Major Gifts

I'm working on a capital campaign and in desperate need of a major gift.

A century ago she was one of the East Coast's most glorious opera houses and a showcase for her era's most renowned performing artists, but today the Academy of Music teeters precariously on the west end of Main Street in Downtown Lynchburg, her former grandeur a fleeting memory, her facade faded and scarred, her cavernous interior dark, dank, and dusty. Unless a few prodigal angels materialize from the ether, this treasured local landmark is destined for extinction.

Raising sixteen million dollars is a daunting task, especially when one considers that an almost equal amount has already been poured into the sprawling tripartite complex which now includes the historic theater, an art gallery and office building, and a multipurpose community event center.

Although this one has been a twenty-year journey with the end still not in sight, too many people, I fear, take these projects for granted, at least after the ribbon-cuttings. How many drive by or pass through the portals of an Amazement Square Children's Museum or a suburban Jamerson YMCA or a Salvation Army Center of Hope homeless shelter and never examine the donor plaques decorating its lobby nor contemplate the good deeds underpinning its bricks and mortar?

Should I be dismayed by their indifference or ingratitude when at every level of our social order entitlement is the prevailing sentiment?

Nevertheless, a legion of volunteers soldiers on, expending its time, money, and energy and soliciting others to do the same. For a work-in-progress like the Academy, the challenge is to convince our prospects that, just as the aforementioned success stories were once figments of someone's imagination, the exquisite architectural designs and virtuoso virtual tours we are baiting them with are no mere fantasies but previews of a not-too-distant reality.

Since libraries and bookstores can supply me with all the culture I would ever want or need, why would I even care about the Academy, attach myself to its ambitious goal, and risk tarnishing a perfect record in chairing a handful of similar endeavors in the past?

The only person whose disinterest in the arts -- musical, thespian, or visual -- surpassed mine was my father, Bert Schewel, despite an amateur acting career that was his for the taking. He won accolades for his sterling performance as Ali Hackim in a local production of Oklahoma in the early fifties only to be snubbed for both leads in a subsequent audition for The Odd Couple, after which he stomped off the stage in a fit of anger and never returned.

Yet he never held a grudge, and became an ardent supporter of the Lynchburg Fine Arts Center, rescuing it from insolvency more than once by reaching into his own wallet and by applying some very convincing verbal arm-twisting which most of his victims were powerless to resist.

From which I infer that, for him, the Fine Arts Center's relevance to a 1970's Lynchburg was eerily predictive of the Academy's to a twenty-first century Region 2000 -- a critical component, the missing piece, really, of a city blessed with every amenity conducive to a superior quality of life, except one, a theater worthy of its heritage.

Even though I worked alongside my father for twenty years, I don't recall us ever having the type of intimate conversation in which the motivations for his ongoing charitable activities might be explicated. Rather they seeped into my consciousness by osmosis as I observed his full schedule of extracurricular commitments and witnessed those rare public occasions when, given the opportunity, he would suppress his brash humor and polished yarn spinning -- for which he was much sought after -- and reveal a softer, gentler, humanitarian side.

He believed simply in giving back -- to the people in particular, to the land of freedom and opportunity in general, who had allowed a business founded by an impoverished Russian immigrant to grow into a fifty-store retail furniture chain and his descendants to attain a stature and prosperity unimaginable, considering their humble origins.

It didn't matter whether any specific cause served his interests directly. Because he also believed that to redistribute his wealth -- to use the current vernacular -- was to make an investment, like the one he always made when business was slow; he would walk down Main Street and buy a shirt or pair of shoes, reasoning that, within days, the money he put into circulation would wend its way back to his furniture store. Similarly, an investment into his community -- whether religious, educational, cultural, or social -- could yield, in time, sales revenue, a good employee, a higher standard of living, or, in the case of a fully-restored Academy of Music, sixty million dollars to the region's economy over five years.

It seems like such a sensible concept -- philanthropy as a payment on a debt of gratitude producing exponential returns -- that I'm surprised more people don't subscribe to it.

If Bert was my role model, I suspect his silent mentor was his own father, my grandfather, Ben Schewel. Ben was a shrewd businessman and consummate salesman. While his mercurial temper could explode without warning, it was palliated by a generous spirit and a congenital empathy with the less fortunate, especially children.

By the time he was thirty, he had apparently accumulated enough savings to begin sending regular donations to the Lynchburg Training School and Hospital for the mentally retarded. In later years he hosted Christmas parties there, which allowed him to indulge in his fourth favorite pastime -- after waiting on customers, rearranging the floor display, and playing small-stakes poker -- handing out the toys he never had as a youngster growing up in a crowded household with eleven siblings: games, trains, dolls, costumes, pedal cars, and tricycles, all raided from the basement of Schewel Furniture Company, where Toyland flourished for two months every holiday season.

He showered cribs and bicycles on needy supplicants like a year-round Santa Claus, shunning the limelight but practicing a private brand of altruism so widespread and legendary it rendered official recognition superfluous.

Ben was a solo crusader. He lacked the patience for elaborate case presentations, nor would he have tolerated the excuses and rebuffs of those whose charitable inclinations failed to meet his standards. Conversely, his brother Abe, my great-uncle, enjoyed the political arena -- he served several terms on City Council in the 1930's and 1940's -- and relished exerting his formidable persuasive skills, whether in a face-to-face encounter or before a pliable audience.

Abe Schewel pioneered Jewish fundraising in Lynchburg, chairing the local arm of the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) for twenty years before turning it over to, whom else, my father in the early sixties. With that legacy, it seemed only natural -- or obligatory -- that I take up the mantle when my father died in 1989, my first such leadership position.

The UJA's successor, the Jewish Federations of North America, raises $800 million annually to fund social welfare programs in Israel, the rescue of endangered Jews and their resettlement in Israel, sustenance for elderly and indigent Jews worldwide, and the revitalization of Jewish institutions in Eastern Europe. As local chairman, my duties are hardly onerous: planning and presiding at an annual banquet; soliciting individual donors; making an occasional speech; and recording pledges and payments (or delegating the latter task to my capable executive assistant).

Every UJA volunteer is expected, sooner or later, to join a mission to Israel, a sponsored tour in which he explores historic sites, samples the native cuisine, culture, politics, and lifestyle, and witnesses his dollars at work.

Thus, in 1992, I board an El Al Airliner for my week-long immersion.

Among many memorable moments is a detour we make on the road between the Dead Sea and Jerusalem to an Absorption Center where 1300 Ethiopian Jews -- a small percentage of the thousands who have been ransomed from a potential massacre and airlifted to safety, at a cost of one-hundred-eighty million dollars -- are undergoing decompression, acclimation, and orientation. We wander past endless rows of caravans and modular homes, dodge bone-thin children playing tag or stick ball, and smile at newly-liberated adults going about their daily business of cleaning, washing, and cooking, their colorful blouses and dresses sparkling in the afternoon sunlight. One woman beckons us to inspect her meager lodgings, so luxurious compared to the primitive shelter she left behind. Several men lead us down a dirt path to their synagogue, a mud-plastered hut they built shortly after their arrival.

The day before our departure I am introduced to a particularly effective method of fundraising: card-calling. By this time, we are well-acquainted with our twenty traveling companions, having eaten, slept, socialized, and ridden long hours in a van with them for seven days. Now, sitting in a private room, each person is asked to describe his impressions of our pilgrimage and to renew (or increase) his financial commitment to the UJA. Needless to say, most of these testimonials are quite moving, and the peer pressure to dig deep very intense.

After those UJA meetings, the second venue in which I frequently heard my father make a public appeal was in his own furniture store, where he implored a captive group, year after year, to do their fair share for the United Way, another responsibility which fell to me when illness overtook him. One thing led to another, and it wasn't long before I was recruited to work on the campaign, chair the campaign (in 1997), and serve on the Board of Directors (for two terms, no less, the last finally expiring this month).

Just as in other localities, the United Way is a unique community enterprise. Granted the privilege of invading the workplace, it mobilizes thousands of employees to contribute upwards of three million dollars, much of it through payroll deduction, for disbursement to thirty-two member agencies to fund youth education, health service, and income stability programs benefiting sixty thousand area residents. The impact of these dollars far exceeds their face value, as an army of volunteers follows in their wake -- enlisting on boards and committees; soliciting coworkers; reviewing allocation requests; counseling, parenting, teaching, or delivering meals to agency clients; and refurbishing homes and offices during a city-wide Day of Caring.

Privy as I am to my employees' salaries as well as their United Way pledges, I am continually amazed by some of the latter amounts, which, as a percent of income, sometimes exceed my own; one destitute fellow even maintained his relatively exorbitant generosity after his wife evicted him from their residence and he began surreptitiously camping out in a Schewel warehouse.

In a corner of my office hangs a photograph of a poor excuse for a football player, properly clad in helmet, jersey, pads, and eyeglasses, the costume I wore at the United Way Campaign Kickoff in 1997, the year I quarterbacked "Schewels Jewels" to a goal-surpassing performance. That was more the product of a booming economy and a diligent staff than any special effort on my part; such an undertaking is too cumbersome and complex for any one individual to affect significantly.

Nevertheless, my lengthening resume garnered me invitations to captain two capital projects -- ten million dollars to support a ninety million dollar hospital expansion and cancer treatment facility and five million dollars to build a Salvation Army transient shelter and dining hall, the successor, incidentally, to a Community Corps Center for which my father had spearheaded a two million dollar campaign thirty-five years earlier.

Besides a reckless disdain for the n-word (no), I suspect what made me so much more magnetically attractive to these bounty hunters than I ever was to the opposite sex was my credibility. Not only could I be depended upon to make at least a modest contribution to the cause, I could draw upon the tender heart and substantial portfolio of my mother, who had become increasingly philanthropic as she had gracefully approached her ninth decade. Trailing me was a history of community networking which might be useful in identifying where the treasure was buried and a reputation for extorting ungodly sums of money from complete strangers, casual acquaintances, and old friends.

It's better to be lucky than smart, and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time -- twice. Both campaigns rode to victory on the "shoulders of giants" (to quote my alma mater, Washington and Lee University): visionary leaders GWD at Centra Health and DCC at the Salvation Army, who never compromised in relentlessly pursuing their dreams; dedicated workers, whose energy never faltered during countless meetings and exhaustive prospecting; and enthusiastic donors, particularly those whose major gifts sparked our success, three comprising fifty percent of the hospital total, four equaling two million dollars for the Salvation Army.

As many folks as I have harassed over the past twenty years, irrational trepidation and procrastination never fail to immobilize me until the fuse burns out and I am compelled to pick up the telephone to ask for the order or arrange an appointment -- just as an inexplicable stage fright roils my stomach every time I ascend to a podium, even though I've done it a hundred times.

Probably it's my innate introversion trying to crack my veneer of self-confidence, but why should I fret? I've memorized my talking points. Regardless of the answer I get, I'm always greeted with cordiality, courtesy, and respect. I've learned long ago not to take rejection personally. And should I be so fortunate as to obtain a commitment -- no matter the level of my request, one million, one hundred thousand, ten thousand, or one thousand -- an elation more potent than the rush of a chemically-induced high (or so I assume) suffuses every pore of my body and vindicates all the intimidating preliminaries.

Volunteer fundraising opens lots of doors, and if my father had enough friends and didn't want any more, as he used to say, I need all I can get, including all the warm, caring, interesting individuals who have permitted me to impose upon them. Like octogenerian PBH, who not only made a gift to the hospital four times greater than what we asked for but did it with this startling comment, "Isn't this fun?" And heroic DWB, who never says "No," and signed on to help our campaign after signing a big check to the Salvation Army. And four local CEO's, all new to me, who ante upped one thousand dollars each for the inaugural Family Alliance Spelling Bee without batting an eye. And when I'm turned down, which invariably happens, my consolation is that I have made a contact who may be helpful in the future.

There are other rewards to this work, some tangible, some esoteric.

Substantiating a riddle posed three hundred years ago in The Pilgrim's Progress -- "A man there was whom some did count as mad; the more he cast away, the more he had." -- research suggests that giving generates wealth for individuals and nations. A Social Capital survey of thirty thousand people demonstrated that when one of two demographically identical families gave away $100 more than the other, its income rose $375 more -- possibly because the household head was then motivated to earn more or, having been recognized for his generosity, was promoted to a position of higher remuneration. Another study concluded that Gross Domestic Product could be stimulated by a factor of eighteen times the amount given.

If fundraisers are making their donors more prosperous, they are also creating moral opportunities for them, enabling their righteousness by encouraging their benevolence. In doing so, they are affirming the sacredness of their own calling, according to the twelfth century Jewish scholar and rabbi, Moses Maimonides.

Commenting on the First Five Books of Moses, Maimonides wrote: "The person who persuades others to give tzedakah (charity) and facilitates their doing so, his reward is greater than the giver's, as it is said: 'The act of tzedakah shall be peace and the work of tzedakah brings calm and security forever.' And about the collection of tzedakah and those similarly engaged, it is said: 'They who turn the many to be righteous, to give charitable contributions, shall be like stars in the firmament, and their brightness shall shine forever and ever.' "

Just how does the fundraiser go about turning his prospect to righteousness?

Since human behavior is conditioned, first and foremost, by self-preservation, self-interest, even greed, if you will, one would assume that parting with one's possessions -- even those one holds in abundance -- is not a natural act, but rather one that must be learned, and indeed has already been etched into the consciousness, stamped into the character, of so many samaritans, either through observation or instruction. Parents, siblings, mentors, teachers, friends, peers, pastors, advisers, counselors, colleagues -- all of these can and must be the totems and conduits of humanitarianism.

It's tempting to excoriate those whose level of giving appears to lag their presumed capacity, but a more sanguine and sympathetic viewpoint would be that their education is still incomplete and that there is always hope. While organizations persist over time, their missions and messages change, as do the resources, attitudes, motives, and concerns of their potential patrons. Which is why United Way rainmakers reseed their fields every year, revise their narratives, and refine their homilies, always searching for that singular phrase or poignant testimonial that will touch a heart and loosen the purse strings. And why the same small contingent of sixty Jews gathers at the synagogue every spring to be reminded that the plight of their brethren is an ongoing crisis.

Although church attendance and ritual observance hardly guarantee strict adherence to the dictates of one's faith, most theologies preach that charity is not just a virtuous choice but a holy obligation and not subject to emotional whims or convenient rationalizations. The logic here is that humans are not the owners but merely the caretakers of their worldly possessions, which are the true property of the Almighty who created them. Thus John D. Rockefeller believed that his riches had been bestowed upon him for a purpose and that he was expected to manage them wisely; faithful to his charge, he gave away $530 million during his lifetime.

In his famous 1889 essay Wealth, Andrew Carnegie posited a secular trusteeship grounded in Darwinian dialectics. The man of wealth, he argued, was not a servant of God but a product of natural selection, an agent of the forces of civilization, who had triumphed in a competitive environment. As a survivor of the fittest, Carnegie had earned his stewardship, and he validated it by giving away $350 million during his lifetime.

Others, like my forbears, may feel obligated by more mundane considerations. Whether he has achieved a modicum of success or simply struggled to make ends meet, who can claim never to have been helped by another person, by a social service organization, even by environmental circumstances? Direct repayment is seldom possible, but contributors can take comfort in knowing that their time and money will lift others as they have been lifted.

In fact, improving the lot of their fellowman -- saving lives figuratively, if not literally, as the UJA did in Ethiopia -- may be the primary motivation of those courageous enough to pierce the veil of middle-class complacency and confront injustice, suffering, and the litany of societal ills that the best of intentions can never wholly eradicate: poverty, hunger, crime, disease, homelessness, mental illness, prejudice, spousal abuse, child abuse, drug abuse, and alcoholism.

The Hebrew word for charity, tzedakah, is synonymous with justice, and thus it is in pursuit of justice that social activists commit themselves to tikkun olam, repairing an imperfect world.

No less valuable and enriching are dollars directed to cultural and educational institutions, as they promote the intellectual and emotional well-being not only of their student bodies and audiences but also of their entire local populations by their influence and programming.

Finally, giving may be motivated, consciously or subconsciously, by less rational forces -- by man's will to self-actualization, the pinnacle of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs, or by his quest for spiritual maturity.

In his book, The Road Less Traveled, Dr. Scott Peck describes the spiritual evolution of man as a difficult process during which he overcomes his natural laziness or entropy, develops self-awareness, sensitivity, and selflessness, enjoys the fruits of his labor, and shares his knowledge and experience for the benefit of others. Holding him back, restraining him at every stage, is his inherent inclination to resist change, to succumb to fear, to remain in his comfort zone -- and not to be philanthropic.

Counteracting entropy is the power of love. Love is man's effort to extend himself for the purpose of nurturing his own or another's growth. And giving is an expression of love. It enables the giver to break through the boundary of his self-containment and reach out in a symbolic embrace of care, concern, and empathy for those less fortunate than him. It is not an easy task, but worthwhile and essential to spiritual fulfillment.

Every community harbors vast resources waiting to be tapped. But philanthropy will never realize its full potential until society's opinion-makers, pundits and preachers, public relations experts, and media moguls decide to exalt it as a cultural lodestar, to enshrine it as the highest social value a respectable citizen would strive to live by, and to proclaim that a person's success, self-worth, and prominence are measured more by how much he gives than by how much he has.

Maybe then I'll see a major gift.