Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation head Les Garner to retire

Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation President and CEO Dr. Les Garner will retire no later than June, the not-for-profit announced Wednesday.

The foundation board will begin the search for Garner’s replacement in January 2023.

Garner has been president and chief executive at the foundation since 2010.

Garner led the foundation through three strategic plans, more than doubling the organization’s assets — from $91 million in 2010 to $223 million in 2022.

Annual grantmaking climbed from $6.3 million in 2010 to $12.6 million this year, the foundation said in a news release.

Staffing rose from 13 employees to 21.

Garner also helped establish the micro-lending program for Cedar Rapids, the expansion of the Kids on Course University summer programs, the third-grade reading proficiency program called Reading into Success, and the Creating Safe, Equitable and Thriving Communities Fund for youth violence prevention efforts, the foundation said.

In 2012, the Community Foundation was named the Outstanding Foundation internationally by the Association of Fundraising Professionals for its service to the community during the aftermath of the 2008 flood.

It received The Gazette Business Excellence Award in 2019 in the not-for-profits category.

Garner was president of Cornell College in Mount Vernon from 1994 to 2010.

He also had been president of North Carolina Wesleyan College in Rocky Mount; assistant professor of business administration and director of the Young Executives Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and special assistant to the director at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria.