A Former Grant Maker’s Persistence Benefits a YMCA Chapter

John Pencer should have known what was coming. He and his wife were sitting down for a meeting with Ervie

Smith, his colleague on the YMCA of Santa Clara Valley’s Board of Directors. The topic: a donation Ms. Smith hoped he would make to the $19.6-million capital campaign she was leading to rebuild Camp Campbell, a YMCA retreat for children and families.

About 30 minutes later, Ms. Smith walked out with a $25,000 pledge — a far larger commitment than Mr. Pencer had ever given any charity, and one far bigger than he had planned when the meeting began. He had heard stories about Ms. Smith’s fund-raising prowess, how year after year she was able to get board members to bring in at least three times the $5,000 minimum the YMCA asks its board members to give personally or garner via outside donations. Seeing her in action, he couldn’t help but admire just how persistent and persuasive a fund raiser she is.

“Ervie’s just someone you can’t turn down — I absolutely could not say no to her,” he recalls. “You could hear the commitment ring in her voice.”

Ms. Smith says Mr. Pencer, immediate past chairman of the board, had to be held to a higher standard.

“I told him very simply that he had to hit the mark for the rest of the board,” she says. “He started out much lower, and I told him that’s not acceptable. I’m a very tenacious person.”

That tenacity has made Ms. Smith, 72, one of the most widely respected volunteer fund raisers in California’s Silicon Valley region. She has been on the board of the YMCA in San Jose, Calif., since 1984 and sports the kind of professional pedigree any executive director would love to have in a board member.

She retired last December after 24 years as executive director of the Valley Foundation, a grant maker in Los Gatos, Calif., that supports efforts to improve health care for low-income residents. Her many years in that role have made her a well-known figure in the region — and the YMCA’s fund-raising powerhouse. To date, she has given about $50,000 to the charity herself and raised an additional $15-million from others. (The national YMCA, including all of its affiliates, raised more than $1-billion in 2007, helping it attain a No. 6 ranking in the Philanthropy 400, The Chronicle’s survey of fund raising at America’s biggest charities.)

“She’s their No. 1,” says Ben Reichmuth, a management and fund-raising consultant and Ms. Smith’s longtime friend. “She’s just as thorough with [her YMCA volunteering] as she is with the people she’s worked with through the Valley Foundation.”

Ms. Smith has been involved in the YMCA all her life. She grew up in nearby Los Gatos, one of the towns served by the YMCA of Santa Clara Valley, where she has been a member for more than 45 years. The Y’s emphasis on promoting healthy bodies, minds, and spiritual lives has made it her favorite among the many charitable causes she supports.

A Competitive Streak

Her first experience with fund raising, however, came not through the YMCA but in selling Girl Scout cookies as a child. The competitive streak that would make her such a tough fund raiser was apparent even then.

“I always wanted to sell the most Girl Scout cookies,” she says with a laugh. “I usually did.”

Today she has to settle for good-natured competition with her fellow board members to see who will raise the most money. She usually wins at that, too. Steve Caplan, a lifelong friend and fellow YMCA board member, describes her as having “a triple Type A” personality and the kind of energy and drive more common to people in their 50s than in their 70s. Ms. Smith is also an avid fly fisher, and Mr. Caplan says their families take fishing trips together to places such as Montana and British Columbia.

“She always wants to have caught more fish, and a bigger fish than the first fish,” he says. “She’s as competitive about fishing as she is about raising money for the YMCA.”

Ms. Smith always thought she would become a lawyer. She went to San Jose State University after high school, but she got engaged during her sophomore year and left to marry and then stayed at home with her three sons. She volunteered for political campaigns, raising money in the rough-and-tumble arena of local politics.

But she went back to San Jose State University in the 1970s, finishing her degree in 1980 as a single mother after divorcing her first husband. (She later married David Brewick, who is a retired highway patrolman.) She began working as a fund raiser for the university’s athletics department. Mr. Reichmuth, a high-school classmate, was her boss. He noticed how efficient and well-organized she was, how she always kept reliable notes of office happenings and could always be counted on to pull together the various meetings that needed to happen.

“You never have to second-guess her on if the project’s going to get completed,” he says.

He taught her how important it is to believe in a cause if you are going to raise money for it. And she says he taught her how to be aggressive and set high goals for potential donors. The debating skills she might have used as a lawyer instead have been used to coax larger pledges out of donors.

“If they agree too easily,” she says, “you probably haven’t asked for enough.”

Making the Case

In 1984, Ms. Smith was named executive director of the Valley Foundation, which reported assets totaling $75.9-million in the fiscal year ending in 2007. (The group had $28-million in assets when she took the helm.) She also worked as an independent fund-raising consultant.

She has been a workhorse volunteer in Silicon Valley, having served on boards for chambers of commerce, the Rotary Club, the Diabetes Society, and the Cancer League. Through the years, she has served as a mentor to many fund raisers throughout the region. She also served on the YMCA’s national board from 2002 to 2005 and was a founding director of the Association of Small Foundations, a national group.

“She knows, to use the expression, where the bones are buried, in terms of the people who give money,” Mr. Caplan says. “And she’s very good at making the case for how the money will be used.”

Ms. Smith says she has built a core of donors for the Y over the years. Her work as a grant maker not only helped her build that network but also gave her insight into the nuances of donor relations and making successful pitches.

“Each year I usually ask for a little more,” she says. “And they usually do give it.”

She isn’t afraid to tell a potential donor that his or her proposed pledge is “not acceptable,” then make the case for more money. About three years ago, for instance, the Valley Foundation’s board was considering giving the Y a $3-million grant for Camp Campbell. Still, Ms. Smith says, that didn’t sound sufficient to her.

“I said, ‘Oh, no. We can do better than that,’” she recalls.

She brought the Y’s executive director in to speak with the board about the project. The foundation wound up pledging $5-million.

“When it’s time to raise money, she really puts on her game face,” said Robb Hermanson, senior vice president for development at the YMCA of Santa Clara Valley. “She has enormous trust in the community. People sort of see Ervie and the Y as synonymous, so they tend to be very generous when she comes knocking.”

She was instrumental in securing a $2-million pledge for the camp from Molly and Barry Swenson, owners of construction and farming businesses in the area. She had known Ms. Swenson, a nonprofit volunteer herself, for years as their paths crossed on several projects and grant proposals.

Ms. Swenson says she has often dealt with professional fund raisers who ask her to support various causes. None, she says, are as compelling as Ms. Smith. Many, she adds, are too timid in their approach and give up easily.

“There’s no question she’s head and shoulders above all of them,” she says. “A lot of the development directors I’ve come across are wimps. She’s definitely not. She just knows how to do it, and she’s professional about it.”

Ms. Smith says fund raisers do indeed need thicker skins.

“Far too often, the professional or volunteer is just too afraid of rejection,” she says. “You have to step out there. It takes knowing that, once in a while, you’ll be told no. But you can’t take it personally.”

Tailoring the ‘Ask’

Ms. Smith’s reputation for dealing with donors is so respected that other local charities bring her in to teach their boards about fund raising.

She also works on a national committee assembled by the YMCA of the USA to give fund-raising and management advice to smaller Y organizations.

She says raising money as a volunteer isn’t complicated. It requires diligent background work to identify potential donors, persistence in pursuing pledges, and the common sense to tailor every “ask” to the individual she courts. She quizzes them on what they like about the Y — the pool? The community programs? — then explains how a donation would help amplify that service or program. Whenever possible, she gives them a firsthand look at the projects the money will benefit. She took Ms. Swenson out to see the children’s camp, for instance.

“We talked all the way up there and all the way back,” Ms. Swenson says. “We still weren’t finished, so we stopped and had lunch, too.”

Ms. Swenson adds, “She’s an amazing lady. I don’t think I know of a single person who doesn’t like her.”

Don’t expect her to stop crusading for the Y any time soon.

“It’s been a way of life since I was a child,” she says. “I want to see other children and families have that same opportunity.”