John Bare
Charles Shaffer Distinguished Fellow and Professor of Practice in Philanthropy
Caldwell 112C
For 26 years, John held leadership positions with three U.S. foundations. He served as Vice President of Programs for John Templeton Foundation (2021-2023), Senior Vice President at The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation (2004-2021), and Director of Planning & Evaluation at The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (1997-2004). John is currently a Senior Fellow with Aspen Institute’s Opportunity Youth Forum (OYF), a member of the OYF Research Advisory Committee on Belonging, Meaning, Wellbeing and Purpose, and a member of the Board of Advisors for Inclusivv. As an independent research and writer, he has worked with Winston Family Foundation, Omidyar Network, Templeton Foundation, Propper Daley, Life Stories, HalfTheStory, and the Los Angeles City of Awe project. He holds the courtesy title of Disruptor-in-Residence at Babson College’s Institute for Social Innovation.
In his foundation staff roles, John managed grantmaking and evaluation across multiple portfolios, including journalism & democracy, mental health & well-being, education, social justice, arts, food systems, children’s health, environmental conservation, and documentary film. At Templeton, John designed a new grantmaking initiative to advance research and practice in the field of youth mental health and technology usage. At Blank, John developed several of the founder’s Legacy Grants, including a $50 million grant to Babson College to establish the Blank School for Entrepreneurial Leadership and a $17 million grant to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. The grant to the National Center funded the launch a Truth & Transformation Initiative, a sweeping campaign through which local leaders are confronting the 1906 massacre of more than two dozen Black residents and the city’s history of racial terror and forced labor. John created the Blank Family Foundation’s Speaker Series and Film Series and in 2018 launched programming at West Creek Ranch, the foundation’s Montana retreat center. West Creek programs included: Power, Equity and Democracy; The Feminist Climate Resistance; Entrepreneurial Leadership in the Social Sector; and The State of Wellbeing in America–An Innovation Lab.
At Knight, John created an indicators project to track more than 100 quantitative and qualitative measures of quality of life across 26 U.S. communities. In Knight’s journalism work, John directed the largest-ever study of training and professional development for U.S. journalists. He designed the Future of the First Amendment research project that assessed knowledge and attitudes of 100,000 students, nearly 8,000 teachers and 500 administrators and principals at U.S. high schools. In the arts, John directed a multiyear study of more than 25,000 classical music consumers. The findings are published in the 2002 book Classical Music Segmentation Study and in the 2003 article “Symphonies Adrift.”
John earned a bachelor’s degree in radio, television & motion pictures (1987) and a master’s (1992) and Ph.D. (1995) in journalism and mass communication research, all from UNC. His dissertation examined the belief systems of U.S. newspaper journalists (“A New Strategy,” in Assessing Public Journalism, eds. Edmund M. Lambeth, Philip E. Meyer and Esther Thorson Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1998).
John is a former columnist for The Chapel Hill Herald and has contributed to CNN.com’s opinion page, The Foundation Review, Nonprofit Quarterly, Hechinger Report, Nieman Reports, The Evaluation Exchange, and Food Tank. In 2015-16, John served as a member of the Advisory Group for The Commons / Open Road Alliance’s project, Risk Management for Philanthropy: A Toolkit, and he has published and presented on the practice of risk assessment in philanthropy. In a 2010 article, “Philanthropy, Evaluation, Accountability, and Social Change,” John challenged the field to take on challenges that defy short-term, simple measures.
He previously served Co-Chair of the Georgia Governor’s Advisory Council on Childhood Obesity and as Executive-in-Residence for Georgia Tech Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship (2009-2019) and taught evaluation courses at Georgia State. At UNC, John received the Vermont Royster-Dow Jones Scholarship and was named a Gannett Media Studies Fellow and a Washington Center for Politics & Journalism Fellow.
John was born in Winston-Salem and attended public schools in Garner, NC. He is the author of two books in a mystery series set in Chapel Hill and the co-writer of two albums that bring 21 fictional songs from novels to life. His 2024 feature in Carolina Alumni Review, “8 Points. 17 Seconds,” explored how our shared history of legends builds hope. He previously showed his photographs at Chapel Hill’s Crook’s Corner restaurant and misses the shrimp and grits. John was married to Elizabeth Ross Bare of Concord for from 1992 until her death in 2020.
In his foundation staff roles, John managed grantmaking and evaluation across multiple portfolios, including journalism & democracy, mental health & well-being, education, social justice, arts, food systems, children’s health, environmental conservation, and documentary film. At Templeton, John designed a new grantmaking initiative to advance research and practice in the field of youth mental health and technology usage. At Blank, John developed several of the founder’s Legacy Grants, including a $50 million grant to Babson College to establish the Blank School for Entrepreneurial Leadership and a $17 million grant to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. The grant to the National Center funded the launch a Truth & Transformation Initiative, a sweeping campaign through which local leaders are confronting the 1906 massacre of more than two dozen Black residents and the city’s history of racial terror and forced labor. John created the Blank Family Foundation’s Speaker Series and Film Series and in 2018 launched programming at West Creek Ranch, the foundation’s Montana retreat center. West Creek programs included: Power, Equity and Democracy; The Feminist Climate Resistance; Entrepreneurial Leadership in the Social Sector; and The State of Wellbeing in America–An Innovation Lab.
At Knight, John created an indicators project to track more than 100 quantitative and qualitative measures of quality of life across 26 U.S. communities. In Knight’s journalism work, John directed the largest-ever study of training and professional development for U.S. journalists. He designed the Future of the First Amendment research project that assessed knowledge and attitudes of 100,000 students, nearly 8,000 teachers and 500 administrators and principals at U.S. high schools. In the arts, John directed a multiyear study of more than 25,000 classical music consumers. The findings are published in the 2002 book Classical Music Segmentation Study and in the 2003 article “Symphonies Adrift.”
John earned a bachelor’s degree in radio, television & motion pictures (1987) and a master’s (1992) and Ph.D. (1995) in journalism and mass communication research, all from UNC. His dissertation examined the belief systems of U.S. newspaper journalists (“A New Strategy,” in Assessing Public Journalism, eds. Edmund M. Lambeth, Philip E. Meyer and Esther Thorson Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1998).
John is a former columnist for The Chapel Hill Herald and has contributed to CNN.com’s opinion page, The Foundation Review, Nonprofit Quarterly, Hechinger Report, Nieman Reports, The Evaluation Exchange, and Food Tank. In 2015-16, John served as a member of the Advisory Group for The Commons / Open Road Alliance’s project, Risk Management for Philanthropy: A Toolkit, and he has published and presented on the practice of risk assessment in philanthropy. In a 2010 article, “Philanthropy, Evaluation, Accountability, and Social Change,” John challenged the field to take on challenges that defy short-term, simple measures.
He previously served Co-Chair of the Georgia Governor’s Advisory Council on Childhood Obesity and as Executive-in-Residence for Georgia Tech Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship (2009-2019) and taught evaluation courses at Georgia State. At UNC, John received the Vermont Royster-Dow Jones Scholarship and was named a Gannett Media Studies Fellow and a Washington Center for Politics & Journalism Fellow.
John was born in Winston-Salem and attended public schools in Garner, NC. He is the author of two books in a mystery series set in Chapel Hill and the co-writer of two albums that bring 21 fictional songs from novels to life. His 2024 feature in Carolina Alumni Review, “8 Points. 17 Seconds,” explored how our shared history of legends builds hope. He previously showed his photographs at Chapel Hill’s Crook’s Corner restaurant and misses the shrimp and grits. John was married to Elizabeth Ross Bare of Concord for from 1992 until her death in 2020.