Beth Marcus, who died on Dec 1, was a 16-year veteran of LISC who led the organization’s fundraising to unprecedented levels of success, with an unwavering eye to forging maximum impact for underserved communities. In a tribute to her life and legacy, LISCers past and present reflect on Marcus’s extraordinary vision, effectiveness and heart.
The LISC community mourns the death on December 1 of Beth Marcus, an unfailingly modest and profoundly effective nonprofit leader who, until her retirement in 2022, steered LISC’s fundraising efforts to new heights. She died three weeks shy of her 63rd birthday, after a long battle with cancer.
As chief of resource development during a decade of change and growth, Marcus was among the most impactful executives in LISC’s 45-year history. She nurtured and coordinated work that raised hundreds of millions of dollars for underserved communities, with LISC’s average yearly corporate and philanthropic revenue doubling during her tenure.
Marcus had a 360-degree understanding of LISC’s work, from the intricacies of tax credit financing to the everyday challenges facing bootstrapped community organizations. She could describe LISC’s mission in human terms, and brainstorm creative ways to raise and deploy capital when, where, and how it’s needed most.
“Beth embodied the best of LISC,” said Robert Rubin, LISC’s long-time chairman. “Her creativity, her resilience, her thoughtful confidence, her deep care for other people—all of it was evident in the way she interacted with colleagues across the community development landscape. LISC board members trusted her insights. Funders relied on her persistence. And our staff benefited from her leadership, her commitment, and her kindness. Beth understood what LISC truly means to underserved communities and, even more importantly, she had the vision to see what we could and should be in the future. And for me, she will be a greatly missed colleague.”
As LISC’s director of corporate partnerships since 2016, Deborah Morant worked intensively with Marcus and the two became close. “I keep a Post-It note on my computer that says, ‘Channel your inner Beth,’” said Morant. “No matter what was going on, she was always gracious and problem solving. She had a way of making everyone feel heard and listened to, valued and important.”
Born and raised in Atlanta, Marcus earned a master’s degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and spent her early career in Boston. Working for a local CDC, she designed and implemented limited-equity homeownership cooperatives In Boston’s Jamaica Plain, then managed affordable housing lending at a statewide organization. She joined LISC in 2007 in a knowledge-sharing position, but was quickly promoted to chief credit officer, reviewing more than $75 million in annual loan volume with an eye to balancing credit risk against LISC’s mission to invest meaningfully in economically marginalized communities.
In 2013, Michael Rubinger, who retired in 2016 after 17 years as LISC CEO, asked Marcus to lead resource development, for a simple reason. “It’s because of what I saw in her personality and her approach,” he said. “I just thought that she would make people feel comfortable, and really want to be involved with LISC.”
In addition to overseeing a steady increase in private revenue from local and national sources, she was instrumental in raising $250 million in 2020 to address issues laid bare by that year’s pandemic and racial reckoning. She liaised closely with LISC’s board and financing affiliates, and helped the organization expand its geographic footprint by strategizing with fledgling local offices to put them on sound financial footing. Working with funders and LISC national program teams, Marcus was a thought leader in standing up and strengthening its most important initiatives, from Project 10X, LISC’s $1 billion “moonshot” effort to help upend racial inequities, to the innovative workforce program Bridges to Career Opportunities.
Marcus was devoted to the development team she assembled and managed and nurtured their career aspirations. “She had this really lovely recognition of what people are bringing to the table, and also where they might like to go,” said LISC’s Meghan Kyle-Miller, who directs development operations. “I think that’s one of the reasons I’ve been at LISC for so long. Beth would say, ‘Oh, you want an opportunity to grow? What are you interested in?’”
Marcus was private about her own struggles, including the cancer that scarcely seemed to slow her down until she withdrew from her full-time role in 2022. A few weeks before the pandemic struck in early 2020, she left on what was meant to be a two-month break. But Marcus cut her leave short. “She didn’t want us to feel adrift with all that change,” said Kyle Miller. And there was much work to be done.
According to Morant, Marcus quickly mobilized alongside her colleagues to increase digital inclusion—because without internet access so many families were suddenly cut off from school and healthcare—and address small business needs, particularly the survival needs of small businesses with structural disadvantages that made them unlikely to benefit from federal programs. Major funders were on the same page and eager to partner with LISC.
Marcus cherished, all her life, the values of community building so aligned with LISC’s mission and also with her own roots. For many years her father served in the Georgia General Assembly as a leading voice for progressive and urban issues. Her mother was also a community leader and worked against encroaching development and neglect of Piney Grove Cemetery, a historic African American graveyard near the Marcus family home in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood.
In another example of her persistence, Marcus took up that cause herself, working with descendants of people buried in the cemetery founded before Emancipation. It was Beth Marcus’s wish that those desiring to make a contribution in her memory consider donating to Friends of Piney Grove.