Who We Are, or What We Stand For
For nearly two decades, the Whitfield Family Foundation ran like a quiet clock. Then Margaret’s oncologist used the word “aggressive,” and three adult children found themselves at a kitchen table asking a question the foundation had never needed to answer before.
What they discovered — without quite naming it this way — is a tension that sits beneath most governance conversations: the difference between an organization that knows who it is, and one that knows what it stands for. Both matter. But when identity leads and principles follow, something quietly goes wrong — often long before anyone notices.