About the Family

Duane and Virginia Secor Stranahan created the Needmor Fund for Social Justice to facilitate their family’s charitable giving — initially as individually directed grants, primarily in Toledo, Ohio.

The creation of Needmor carried forward the legacy of their parents’ community stewardship, starting as far back as the 19th century as the Secors served as a pivotal family to Toledo’s economic, intellectual, and cultural formation, and from 1910, when brothers Frank and Robert Stranahan founded The Champion Spark Plug Company, which would become a leader in corporate accountability and philanthropy. The Secor Stranahan family recall that in the earliest days of Needmor, before there was a Board or staff, there was a desk drawer at the Toledo Trust where the family would put aside spare dollars. Soon, Duane Secor Stranahan decided that a board should be put in place to review funding requests and work with other charitable enterprises.

“We also had this belief that if you want to make change, the powerful way to make change is to engage the people who are affected by the problem.” — Molly Stranahan

The Needmor Fund for Social Justice had supported organizing throughout its first few decades, but its focus had been on funding issues important to the Family: education, social justice, environment, and population. Mary Stranahan remembers, “It was becoming quite clear that in any of those areas of interest, it was the organizing piece that was giving the juice to our board members.” In 1974, hoping to maximize their impact, the family pooled their philanthropic resources and hired an executive director to lead them through the development of a grant making process. In the 1980s, Needmor made the official decision to make community organizing its sole focus. 

The work of the Needmor Fund for Social Justice continues to be distinguished by a remarkable degree of family involvement, substantially enriched by non-family committee and board members. We believe that the involvement of the Donor Family — their time, energy, knowledge, values, historical connection to Needmor, and their financial contributions — constitutes a vital resource for Needmor and should continue to be cultivated.

To learn more about our history of funding community organizing, we invite you to read: The Needmor Fund: 50 Years, 50 Stories