New director looks foward, cuts back.

• Position: Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation Inc. Exec. Dir. Gayle Williams Dorman

Who is Gayle Williams Dorman, and how can I please her? That's the question a lot of people in the business of writing and receiving foundation grants are trying to figure out these days.

This much is clear: Dorman, 43, is the new executive director of the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, one of the state's wealthiest and most prestigious foundations. She came to Winston-Salem in August after six years at Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment, where she was program director for education.

In January, only a few months into her tenure, Dorman rocked do-gooders across the Southeast by announcing that in 1994-95 the foundation, which normally doles out more than $3 million a year, will slash the number of grants it gives by about half, from 70 or 80 to 30 or 40. (The total amount it will spend has not been determined.)

Dorman says she came to that decision after meeting with board members. "I heard the same desire from each of them: to look to the future and examine the traditions of the foundation." With a staff of five, she says it was "physically impossible" to plot the future and award grants. As for the grantees -- children's programs, environmental groups and other liberal causes the foundation has traditionally supported -- "most have said, 'We understand what you're doing, and we wish you well.'"

Her ability to make tough calls goes back to her childhood, when she helped her father work his tobacco fields near Wilson. "He always said, 'You're as...