Marion Kane

Executive Director
Barr Foundation

Marion is the Executive Director of the Barr Foundation, a new private family foundation serving the greater Boston region. Over the past 4 years, the Foundation has been engaged in thinking and planning around a unique strategic premise: what if foundations are really in the knowledge and network creation business more than the dollars business.  Applying this principle has meant designing a foundation that centrally positions networks and knowledge creation and sharing, and transitioning/aligning staffing, programming and grant making practices to support these goals.

Marion began her career as a journalist at ABC in New York.  She later became the outings editor of the Sierra Club Magazine in San Francisco and then moved to Mt. Desert Island, Maine in 1972 with her husband Dan and two young children to start a new college with a focus on human ecology.  In Maine, she worked as a feature writer and editor for the Bar Harbor Times and Director of Public Relations for the College of the Atlantic before leaving her job to help start the Maine Community Foundation.

With no previous experience in philanthropy, she and the founding executive director learned the foundation business from the ground up.  Among other roles, Marion set up the foundation’s accounting system, IT system, grant making program, development office, investment program and public relations function.  In 1989 she became President of the Foundation and led its growth from $4 million dollars in assets to $85 million in 1999, and from two staff to 14.   She also founded the Maine Grantmakers Association and the Maine Grants Information Center (now the Maine Philanthropy Center) to help promote the development of philanthropy in Maine and serve the funding and nonprofit community.

Marion graduated from Wellesley College with a BA in English literature in 1966.  She lives on in Boston and maintains a residence in Maine where she visits as often as possible.