Ad Executive Campaigns for Charity

I was a true product of the 60s, and I thought, How can I find an occupation where I can do good and have an enriched life?

I enjoyed literature and I’ve always been a reader, so my goal upon graduating from San Francisco State University was to teach. I taught an Englishcompetency course at San Francisco

ROBERT SPROUL Age: 61 First professional job: Advertising account executive, Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, San Francisco Current job: Chief executive, Fritz Institute, San Francisco

State University while I was getting my master’s. And I also taught as a volunteer at Delancey Street, a home for ex-convicts.

But after six months, I realized academe was very bureaucratic and not the romantic notion I had of teaching. And I started to look around at what I could do with a master’s in English.

My dad knew a couple of people in the advertising business, and they had always said, “You ought to come and talk to us when you get out of school.”

So I wound up with 30 years in the advertising business, both working for large agencies and then, for 15 of the 30 years, I had my own ad agencies — four of them that I actually built from the ground up, and then either sold or merged.

You kind of start to mark your life off in 10-year increments, and at 60 I started to say to myself, What do I want to do for the last 10 years of my working career? And it was really to get back to the impetus that led me to teaching and working at Delancey Street and always serving on boards throughout my career — and that was to figure out some way to give back and make a living at the same time.

Part of it, quite honestly, was just sitting at my desk saying, Man, I’m selling postage meters and paper and cat litter, and it’s just not personally rewarding, even though it’s a way to make a very decent living.

My dad always brought us up that no matter what you do, you should always find ways to give back. My grandfather, Robert Gordon Sproul, was president of the University of California system for 28 years, and I always have been attached to UC Berkeley. So I started out working with the alumni association. And then I was recruited to work with the East Bay Conservation Corps, which was started in the basement in a YWCA in Oakland. They took inner-city youth and taught them to show up for work and work on outdoor environmental projects. I went on to become chairman of the board for the group for about 10 years. And then I was chairman of the UC Berkeley College of Letters & Science Board, which advises the college’s deans, and did that for 10 years as well.

Now I’m working on the Bancroft Library committee to retrofit the Bancroft. It has all the Mark Twain collection, all the beatnik literature, and Grateful Dead documents, and it’s really the jewel of the University of California at Berkeley. And I’m working on a project with a couple of people to raise the level of the alumni magazine to represent the entire university.

One of the people I’m working with on the magazine project at the university was recruited by Lynn Fritz for the chief executive officer position at the Fritz Institute.

My friend told Lynn, “I don’t think this job is right for me, but I know a guy who’s ready to make a change and he’s been looking to work for a nonprofit.”

My friend explained to me that the Fritz Institute was looking to shorten its elevator pitch, but in essence was a lot like the BASF tagline: We don’t make the products, but we make the products we work with perform better.

He went on to explain that the Fritz Institute was like an incubator, working with governments, philanthropies, the private sector, and academics to solve problems having to do with increasing the capacity to serve those most vulnerable in the event of a catastrophic disaster.

It sounded somewhat complicated but also very intriguing. It struck me first of all as an organization that was needed, that was addressing issues in a unique proven manner, and that it had the potential to become the gold standard for saving lives and reducing misery caused by disasters.

So in January of last year I sat down with Lynn and his wife, Anisya Thomas Fritz, who was the current CEO, and after talking with Lynn I was so taken by his passion, his vision, and the uniqueness of what the Fritz Institute offers. And so the big question was how was an ad guy going to translate taking on a new career, (a) at a nonprofit and (b) in the area of disaster preparedness response and recovery — two areas in which I had very little experience as a manager.

And what I found is a lot of the same things that go into managing an ad agency go into this particular nonprofit, and that is that my assets are the people that come to work there every day. The other part was just managing a balance sheet, making sure that we were financially solvent at all times.

I think the reason that Lynn was attracted to me is that nobody knows what the Fritz Institute is. By using my marketing techniques and my background, I think we’re going to achieve his goals a lot faster.

I’m very glad I made the switch into the nonprofit world. I feel energized when I go to work every day. I’m working with very committed, extremely smart people who have to make a living, but what they’re really trying to do is change the world, which I find remarkable in the generation coming up. It really gives us cause for hope.