Director of PBS Foundation Pledges to Work With Public TV Stations

Ever since Cheri Carter took the helm last month of the PBS Foundation — the Public Broadcasting System’s new fund-raising arm — the television in her office has been tuned to the network’s children’s shows.

Ms. Carter wants to familiarize herself with kids’ programming, she says, because it is central both to the mission of PBS and to her passion for the organization.

“I came from a place that focused on saving children’s lives physically,” says Ms. Carter, who worked as a fund raiser for the last four years at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, in Washington. “Now, I feel I am at a place focused on saving children’s lives through education and through spirit and character building.”

Besides, Ms. Carter, 49, was already a teenager when Sesame Street started airing in 1969, too old to watch the program that has become synonymous with PBS.

“I’ve always watched Jim Lehrer,” Ms. Carter says. “Now I have an excuse to watch Sesame Street, too.”

Ms. Carter, a self-described “TV nut,” is the first full-time executive director of PBS’s year-old fund-raising charity. Started last June with $557,500 from PBS, the PBS Foundation, in Alexandria, Va., announced last month that it will receive its first major grant: $10-million over five years from the Ford Foundation.

The organization was created to do what PBS had been unable to do before: accept big-time donations for systemwide use. PBS had always relied on its stations — 348 around the country — and on independent producers to raise their own money and to develop and distribute their own programs.

Fund raising, however, has grown increasingly tough, with corporate underwriting tight and state- and local-government support slipping. At the same time, federal support for public broadcasting, which accounts for about one-quarter of PBS’s operating revenue, has become a political football, with conservatives growing impatient with what they view as a liberal bias in public television. Battles over the cultural and political leanings of PBS programming might have an impact on private fund raising, too, although it is unclear exactly how.

Public-television fund raisers, like Ms. Carter, also face the challenges of increasing competition for viewers, as cable and satellite television stations multiply and move into territory, such as the production of documentaries, once considered the nearly exclusive domain of public television.

Last year, PBS stations aired programs that were financed in part by $148-million raised in recent years from corporations, foundations, and individuals, down slightly from 2003 when programming shown that year had been supported by $153-million from private sources. PBS received about $80-million last year from the federal government, much of it through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The PBS Foundation intends to raise and spend $25-million over the next five years, and to collect at least an additional $3-million for its endowment. Some of the money, Ms. Carter says, will come through fund-raising doors that were once shut to PBS.

She says that the Ford grant, for example, would probably have been given piecemeal to stations or producers, or not at all, if the foundation did not exist. And she echoed the rumor that has been flying since Joan B. Kroc, the widow of Ray A. Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, left a bequest of more than $200-million to NPR in 2003: PBS could have had all or some of that money if at the time it had had a mechanism, such as a PBS Foundation, to receive it.

In an interview, Ms. Carter discussed the PBS Foundation and her new role.

Do you expect any turf tensions between your office and the stations, networks, and producers?

No, I really don’t expect any. I’ve just gotten home from a visit to the West Coast and I was in San Francisco, L.A., and then Phoenix, and it was so great to sit down with the station managers and development teams and, face-to-face, talk about the foundation and the great partnerships we can build together. The success these stations have around the country in raising money to support these programs is just amazing to me. I was very well received, and at the end of the day we were all talking about great things that we can do together to benefit both the local station and the PBS Foundation. It is about us finding some great joint projects.

What is an example of a joint project under consideration?

The Ford Foundation grant, number one. We are still developing the details of that, but at least part of the grant will help fund an initiative called Public Square, which will benefit both the stations and the whole system.

The concerns people, as good fund raisers, are going to have is not knowing, not being in the loop, and us not collaborating with them. But my pledge to all of them is full disclosure and full collaboration, making sure if we have anyone on our list of board-development potential or fund-raising possibilities, they’ll be the first to know. Everybody is really keen on making sure that happens. It can’t work unless we share information in full disclosure and collaboration.

What is the key selling point for public broadcasting?

The big thing for me is the trust people have in public broadcasting. You always have to convince a donor to invest in something. Here, you are investing in the future. Public broadcasting is Americana. It is a safe place to go. When you turn on a public-television station you are going to be inspired, educated, energized, you are going to be informed without any kind of interference. That’s a wonderful thing, especially for children and parents today, to have a safe harbor, a wonderful place to go every day to build character, to be educated.

Should PBS try to wean itself away from relying as much as it does on government money?

The more we want to do, the more money we need. Obviously, the federal money is very important. But what I am here to do is to grow the private money, the private investment in public television. The great thing about having a PBS Foundation now is that we can build an endowment and sustain the growth that we all want for public television.

Is PBS ready now for a Joan Kroc-type gift?

I am always ready for a Joan Kroc gift. I do wish the foundation had been in place back then. This foundation had been talked about for the last couple of years. It has been a vision of PBS CEO Pat Mitchell and the board, and they fast-tracked this over the last year to put a mechanism and foundation in place to be able to accept those kinds of extraordinary gifts.

Is there another Joan Kroc out there for PBS?

I am sure there is, and my job is to help uncover that potential.

ABOUT CHERI CARTER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE PBS FOUNDATION

Education: Earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communication at the University of Georgia in 1977.

Previous employment: Started her career as a Congressional aide, then took fund-raising and public-relations jobs in Florida, was a special-events coordinator and then deputy finance director for the Democratic National Committee, and served as director of external affairs for the late U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ronald H. Brown. She worked in the Office of Public Liaison during part of the Clinton administration, and as the chief operating officer of the 2000 Democratic National Convention. In 2001, Ms. Carter became a fund raiser for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, in Washington.

What she is reading now: Moloka’i, by Alan Brennert, a historical novel based in Hawaii, Ms. Carter’s favorite place to visit.

Favorite Sesame Street character: Big Bird, “because,” she says, “he is sweet and bigger than life.”