At Cancer Center, Fund-Raising Legacy of Ex-Marine Won’t Fade Away

Mortimer H. Chute, senior vice-president for development at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center here, says that he learned a lot about how to run a big fund-raising operation from his days in the Marine Corps, when he was a 22-year-old first lieutenant leading a platoon of 50 men.

”You’re responsible for the lives under you,’’ he says. ”You have to do the same things you ask them to do. I’ve made a point of that with fund raising here.’’ Pointing to a tall stack of blue files on his desk, containing records on several of the center’s wealthiest donors, he says, ”Those are the donors I’m working with.’’

As if on cue, Mr. Chute is interrupted by a phone call from one of them, confirming a $2-million pledge. It turns out to be the last big gift to the center that he will bring in. Now 62, Mr. Chute is retiring this month after 14 years as chief fund raiser.

As one of the most prestigious cancer-treatment facilities in the nation, Memorial Sloan-Kettering could inspire multimillion-dollar gifts on its reputation alone.

But according to friends, colleagues, and even a few critics, Mr. Chute deserves much of the credit for building yearly gifts from $38-million when he started to $75-million last year, much of it in six- and seven-figure gifts. The donations were enough to place the cancer center at No. 98 on The Chronicle’s Philanthropy 400 ranking of the organizations that raise the most private money.

While last year’s contributions declined by about $4-million from 1995, most of the drop was caused by an accounting change. And gifts are expected to exceed $85-million by the end of this year. All told, the institution has raised more than $1-billion during Mr. Chute’s tenure.

When Mr. Chute arrived at the cancer center in 1983, the institution received gifts from about 125,000 donors, most of whom lived in the New York metropolitan area.

Through direct mail and by criss-crossing the country to meet with prospective donors, Mr. Chute and his staff gradually built the fund-raising operation into a national program that wins gifts from more than a million donors each year.

”What is miraculous is that the whole picture has expanded,’’ says Laurance S. Rockefeller, the center’s co-chairman. ”I tell people we have a crisis of opportunity.’’

Last year, 10 million direct-mail letters from the center brought in 212,797 new donors who gave an average of $26. Of those, Mr. Chute says, some 300 usually decide to give at least $1,000. Once they give that much, they receive lavish appeals and special perks, such as invitations to lectures about advancements in cancer treatment.

The center can also count on 50 bequests or other planned gifts each year from people who began as direct-mail donors. Planned gifts alone yielded $19.4-million last year, up from an average of about $5-million when Mr. Chute started.

”The planned-giving program was in the toilet when he came,’’ says Robert F. Sharpe, a Memphis consultant who has advised the cancer center for several years. Currently, planned gifts account for nearly one-third of the money the center receives from individuals.

Mr. Chute has been so effective that Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s board members have been able to indulge their desire to stay out of any direct solicitations.

”We worked like dogs in the earlier years to raise money,’’ says Mr. Rockefeller who, at 87, has been on the board for 50 years, as was his father, John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

”Now the board doesn’t fund raise,’’ he says. ”They just smile and say, ‘Mort’s done it again.’”

Mr. Chute was probably not smiling along with them, however, on the day the board decided to increase the goal of the last capital campaign by $50-million. Midway through the five-year drive, which ended in 1989, the board voted to increase the goal to $350-million without consulting Mr. Chute.

”I was a little surprised,’’ he says dryly. Nevertheless, the campaign ended on schedule. It raised $368-million.

Some of Mr. Chute’s peers regard him as unconventional and somewhat standoffish.

He makes no secret of the fact that he has little regard for professional fund raisers’ groups that, from time to time, have invited him to attend their annual meetings, usually to give a speech.

”I never went back,’’ he says of one such conference. ”It didn’t stimulate me. It just seemed like a bunch of people running around looking for other jobs.’’

Mr. Chute takes a dim view of people who jump from one fund-raising job to another every few years. And fund-raising experience, he says, has been low on his list of priorities in shaping his staff.

”I hired good people,’’ he says simply, when asked to explain the secrets of his success at Memorial Sloan-Kettering.

When interviewing job candidates, Mr. Chute says he looked for outstanding educational credentials, experience in law, banking, marketing, or other such professions, and other qualities he often judged by intuition: intellectual ability, high morals, social adroitness, and what he calls ”refined aggressiveness.’’

”I don’t care where they worked before,’’ he says. ”You have to know what goes on in the world. The very narrow field of fund raising, particularly when you bounce around, does not prepare you for working at the most-sophisticated non-profit institutions.’’

One fund raiser who owes his job to Mr. Chute is Peter Baida, who currently runs the center’s vast direct-mail program, the source of more than 95 per cent of the institution’s new donors.

When Mr. Chute came to Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Mr. Baida had been in the development office for six months. With an M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, he had been tapped for a management-training program and placed in charge of the development office’s support staff.

Mr. Chute recalls that he was surprised when Mr. Baida sought a job managing the cancer center’s direct-mail office, since he had no marketing experience. But Mr. Chute thought it over for a week and decided to give him a try.

Mr. Chute says he was impressed largely by Mr. Baida’s intelligence, but he also had taken note of two other attributes that would help in the direct-mail job: He had successfully recovered from a personal bout with cancer years before, and he had a love of writing that led him to produce a well-reviewed book on the business ideas of numerous historical figures.

So, as Mr. Baida spent his nights researching the lives of luminaries such as Benjamin Franklin for his book, he spent the day mastering the complexities of the direct-mail industry, arguably Mr. Franklin’s legacy as the first Postmaster General.

Mr. Baida says that one reason he has succeeded is because Mr. Chute has allowed him to experiment. A few years ago, Mr. Baida sent donors an appeal that gave them the option of receiving only one direct-mail solicitation from the center each year, rather than the five or six they had been getting.

Many direct-mail experts, says Mr. Baida, would argue that such an offer is the kiss of death, but Mr. Chute thought it was a good idea.

So did donors. The response rate among people who got the single-solicitation offer was higher than with other mailings. What’s more, people who opted for one annual appeal continued to make donations for many more years than people who got multiple mailings. Aside from keeping donors happy, the approach helps the center save money on paper, printing, and postage.

Mr. Baida says that one thing that especially impressed him about Mr. Chute was his unwavering opposition to soliciting gifts by telephone, even though using the technique could be very lucrative for the center.

In rejecting telemarketing, Mr. Chute says he always came down to one question. No one in his right mind uses a telemarketing campaign to solicit wealthy donors who make the most generous gifts, says Mr. Chute, so why would Memorial Sloan-Kettering want to subject any donor to a fund-raising technique unworthy of its best contributors?

Mr. Chute says he never received a satisfactory answer. He says he is convinced that telemarketing, while effective in the short run, turns off people who might otherwise become an institution’s most-generous donors. The rank-and-file donors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, he notes, have included many such people.

Fund raisers on Mr. Chute’s staff sometimes joke about his insistence on keeping an eagle eye on costs and returns above all else. His hard-nosed approach, Mr. Chute says, came from an earlier experience, in which he nearly went under in the corporate world.

After two years of active duty in the Marines, Mr. Chute joined Bainbridge, Kimpton & Haupt, a New York office-products distributor. He spent years working his way up to vice-president before the company, with 150 employees and annual sales in the eight-figure range, began to falter and nearly went bankrupt.

The stockholders put Mr. Chute in charge and, after three years under his leadership, the company turned the corner. The six stockholders, including Mr. Chute, sold the company for a modest profit. Mr. Chute was 43.

Thinking about how much he liked volunteer work on the alumni council of Princeton University, his alma mater, Mr. Chute decided to try his hand at a management position in the non-profit world. He landed at Memorial Sloan-Kettering after a two-year stint, albeit a brief and unhappy one, with a national non-profit organization, which he prefers not to name.

”They were wild-eyed idealists,’’ he recalls. ”They sat around and talked all day. The ideas sounded great, but no one ever actually did anything.’’

Few can say that about Mr. Chute. ”We all know how quickly you move,’’ said Mr. Chute’s secretary, Trudy O’Hagan, as she raised a glass to him in a long toast during his retirement party.

At the end of most work days, she recalls, Mr. Chute was planted by the desk of Lloyd Haynes, the development officer’s senior cashier, as he prepared the daily deposit, logging in donors’ checks that could total as little as $5,000 or as much as $1-million.

”He knew exactly where we stood every day, to the penny,’’ says Brian Lally, another senior fund raiser. ”I’m the guy who had to put together all the reports, and he knew them better than I did.

”That comes from being in touch with the business.’’