A Hedge-Fund Manager Drums Up Support for His Charity

“Some folks play golf, some folks play the ponies, some folks play hard to get — we play music for A Leg to Stand On, a 501(c)(3) charitable

organization that transforms the lives of disabled children in developing countries through the provision of corrective surgery and prosthetic limbs.”

Those words adorn the back cover of Clarksdale 9, the inaugural CD from the Subscribers, a rock band made up mostly of hedge-fund managers in New York and London. Through sales of its CD and tickets and corporate sponsorships to its live appearances in the past three years, the band has raised about $500,000 for charitable projects.

C. Mead Welles — who plays drums and guitar for the band — created A Leg to Stand On, in New York, a few years after traveling to Bangkok in 1997. At the time, he was busy criss-crossing Southeast Asia, lining up investors for his then-new hedge fund, Octagon Asset Management, which currently has $150-million in assets.

While sitting at an outdoor cafe bemoaning his punishing travel schedule and a recent break-up with a longtime girlfriend, Mr. Welles saw a boy perched on a garbage-can lid, with a “lifeless expression” on his face. The boy’s leg was severely deformed and his knuckles were raw and filthy from trying to pull himself down the street.

“It was a rude awakening and a very much needed slap in the face to say I should be grateful for what I have,” says Mr. Welles. “There was no way I could do what I was doing with a limb deformity.”

He made a pact with himself to try to raise money to help improve the health of disabled children in the developing world, which in turn would give them a chance to rise out of poverty by allowing them to go to school and find jobs.

Mr. Welles considered working with an established charity, but also wanted to make sure his money went to a cause that wasn’t getting much attention. “Our goal was to say, let’s look at the universe of needs and what groups are catering to those needs and see what is underserved,” he says. “The limbs were an area that did not have a lot of dedicated resources providing a solution.”

Striking Up the Band

With his new business occupying most of his time, Mr. Welles wasn’t quite sure how to get started on his charitable mission until a chance meeting with Dinesh G. Patel, chief of arthroscopic surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston.

Dr. Patel, who helped found the charity and serves as its co-chairman, helped Mr. Welles refine its approach. The group collaborates with local organizations that chip in with fund raising and clinic space, and recruit medical professionals to provide services.

Since 2003, the group has helped provide medical treatments to more than 1,000 children in India, Colombia, and Haiti, including prosthetic limbs or braces and corrective surgery. Mr. Welles hopes to expand to Latvia, Peru, and countries in Africa next. The group is run by an executive director, but Mr. Welles says he spends at least one or two hours each day on the group’s activities.

The charity shares office space with Octagon and Mr. Welles says he supports the group financially (but would not say how much he gives to his own charity or other organizations), and that other donors, as well as his company, also give money to the group.

He says the diversity of support is important: “I don’t want this to be about me. What if I get hit by a bus?”

Most of the money the charity raises — $430,000 last year — goes directly into programs, which include training for local doctors and physical therapy for patients. Mr. Welles, his company, and a few other donors cover the group’s annual operating budget of $80,000.

While A Leg to Stand On has received grants, including $86,000 from AmeriCares, in Stamford, Conn., to help provide prosthetics for children in India, Mr. Welles is “not one to ask for money,” he says. Instead, he relies heavily on performances by the Subscribers to drive donations.

Since 2004 the charity has organized “Rocktoberfest,” a party at a New York club where the Subscribers and several other bands made up of hedge-fund managers and others from the industry perform. In its first year, the event raised $100,000 for A Leg to Stand On; last year it brought in $250,000.

The band has also been paid to play at hedge-fund industry conferences and parties. For the past two years the group has performed its mix of cover songs and originals — including “Wall Street Blues” — at a benefit event in Memphis that last year raised $30,000 for A Leg to Stand On. An encore for the Memphis event — organized by Thomas Irhke, general partner of the local hedge fund Commissum Capital Management — is planned for the spring.

“We are a bunch of people who enjoy music and wanted to do something positive with it,” says Chris Heasman, a band member (guitar, vocals) and director at Lazard Asset Management, in New York. “If we can convince people to come to our parties and give money to children in need, that is a success.”