Nancy Beth Lyon gave up her plans to earn a master’s degree in social work in 1943 when she married Frank H. Porter, whom she had known since their Cleveland Heights High School days. But she never abandoned her commitment to helping others. After Frank completed his wartime service in the army, the couple moved to Russell Township on the outskirts of Cuyahoga County, where they brought up four sons and a daughter. With energy to spare, Nancy gave generously of her time and talents to nonprofit agencies that touched thousands of lives.
Committed to connecting as many people as possible to effective health care, educational opportunities and essential human services, she volunteered at the Welfare Federation of Cleveland, served as a board president of the Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging and was a founder and board president of the Centers for Families and Children. Nancy also served on the visiting committee for the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University.
Nancy’s volunteerism introduced her to a young Cuyahoga County welfare department employee named Steven A. Minter, a fast-rising public servant destined to become a chief executive of the Cleveland Foundation. Their common interest in helping low-income families escape poverty and their membership in Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights, where the Porters and the Minters would all serve as elders, cemented Nancy and Steve’s lifelong friendship.
Nancy Porter passed away in 1996 at the age of 75, leaving her husband to carry on their charitable endeavors. Frank Porter, the owner of Central Cadillac, a luxury car dealership started by his father-in-law, had pursued his love of contemporary art and sculpture with a passionate spirit equal to that of his late wife’s. With Nancy’s enthusiastic support Frank had built an extensive art collection, commissioned internationally renowned architect Walter Gropius to design the landmark Tower East in Shaker Heights (the first of several buildings Porter developed in Cleveland’s suburbs), and avidly supported the Cleveland Museum of Art.
As Porter considered how to perpetuate the charitable and cultural interests that had enriched his and Nancy’s lives, he initially thought of setting up a private family foundation. Reflecting on his wife’s admiration and affection for Steve Minter, Porter also investigated the possibility of bequeathing the couple’s estate to the Cleveland Foundation. He ultimately decided that establishing an endowment fund at the foundation would be far simpler and also more beneficial to Greater Cleveland.
In 2003, a year after Frank H. Porter died at the age of 82, the Cleveland Foundation announced the Porters’ bequest, which had an estimated value of between $60 and $70 million. This extraordinary gift was the largest in the foundation’s history at the time. In contrast to national trends in giving to community foundations, which tended toward donations to designated causes, the Frank H. and Nancy L. Porter Fund was an unrestricted endowment. Porter had displayed remarkable foresight in giving the foundation’s board of directors the discretion to make grants from the fund for priority community concerns.
Gratefully considering the bequest a gift from the entire Porter family, the foundation’s directors approved the use of a portion of the endowment as a donor-advised fund so that the Porter children—Frank Jr., George, Frederick, Elizabeth and Steven—can recommend awards in their parents’ names to organizations and causes the couple cared about during their lifetimes.