Belief in the Power of Collaboration Guides One Couple’s Giving
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
March 3, 2005 | Read Time: 11 minutes
Diabetes has been a constant in Bill and Dee Brehm’s 52-year marriage. Mrs. Brehm, 74, was diagnosed with
the disease, which can be life-threatening if left untreated, during her sophomore year of college.
So when deciding how to focus their philanthropy, high on their list of priorities was finding new treatments, and perhaps even a cure, for diabetes. The couple say they have long been frustrated by the fact that the basic treatment — insulin injections — has remained almost unchanged since it was introduced in 1922.
“Think about the technical progress that’s been made in the world since 1922,” says Mr. Brehm, 75. “That was before Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic, before the jet airplane, before nuclear energy. With all the technical progress that’s been made in the last 82 years, why are we still dependent on insulin to treat diabetes?”
Yet while the couple wanted swift results, they spent four years doing research and meeting with scientists before settling on a pledge of $44-million in November to the University of Michigan
|
||||||||||
Health System to create a diabetes-research center. Not only was Mr. Brehm a graduate of the University of Michigan, but also the first doctor to treat Mrs. Brehm’s diabetes was chief of endocrinology at the university.
Collaboration Is Key
Most of the money will be spent on a new facility that will provide scientists with the latest technology and will be designed to encourage collaboration, both among researchers working in the Michigan laboratory and with scientists at other institutions.
And at the Brehms’ urging, the university will hold a brainstorming session this month that will bring together people from different backgrounds, including university leaders, professors, and scientists; officials from the National Institutes of Health, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and the American Diabetes Association; diabetes researchers from other institutions; and representatives of the pharmaceutical industry to discuss the operation and design of the new facility.
“People spark each other when they get into a room together,” says Mr. Brehm.
The donation reflects the Brehms’ belief in the power of human interaction and collaboration to trigger major breakthroughs in solving problems, a principle that guides the couple’s philanthropy. Last year they gave $15-million to the Fuller Theological Seminary, in Pasadena, Calif., one of the largest multidenominational seminaries in the United States, for projects aimed at bringing together worship and the arts.
In honor of Mrs. Brehm’s early career as a special-education teacher, the Brehms have started a scholarship program at her alma mater, Eastern Michigan University, in Ypsilanti, for undergraduates who are studying to enter the field.
The couple’s total philanthropic commitments in 2004 were almost $60-million, putting them at No. 22 on The Chronicle’s list of America’s most generous donors.
Richard J. Mouw, president of the Fuller Theological Seminary, says the Brehms represent “an interesting alternative” to previous generations of donors who waited to give the bulk of their fortunes at the end of their lives, out of loyalty and with a generic trust that the institution would use their money well, and to the approach embraced by many of today’s donors, who are much more likely to give when they are younger and know exactly what they want to support and how their money should be used.
“The Brehms are people who want to be very involved in the process, but they don’t want to trump everybody else’s ideas,” says Mr. Mouw.
Emphasis on Technology
Mr. Brehm’s first career was in public service.
He served as an assistant secretary of the Army under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, and as an assistant secretary of defense under Presidents Nixon and Gerald R. Ford. After leaving the government in the late 1970s, Mr. Brehm helped found SRA International, an information-technology and systems-integration company, in Fairfax, Va.
The company’s initial public offering in 2002 gave the couple the money to make large donations to the institutions they support. Mr. and Mrs. Brehm have already decided that their entire estate will go to charity after their deaths. Any money left over after fulfilling the philanthropic commitments they have made will go to a charitable lead trust that their children and grandchildren will help distribute.
“We like the idea of our family gathering together a couple times a year, and making advisory decisions for the distribution of those assets,” says Mr. Brehm.
The couple’s emphasis on technology in the University of Michigan gift draws on Mr. Brehm’s background in information science.
Mr. Brehm says that scientists at the new facility, unlike many of their colleagues, will have access to the best equipment to do their work.
“Information science in most cases takes a back seat in medical research,” he says. “It’s in some ways the last thing the scientists think about when they start a research project. It’s the thing they have to go out scrambling around for.”
Providing scientists with access to one another, however, is just as important as providing them with state-of-the-art equipment, the Brehms say.
The new laboratory will bring scientists together in one physical space and will be equipped with technology that will make it easier for scientists to communicate and show their results to one another. Mr. Brehm says he was particularly excited by equipment he saw cancer researchers use to communicate with scientists at other institutions as they were all looking at the same results on a video screen.
At many universities, medical research centers consist of “a collection of individuals sprinkled liberally across an entire campus” who seldom communicate with one another in person, says Peter Arvan, chief of the division of metabolism, endocrinology, and diabetes at the University of Michigan Medical School and the first William K. and Delores S. Brehm Professor of Type I Diabetes Research.
With everyone in the same building, says Dr. Arvan, “people will have direct, face-to-face contact that will allow for more efficient, rapid exchange of ideas that will occur at the water fountain, over lunch, or a cup of coffee, that might not occur through people who are connected only by a virtual center.”
The goal of the center will be to identify new treatments for Type I diabetes, the form of the disease that Mrs. Brehm has, in which the immune system attacks and kills the cells in the pancreas that secrete insulin, leaving the body unable to produce the hormone that converts sugars and starches into energy.
With Type II diabetes, either the body does not produce enough insulin or the cells ignore the insulin. People with either type of the disease have a higher risk of heart disease, blindness, nerve damage, and kidney damage, particularly if they don’t control their blood sugar.
Scientists are investigating several potential approaches to treat Type I diabetes, such as seeking ways to transplant healthy insulin-producing cells into a patient’s pancreas or use gene therapy to allow other cells to produce insulin.
Allen S. Lichter, dean of the University of Michigan Medical School, says that the Brehms, because they are not academics themselves, are able to look at the problem in a different way than people who are part of the research culture. “They say, ‘Let’s cure this disease,’ while scientists are much more cautious,” says Dr. Lichter. “Their willingness to be bold is refreshing.”
Pledge to Seminary
The couple’s other primary philanthropic commitment, to the Fuller Theological Seminary, also brings together unconnected professionals to solve a common problem — in this case, artists and members of the clergy who are trying to integrate the arts into worship.
The seminary started the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology and the Arts in 2001, and the couple has continued to provide financial support for related projects.
The Brehms say they realized the need for such a program after spending well over a decade helping their pastor and his wife put on marriage retreats in churches across the country. The retreats would usually wrap up during the Sunday worship service.
“We had the opportunity to go to many different churches,” recalls Mrs. Brehm, “and we began to wonder if the music directors and the pastors really knew each other, and if they were coordinating their worship.”
In some cases, says Mr. Brehm, “there was downright hostility between the music director and the pastor. They just didn’t understand each other. They didn’t understand what they were supposed to be doing together.”
Initially, the Brehms offered to endow a professorship in worship and the arts at Fuller, where Mr. Brehm had been a trustee since 1983.
But as seminary officials started to look for a professor to fill the position, they realized they were not sure what kind of candidate they were looking for: a theologian who knew about the arts or an artist who knew a lot about theology. Neither seemed to fit the bill.
So instead the seminary began experimenting with ways to bring the arts into campus life through activities such as workshops and lectures by visiting artists, film series, and an annual arts festival. Those programs led to the creation of the Brehm Center, to which the couple pledged $15-million for an endowment in 2003.
As Fuller’s involvement with the arts grew, the fact that the seminary doesn’t have a chapel became an issue. That led the Brehms to agree last year to make a gift of $15-million to build a new worship center on campus, and this year they have promised another $4-million for a new seminary library.
In deciding what kind of worship center to build, the Brehms knew they wanted a place where the Center for Worship, Theology and the Arts could stage concerts and students could practice dance, drama, or preaching. But they also wanted to know what others thought was needed.
At Mr. and Mrs. Brehm’s recommendation, the seminary gathered approximately 100 people — administrators, professors, students, alumni, city officials, local pastors and gallery owners, and people who live near the seminary campus — to talk about the options.
The clear consensus of participants at the meeting: It made more sense for Fuller to build a new worship center, rather than retrofit a church building that was for sale next to the seminary.
The gathering also led to a series of broader conversations aimed at creating a master plan for the campus, which, in turn, led the seminary to undertake an ambitious capital campaign that has raised nearly $100-million, says Mr. Mouw, Fuller’s president.
Family Involvement
While the Brehms have been responsible for several multimillion-dollar gifts, the couple cares a great deal about small gifts as well.
Particularly close to their hearts is a project the Brehms hope will teach their engaged style of giving to their six grandchildren, who range in age from 9 to 16.
Every March, on their grandfather’s birthday, the grandchildren receive $75 to put toward a charitable project. They have until their grandmother’s birthday, in August, to report back on how they plan to use the money.
“They have to choose something to do with their money, and ‘do’ is the important word there,” says Mrs. Brehm. “They are not to mail it to some organization, but they are to be a part of what they’re going to spend their money on.”
Last year, for example, a teenager who baby-sits for one of the Brehms’ granddaughters, Kelly, went on a church mission trip to work at an orphanage in Guatemala. Kelly, who was 9 at the time, went to a dollar store with her baby sitter and, using the money her grandparents had given her, bought diapers, baby clothes, and toiletries for the teenager to take to the orphanage.
Three of the other grandchildren used their money to buy Christmas presents for people who are homeless.
While the Brehms hope that their philanthropy serves as an inspiration to their children and grandchildren, they readily acknowledge that being hands-on donors is hard work.
“It certainly would be easier to give your money, and not have a part in how it’s used,” says Mrs. Brehm. “You have a dinner, and that’s it.”
Both she and Mr. Brehm say that the success of their giving is due to the strengths they each bring to their partnership as donors.
Mr. Brehm is the idea man, with sometimes grandiose plans, while Mrs. Brehm is the pragmatist who asks how things will get done.
“We each bring something to the party,” says Mr. Brehm. “Dee has a very practical side to her, and I’m kind of wild. It’s good to have that kind of checks and balances.”
Mrs. Brehm agrees. “I keep him from going too fast, and he pulls me ahead a little bit,” she says. “You need both.”
