at home with either major party. Like my parents, I wished we had more parties to choose from.

College: 1968 - 2002

Before 1968 I saw politics as deciding which candidate to work for in the next election. This changed as I watched the issues of race and war tear the country apart. When I moved to live in the diverse working-class city of New Haven to attend Yale, I was drawn to life outside campus. I became more engaged by the community service work of the New Haven Black Panthers and the anti-war protests. I didn’t give up contesting elections, however, and joined my brother to canvass for the peace campaign of New York’s Al Lowenstein. I also signed onto join the reform mayoral campaign to unseat New Haven’s party machine.

At the same time, I made my first ever political donation. In a short-lived attempt at anonymity, I left $200 in cash at the office of the Black Panthers for their free breakfast, health, and community education programs. I let them have my car to help residents visit family members in prison. This side of my volunteer work earned me a substantial FBI file informed by the New Haven police tapping my dorm room phone. A few years later a letter arrived with a $1,000 check from a class action suit I signed onto against the New Haven PD.

I had some memorable college classes, but maybe because of the family I grew up with, I learned the most from what happened outside them. My friendship with the Panther leaders taught me lessons in personal relations across different backgrounds. As did two weeks on a picket line with the dining hall and janitorial workers. Yale going co-ed in my sophomore year (I'd been at boys' schools since 3rd grade), brought a new connection and appreciation of strong women like my mother and two sisters. In 1969 outnumbered by eight to one, 455 women brought feminism to campus, interrupting a men's club of 265 years.

Haymarket Foundation

My first job after college was doing a season of tax preparation for H&R Block. I had graduated a semester late, and had taken their tax prep course in the fall so I would have a job in January when I moved northeast to Cambridge. In my Central Square office, I had a chance to learn the ins and outs of deductions and help area residents like presidential biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin and future author, Joe Klein, then a columnist for city's alternative weekly, The Real Paper. In the evenings I volunteered at a free tax clinic for low-income residents sponsored by Fair Share, a community group in neighboring Chelsea.

In 1972, as the tax season wound down and I wondered what was next, I got a timely call from my mother. She had just met someone my age at the national meeting of the Council of Foundations, held that year in Minneapolis. As was her nature, she introduced herself to the youngest person there, the one with the pony tail and sneakers. Obie Benz, a Sunbeam Bread heir, had started the Vanguard Foundation in San Francisco as a way for young people with inherited wealth to support social change initiatives in the Bay area. Urged on by my college friend, Lynn Rosengarten, I decided to give it a try in Boston. We traveled west to meet Obie and Vanguard volunteer Anne Hess. Annie had experience from a family foundation, the Stern Family Fund. At the time, it was one of the few national foundations to focus on supporting activism. Its director David Hunter would be invaluable in helping us get started.

New to Boston and with less money than people expected from my last name, I had to find others like myself to join in. In time they did, and the Haymarket Foundation started at 2 Holyoke Street in Harvard Square. It offered an opportunity for young donors in New England to support organizing and community empowerment. Empowerment included sharing the power to make grants with experienced local leaders. Haymarket also gave its donors, many of whom remained anonymous, a chance to meet with others like themselves to discuss personal issues related to inherited wealth and living out the values that drew them to Haymarket in the first place.

Funding Exchange

We first reached a national audience with the publication of our book, Robin Hood Was Right, a gift-giving guide to funding social change. Talk show hosts Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey invited us on to talk about the book, and, in a friendly way, ask questions like why we were supporting causes that could well reduce our wealth advantage.

In the wake of the publicity, young donors started similar community foundations in Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and elsewhere. We created a national consortium called the Funding Exchange to support their growth and, as a national network, engage other foundations in a conversation about social change philanthropy and the value of more diversity to their boards.

The Film Fund

Our foundations lacked the expertise to fund the media arts, like documentary films that could dramatize the issues we addressed. In response, my Haymarket co-founder David Crocker and I joined film activist, Barbara Zheutline and producer, Miles Mogulescu to create The Film Fund, as a vehicle to support and give visibility to social issue documentaries such as ones we'd invested in individually: 1976 Oscar-winning, Harlan County USA and 1977 Oscar nominee Union Maids.

We recruited a panel of experienced filmmakers including Barbara Kopple and Julia Reichert, the directors of the above films, and renowned cinematographer Haskell Wexler to evaluate promising documentaries already in production and in need of a boost or finishing costs. The Film Fund had a ten-year life, contributing with others to the emergence of the independent documentary film landscape we see today.

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By the 1990s, the nonprofit and philanthropic sector had grown exponentially. Many more traditional community and private foundations, as well as new ones similar to ours, had incorporated a more systemic approach to addressing social issues through advocacy and community building. At the same time, it became more evident that progress on any issue depended on a democracy and government that worked and had the trust and participation of its citizens. That brought me back to my family roots in good government and elections.

In 1994, a mid-career year program at the Harvard Kennedy School gave me an opportunity to explore best practices for elections among the states and in countries similar to ours. On graduation, I took a job with the Commonwealth Coalition, a network of advocacy groups working to elect reform candidates to the state legislature. The Commonwealth Coalition also had two democracy programs. The Money and Politics, which I was hired to direct, and Voter Power, where I joined Malia Lazu to start Boston Vote.

Boston Vote - MassVOTE

As voter turnout in Boston hit rock bottom, local nonprofit leaders approached us to see if their community-based organizations could get the people they served every day to register and vote. As long as voter participation in their neighborhoods remained low, they'd continue to be overlooked by campaigns and elected officials.

Together we started Boston Vote to train nonprofits on what they could do on a non-partisan basis to encourage voting and better understand its broader benefits to their mission and people they served. Boston Vote, which became MassVOTE, also worked with local election officers and state officials to improve voter access and education. Along the way it won some key voting rights victories, including an effort that led to the high-profile resignation of a House Speaker who tried to gerrymander Boston's black community and dilute their vote.

Nonprofit VOTE

In 2004, we discovered that the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits ran a program similar to MassVOTE. Its advocacy director, Marcia Avner, contacted us about a collaboration to share our models with other states. Nonprofit associations in Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Maine were some of the earliest to join what would become Nonprofit VOTE. With the help of the National Council of Nonprofits, it initially focused on training and resourcing other state nonprofit conveners to make voter engagement part of their programing.

Through its website, communications, and national partnerships, it reached a 50-state audience for its nonpartisan resources and trainings to help nonprofits integrate voter engagement into their ongoing activities and services.

Some of the early national partnerships were with nonprofit convenors like the National Council of Nonprofits, Independent Sector, and United Way, and networks like the National Association of Community Health Centers, Goodwill Industries, Feeding America, and Alliance for Strong Families and Communities.

Nonprofit VOTE soon became the official partner for the nonprofit sector for the National Association of Secretaries of State. With their support, in 2012 it co-founded National Voter Registration Day, which has become an annual nonpartisan civic holiday celebrating our democracy. With Nonprofit Vote as its manager, it has gained momentum ever since. Nearly 4.5 million voters have registered to vote on the holiday to date.