Newell Flather, Founder Emeritus
Phone: 617-426-7075
E-mail: nflather @ gmafoundations . com

Newell Flather has worked in the field of philanthropy since 1971. He served as a vice president at the Boston Company, and went on to found Grants Management Associates in 1982 where he served as president until he was succeeded by Mary Phillips in 2007.

He is president of the Theodore Edson Parker Foundation in Boston, and a trustee of both the Fund for the Arts and the Rebecca Pomroy Foundation. He also serves as a member of the investment committee of the Parker Foundation and the New England Foundation for the Arts.

Newell’s programmatic expertise includes the areas of youth development, community development, education, race relations, social services, and international grant making. He has worked extensively with foundations in developing innovative and effective ways to for them to engage with grantees and provide assistance beyond grants.

Additionally, Newell’s extensive philanthropic experience has included serving as a chairperson of the Associated Grant Makers, a New England-wide, regional association of grantmakers, as a founding trustee of the Beldon Fund, a progressive national environmental funder; as chairman of the Council on Foundations’ membership committee, and as a trustee of Women & Philanthropy, a national affinity organization.

He is a graduate of Harvard College, earned an M.B.A from Harvard Business School, and a Masters degree in international and African studies from Columbia University, where he was a Ford Foundation Fellow.

Newell is an active volunteer with many local organizations, and currently serves as chairperson of his Harvard class committee and a member of the Development Committee at the Massachusetts Historical Association. He is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Boston Study Group and the personnel committee for the Museum of American Textile History. Newell served on the Visiting Committee at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, as an Overseer at the Heller School at Brandeis University, and as a director of the National Peace Corps Association. He taught high school in Ghana, West Africa, as a member of the first group of Peace Corps Volunteers to go into service.