Officially, he was an authority on nonprofit foundations. Unofficially, he was an unparalleled networker among the nation’s rich and powerful.

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Joel Fleishman in an undated photo. He was among the first people to insist that foundations can and should measure the impact of their giving, and that they should be measured by it.Credit...Duke University

Clay Risen

By Clay Risen

Oct. 3, 2024, 4:10 p.m. ET

Joel Fleishman, whose prominence as an expert on philanthropy was only the most public side of a man whose wide network of friends in high places, immense fund-raising talents and deep knowledge of subjects like classical music and fine wine made him an unparalleled influencer among the nation’s wealthy and powerful, died on Monday in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 90.

A close friend, Adam Abram, said he died in a hospital of complications of a fall.

Mr. Fleishman was perhaps best known as a groundbreaking scholar in the field of philanthropy studies; he was among the first to insist that foundations can and should measure the impact of their giving, and that they should be measured by it.

His 2007 book, “The Foundation: A Great American Secret,” helped catalyze a wave of changes in the way private philanthropies operate. It showed both that they were integral to progress and that they often failed to achieve their promise.

“I consider foundations a major force for good in American society,” he wrote. Yet, he continued, “they operate within an insulated culture that tolerates an inappropriate level of secrecy and even arrogance in their treatment of grant-seekers, grant-receivers, the wider civic sector and the public officials charged with oversight. This needs to change.”

After arriving at Duke University in 1971 at the behest of its president, the former North Carolina governor Terry Sanford, Mr. Fleishman helped build its school of public policy, one of the first in the nation. He later became a senior vice president of the university.

For decades he taught a class on philanthropy and the law, to which he invited presidents of the country’s top foundations to speak.

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“To be invited by Joel to give a lecture to his class at Duke was the highest honor imaginable,” Darren Walker, the departing president of the Ford Foundation, said in an interview.

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Mr. Fleishman, wearing a blue sports jacket, beige slacks and a tie, sits outdoors in a wooden chair with his legs crossed.

Mr. Fleishman’s interests ranged beyond public policy and philanthropy. He was, among other things, an avid wine connoisseur.Credit...Duke University

But it was in his informal role as a mentor and networker that Mr. Fleishman left his greatest impact. He was a member of that select group whose people skills and willingness to remain in the background are critical to the flow of talent into the upper reaches of business and government.

“Joel was the great connector,” Richard H. Brodhead, a former president of Duke, said in an interview. “He was the connector of people with people, and then networks of people with institutions and values.”

He sought out promising young people to take under his wing, tutored them in subjects like classical music appreciation, introduced them to potential employers and kept up with them through their careers. (He personally coached Mr. Walker for his final interview at the Ford Foundation.)

More than just an influence peddler or a guy with a great Rolodex, Mr. Fleishman was guided by a philosophy about civil society and the need for people like him to build bridges among government, the private sector and the nonprofit world.

“Joel Fleishman has many legacies of his extraordinary life,” said Dina Powell McCormick, a former deputy national security adviser who worked with him in her role as president of the Goldman Sachs Foundation and a member of the firm’s management committee. “Perhaps the one that has had the most impact in the world is the generation of leaders whom he mentored, and who went on to become transformative agents of change on Wall Street, in corporations, in government, in journalism, in academia and in philanthropy.”

Joel Laurence Fleishman was born on April 15, 1934, in Fayetteville, N.C. His father, Albert, was a beer distributor. His mother, Ruth (Zeighauser) Fleishman, managed the home.

He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1955 with a degree in history, and from its law school in 1959. An accomplished amateur playwright who put on his own plays around Chapel Hill, he also received a master’s degree in theater from the university in 1960, the same year he received a Master of Laws degree at Yale Law School.

In 1961 he joined the administration of Governor Sanford, a liberal Democrat who had just taken office and who added him to a formidable brain trust of advisers; Mr. Fleishman in turn recruited the novelist John Ehle to join them.

He returned to Yale in 1965 to run a summer program for underserved students. He was later an associate provost for urban studies and programs and an associate director of Yale’s Institute of Social Science (now the Institution for Social and Policy Studies).

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A black-and-white portrait of a younger (but already balding) Mr. Fleisher, looking straight at the camera with a serious expression on his face.

“Joel was the great connector,” a former president of Duke University said. “He was the connector of people with people, and then networks of people with institutions and values.”Credit...Duke University

After being lured back to North Carolina by Mr. Sanford, who took over as Duke’s president in 1970, Mr. Fleishman set out to build a program melding the law, social policy and public management. That was a novel idea at the time, but it has become a standard feature at many of the nation’s top universities.

He was the first director of the university’s Institute of Policy Sciences and Public Affairs, which evolved into the Sanford School of Public Policy.

He left the institute in 1983 to lead a capital campaign for the university; Duke officials estimate that over the course of the campaign, and in the years that followed, he raised more than $500 million.

He took a temporary leave from Duke from 1985 to 1993 to run Atlantic Philanthropic Services, which disbursed grants from the Atlantic Foundation and the Atlantic Trust.

Mr. Fleishman is survived by his sister, Harriet Wolff.

Mr. Fleishman’s interests ranged beyond public policy and philanthropy. He was an avid wine connoisseur, and he wrote a wine column for Vanity Fair in the late 1980s.

Having grown up in a tight-knit Jewish community in Fayetteville, he remained deeply religious and raised money for Jewish student life at Duke. In 2021 the university’s Chabad chapter purchased a building for its new home, which it renamed Fleishman House.

He taught his final class in 2023, bringing a five-decade teaching career to an end — but not, he insisted, his career as a whole.

“I’m not retiring now,” he said in an interview after his last lecture. “I’m just downsizing.”

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