May 17, 2007 | Read Time: 8 minutes
Son airs misgivings as widow of tabloid pioneer seeks to raise millions for disabled-veterans memorial
Lois Pope, known as the widow of the man who built the National Enquirer into one of the nation’s most famous tabloids, wants to be known as the prime mover behind the planned American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial, in Washington. But the troubled history of her attempts to raise money for the memorial is turning into a saga worthy of the Enquirer.
Because Mrs. Pope’s charity hasn’t raised the funds to build the monument, she must seek Congress’s blessing to continue to raise money through 2015, since charters for monuments expire after seven years. As she seeks that approval, her son, Paul D. Pope, is raising questions in public about the memorial’s fund-raising record, and, in a separate case, is suing her in court for control of what he estimates is a $218-million Enquirer fortune.
Mr. Pope has commissioned reports by outside private investigators that question the financial health of the Disabled Veterans’ LIFE Memorial Foundation, an organization based in Arlington, Va., that raises money for the memorial, and has been sending news releases to journalists to attract attention to the memorial’s finances.
Mrs. Pope has directed $8.5-million of her own money to the memorial foundation, including a $5-million pledge, a significant share of the $31-million she has given to charity in her life.
No one, Mr. Pope included, questions her sincerity or the need for a memorial. He questions her tactics, pointing out that in some years the foundation spent 88 cents out of each dollar raising funds. And according to tax documents, the foundation had accumulated $250,000 in debts as of December 2005.
In a news release he issued in April, Mr. Pope said that after his consultations with investigators, he told his mother that the shaky finances should prompt her to sever ties with the organization, and that he worried she could be tarnished by a scandal that would be as serious as the wrongdoing at Enron. He says she told him the reports were inflammatory and asked him to destroy them.
Mrs. Pope says her fund-raising approach has started to pay dividends, and she vows to raise the additional $35-million or more her charity needs to break ground by early 2009.
To be sure, since Mr. Pope commissioned the report, the foundation has been doing a little better. Last year, the foundation raised $16.8-million, at 66 cents on the dollar, and netted $1.95-million. And through the first quarter of 2007, the foundation cleared $2.3-million more.
But it is too early to declare the foundation financially sound. It owed its suppliers $1.6-million as of December 31, 2006, and of the $31-million it has raised in its lifetime, it has spent more than $30-million$1.5-million on administration, $21-million on fund raising, and $7.8-million on program expenses.
Moreover, while some of that $7.8-million covers architectural drawings and activities related to building the memorial, a significant fraction$4.8-millionoverlaps with the memorials educational campaign: information and veterans testimonials the foundation includes packages of goods it sends out in fund-raising appeals.
Winning Approval
Mrs. Pope conceived the memorial during a trip to Washington when she asked a park ranger for directions to the disabled-veterans monument. Shocked at the ranger’s answer — it doesn’t exist — she began calling Jesse Brown, then secretary of veterans affairs, every day to push the idea, to the point that she befriended the people screening his calls.
Not only did she win Mr. Brown’s approval, but after he left his post he became executive director of the memorial foundation until his death in 2002.
Mrs. Pope ran the necessary federal gauntlet and finally, in 2006, secured a prime spot of parkland just southwest of the U.S. Capitol. The quest for that land expended so much effort that the foundation had to seek an extension from Congress to raise more money, since its original seven-year charter expires in October.
In March the House of Representatives voted 390 to 0 to extend the memorial’s charter. A Senate spokesman expects an extension to pass with similar unanimity.
Now the foundation must find ways to jump-start donations. Mrs. Pope says fund raising has been hard because she had only the names of donors sympathetic to veterans’ causes. She says gearing up a fund-raising machine is like starting a refinery: Upfront costs are significant, the payoff delayed.
Indeed, Bennett M. Weiner, chief operating officer of the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance, says that compared with other charities, memorials have a tough time selling the rewards of giving, since “donors know it won’t be immediate.”
And while most groups use many fund-raising methods — a point Mr. Weiner says is crucial to charities’ success — direct mail accounts for 70 percent of the income of the veterans’ memorial organization.
That number is so high partly because the foundation works hard to sell itself via mail. Each year, it mails 13 rounds of up to 100,000 appeals containing umbrellas, ceramic mugs, and other trinkets that donors can keep whether they give or not. They then follow up with 13 more rounds of letters. The foundation says around 900,000 people or groups have donated an average of $16.58, half of them repeat donors.
But sending out so many packages with token gifts has been costly, and new increases in postage rates will add 50 cents per package, foundation officials estimate. Furthermore, if those repeat donors flag, the foundation’s revenue would dry up, since it has attracted few large gifts. Mrs. Pope says she will soon get final approval from a donor she won’t name who plans to give $10-million or more.
Even though Mrs. Pope is wealthy enough to donate the money needed to build the memorial, she says she won’t do so. “I have thought about it,” she says. “I don’t think I’m going to have to.” She adds, “I don’t expect disabled veterans to pay. They’ve paid enough. I think it would be nice if all Americans contributed, so they feel a sense of ownership.”
Seeking Attention
Richard Fenstermacher, the foundation’s director of organizational strategies, defends the memorial’s reliance on direct mail by saying that such appeals educate the public. He says the foundation had planned to suffer early losses in exchange for increasing awareness of the memorial.
Moreover, Mr. Weiner and Mr. Fenstermacher both say memorial charities should not be judged by the same watchdog standards as charities that raise money perpetually. Such light shines unflatteringly on Mrs. Pope’s foundation, earning it, for example, zero of four stars from Charity Navigator, a watchdog group in Mahwah, N.J.
Yet according to federal guidelines, memorials cannot erect one pillar until they raise enough money to cover all costs, including an endowment equal to 10 percent of construction costs, for upkeep.
As a result, the ratio of program costs to fund-raising costs appears skewed for years, Mr. Fenstermacher says. “It’s higher than what charity-watchdog organizations want to see,” he concedes. “But it’s difficult to determine a peer group for us.”
For that, one might look to the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, another effort seeking to raise enough to start construction on a monument in Washington. Tax records show that the King memorial foundation, founded in 1999, lost money as late as 2003. However, in 2005 it raised $10.1-million and spent just $1.8-million on fund-raising efforts. To date, it has raised $79-million of the $100-million it needs for its monument on the National Mall.
Making Progress
Even with the attention Mr. Pope has produced, Mrs. Pope prefers to talk about her foundation’s progress on a 24-step plan for memorials devised by the National Park Service. She has checked off 1 through 16, and plans to hire a general contractor within 30 days.
John G. Parsons, associate regional director of the park service’s National Capital Region, says that he is confident the foundation can finish the project, since it has the number-one criterion for doing so: a constituency. He contrasted the disabled-veterans memorial, with its well-defined population, to a failed movement years ago to build a “peace garden” in Washington. “Nobody wanted to donate to peace,” he says.
Still, among the final steps loom some big challenges, including No. 20, raising money, and No. 23, actually building the monument.
And Mrs. Pope herself has already been wounded. Mr. Pope talks freely and sometimes angrily about his mother, but when asked about her son’s role in denigrating her foundation’s reputation, Mrs. Pope tightens up. She resorts to terse sentences: “It’s made me very sad. And it’s disappointed me. Obviously, he’s very angry.”
In a small way, she also looks past the memorial to future projects: a national disabled-veterans holiday, or even work on autism, another interest. After a recent meeting about the memorial, Mrs. Pope says, “Someone said to me, ‘Do me a favor, don’t ever try to do another memorial.’ And I don’t think I’ll ever do another.”
