Brian O'Connell (advocate)

O'Connell died in 2011 in Chatham Mass. where he had lived since retiring from Independent Sector.

He won a number of awards including a special John W. Gardner Leadership Award when he retired from Independent Sector; Weston Howland Award for Citizenship from the Lincoln Filene Center; Gold Key Award of the American Society of Association Executives; United Way of America's Award for Professionalism; the Chairman's Award of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives, the Tufts Presidential medal, and with John W. Gardner, the 1998 Tiffany Award for Public Service.

He also served on the boards of The Bridgespan Group, The Cape Cod Foundation, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the National Academy of Public Administration, Points of Light Foundation, Ima Hogg Foundation, and the National Assembly of Health and Social Welfare Organizations (now National Human Services Assembly). He was also chairman of the 1989 Salzburg Seminar on non-governmental organizations.

In 1980, O’Connell joined John W. Gardner, the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in the Johnson administration and the founder of Common Cause, to create Independent Sector, which now (2012) has 550 member nonprofit organizations. O’Connell and Gardner, who died in 2002, saw the need for an umbrella organization that could speak for all charities and other nonprofit groups and represent their interests in Washington.

After leaving the association in 1978 he became the president of the National Council on Philanthropy and the executive director of the Coalition of National Voluntary Organizations.

In 1966 he was named the executive director of the National Mental Health Association (now Mental Health America), where he was a leader in promoting new ideas about community care and educating the public about new research on depression. He also helped organize the National Committee on Patients’ Rights.

Brian O'Connell (23 January 1930 – 21 March 2011) was an American author, academic, and public administrator who helped found Independent Sector, an organization that represents the interests of charities, foundations and nonprofit giving programs in the United States.

Brian O’Connell was born on Jan. 23, 1930, in Worcester, Mass. After earning a bachelor's degree from Tufts University in 1953 he did graduate work in public administration at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.