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Bass Begins New Chapter At Bauman Foundation

Closing a chapter that started nearly three decades ago, OMB Watch and founder and executive director Gary Bass bid farewell yesterday to the organization he helped create.

In a farewell message emailed to supporters yesterday, Bass called it “a distinct honor and pleasure” to serve as executive director for the past 28 years. “I’ve had many opportunities to work with dedicated board members, an outstanding staff, officials in Congress and the White House, members of the media, and the wider public.

“Together, we’ve been a passionate force for social change, both here in Washington and throughout the country,” he wrote.

Bass will begin next week as executive director of the Bauman Family Foundation, also a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization but from the funding side. As first reported by The NonProfit Times last October, Bass had intended to stay at OMB Watch until November 2011, unless a replacement was found sooner. In his message, he also introduced his successor, Katherine McFate, who was appointed two months ago and begins as executive director today.

Prior to joining OMB Watch, McFate was at the Ford Foundation as a program officer for government performance and accountability. She also has worked at the Rockefeller Foundation and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Bass has been selected to The NonProfit Times’ Power & Influence Top 50 some 11 times, from 1999 to 2008, and again last year. It won’t be much of a different commute for him: the foundation’s headquarters on S Street are around the corner, just a few hundred feet, from OMB Watch’s office on Connecticut Avenue.