Loren Finnell, President & CEO

Dr. Loren Finnell is the President, CEO, and Founder of The Resource Foundation. He is a humanitarian, a pioneer, and a social entrepreneur with 47 years of experience working with nonprofit organizations worldwide. In 1987, he founded The Resource Foundation to leverage the resources and experience of donors worldwide and nonprofits in Latin America and the Caribbean to increase the self-reliance and living standards of the disadvantaged.  He currently focuses his time and energies on staff development, communication with and involvement of the board of directors, financial stability, as well as outreach to existing and prospective partners and donors. In honor of his life work, The National Peace Corps Association selected Dr. Finnell to receive the 2006 Sargent Shriver Award for Distinguished Humanitarian Service.  In 2008, Dr. Finnell received a Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa degree from Manchester College. In 2009, the Foreign Policy Association, the nation’s oldest international affairs organization, invited him to become a Fellow. In 2011, he was invited to become a member of the Clinton Global Initiative.

Prior to establishing The Resource Foundation in 1987, Dr. Finnell headed his own consulting firm for eight years, supporting the programmatic and management needs of U.S., Canadian and developing world nonprofits in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, as well as fulfilling USAID contracts. From 1972 to 1979, Dr. Finnell helped found and develop Private Agencies Collaborating Together (PACT), a U.S. based international consortium of nonprofit organizations, serving as its Deputy Executive Director and managing a Development Fund that made grants to development projects worldwide.

Dr. Finnell had two tenures with International Voluntary Services, as Program Director in Washington, DC (1971-72) and as Staff in Laos (1966-68). In the interim, he was Project Officer for the International Development Foundation, serving in Colombia and Ecuador. His international career began as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador during 1964-66. Dr. Finnell has written numerous technical documents, reports and publications on management and programmatic issues facing NPOs worldwide. He has visited 44 countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia on multiple occasions, and he is fluent in Spanish and has a solid understanding of Portuguese.

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