Dr. Byron Harrell

Byron Harrell, Sc.D., is the President of Baptist Community Ministries, a health legacy foundation located in New Orleans and one of the largest private foundations in Louisiana. Following Hurricane Katrina, he helped lead BCM to focus its funding and talent in support of public charter schools in New Orleans as an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to achieve systemic improvements in student performance.

Author of “Supercharged Giving: The Professionals Guide to Strategic Philanthropy” (2009), he is passionate about boosting grantmaking outcomes through the latest applied research. Dr. Harrell also wrote “Size Matters: Why Large Foundations Perform Poorly” published in Philanthropy magazine about the ground-breaking discovery of an inverse relationship between the size of a foundation and its effectiveness. He also consults on a wide range of strategic, governance, and operational issues in private foundations. Dr. Harrell is a frequent lecturer and author on strategic philanthropy based on “Concept Mapping” which is a program which graphically links the mission of a foundation and its strategies to each grant. He is also a co-founder of the new research auction site “Philoptima” which is an open innovation web-based way to find solutions to community problems.

Harrell holds a Doctor of Science degree from Tulane University with a primary interest in the performance of foundations from an organizational theory approach. His current research “The Performance of Health Conversion Foundations As Influenced By Bureaucracy And The Size Contingency” focuses on the structural design of successful foundations and the measurement of foundation performance. In addition to his experience in philanthropy, Dr. Harrell worked for more than twenty-five years in health systems management, hospitals, health maintenance organizations and related fields.