Cuninggim, Merrimon, 1911-1995

Augustus Merrimon Cuninggim was born in 1911 to Jesse Lee & Maud Merrimon Cuninggim in Wesley Hall, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, where his father was a professor in the Biblical Studies Department. Cuninggim received his B.A. from Vanderbilt in 1931. He received his M.A. from Duke University and, as a Rhodes Scholar, attended Oxford University in 1933 where he received a B.A., M.A., and Diploma in Theology. He became an intercollegiate tennis champion in Britain, held national ranking in the United States, and reached the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. In 1936 he returned to the United States where he became Director of Religious Activities at Duke University. In 1939 Cuninggim married Annie Whitty Daniel and began studies at Yale University, where he earned a B.D. and Ph.D. in Religion and Education. His academic honors included Phi Beta Kappa, of which his father had also been a member, and a Kent Fellowship in the Society for Values in Higher Education. Merrimon and Whitty had three children, Lee, Penelope, and Terry.

Cuninggim's career consisted of two primary fields of work: higher education and philanthropy. In the early 1940s Cuninggim was a professor of religion, first at Emory and Henry College in Virginia and then at Denison University in Ohio. An ordained Methodist minister, he was a chaplain in the Navy from 1944 to 1946, serving aboard the battleship Tennessee. From 1946 to 1951 he was a professor of religion at Pomona, the Associated Colleges of Claremont, California, where he was also the chaplain of The College Church. In 1951 he became Dean of the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. Under his leadership Perkins became the first graduate school in the South to desegregate, two years before the Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, 1954. This was the professional accomplishment of which Cuninggim said he was most proud.

In 1960 Cuninggim began what became the second accomplishment of which he was most proud. When Cuninggim became the Executive Director/President of the Danforth Foundation in St. Louis, Missouri, the institution had a growing national outlook that matched his own view of philanthropy. In 1961Cuninggim said that he wanted to expand and develop the genuine concern which the Danforth Foundation had in regard to the national character of their educational grants. Throughout his tenure at Danforth, he consistently held this position and under his guidance, both the national reputation and influence of the foundation grew substantially as did its resources. By the time Cuninggim resigned in 1972 the Danforth Foundation had reached the rank of eighteenth in resources among the nation's 25,000 foundations.

From 1973 to 1975 Cuninggim served as an advisor on program management to the Ford Foundation. McGeorge Bundy, then president of the foundation, said in his recommendation to hire Cuninggim: "I have met most of the senior philanthropic professionals now at work in the country. I have no hesitation whatever in saying that outside our own staff the man most respected for intelligence, integrity and humane wisdom is Merrimon Cuninggim."

In 1976 Cuninggim became the President of Salem Academy and College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, one of the oldest institutions for the education of women in the United States. He served in this capacity until 1979.

From 1979 until his death in 1995 Cuninggim served as a special consultant to both colleges and foundations, largely on management problems, counting among his clients Duke Endowment, Lilly Endowment, National Endowment for the Humanities, Association of Governing Boards, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation.

In 1981 he and 15 other professional people, all of whom had extensive experience in foundation work, formed the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) to advise foundations and other charitable institutions on effective management. Working with grantors only, the CEP offered expert evaluation and improvement suggestions in reports that focused on efficient and effective management, organization, program development, and grantee relations. The CEP published occasional papers by its members on various aspects of foundation management and held seminars/colloquiums for foundation trustees, officers, and staff, frequently in cooperation with other agencies such as the Council on Foundations.

Cuninggim served on various boards of directors including St. Louis Community Foundation, Association of Governing Boards (a trade association of trustees of colleges and universities), and the Society for Values in Higher Education. He sat on the board of trustees of Duke University, Vanderbilt University and the Board of Visitors of Wake Forest. At Vanderbilt, he served as consultant to the Margaret Cuninggim Women's Center, so named for his sister who served as Dean of Women and Dean of Student Services from 1966 to 1972.

During his career, he authored eight books: The College Seeks Religion (1948), Freedom's Holy Light (1955), Christianity & Communism (with others, 1958), The Protestant Stake in Higher Education (1961), Private Money and Public Service: The Role of the Foundation in American Society (1972), Church-Related Higher Education (with others, 1979), Letters to a Foundation Trustee: What We Need to Know About Foundations and Their Management (1991), Uneasy Partners: the College & the Church (1994). He was awarded seven honorary doctoral degrees.

Merrimon Cuninggim died in 1995.