Donor Driven to Raise Funds to Help Find Diabetes Cure

For more than 20 years, James C. Tyree suffered extreme complications from diabetes, including spending a month in a coma in 1997 following a sharp spike in his blood sugar. His ability to overcome those challenges provided good material for the many speeches the financial executive has made over the years for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International.

“I’ve been dead, I’ve been blind, and I don’t feel anything below my knees,” he would often tell audiences. “But I feel great.”

The speeches were meant to motivate others fighting the disease, but the truth is, like many diabetics, Mr. Tyree didn’t always feel great. Even a diabetic who stays on top of the disease can have a wide-ranging blood-sugar level that leaves one feeling off for much of the day.

But two years ago — just days before he would have had to begin dialysis due to failing kidneys — Mr. Tyree received two new kidneys and a new pancreas in a transplant operation. The transplant essentially cured his diabetes; he no longer takes insulin.

Plenty of wealthy donors suffering from a disease support charities that are working to find a cure for that disease, in part because they hope to benefit personally from the research. Yet Mr. Tyree’s commitment to diabetes research seems to have only increased now that he has overcome the disease.

“He’s hoping for a real cure,” says Robin Harding, who was chief operating officer of the research foundation before leaving in July to start a consulting business. “He feels now more than ever how blessed he is, and that he needs to continue to raise money to find a cure for this disease.”

$1-Billion Campaign

Mr. Tyree, the chief executive of Mesirow Financial, a financial-services firm based here, has been an active volunteer and fund raiser for the research foundation since the early 1990s. He just ended a two-year term as chairman of the executive committee of the foundation’s board.

He also chaired the organization’s campaign to raise $1-billion for research for four years, before ending his term on the board this summer. The five-year campaign hit the $1-billion mark this June — one year early — and Mr. Tyree says the organization now hopes to reach $1.25-billion by the time the campaign wraps up next June.

Mr. Tyree is grateful for his transplanted organs, but he knows that transplants are not a real solution to the disease, since only 3,000 transplants occur each year and more than one million people suffer from juvenile, or Type 1, diabetes, a chronic condition that typically appears in young people and means the pancreas produces little or no insulin (Type 2 diabetes is much more common and typically affects adults).

“I’ve gone to the best party in the world, but I’m there alone,” Mr. Tyree says. “And because of that, it’s not a very good party. Yeah, I feel great, but there are a whole lot of other people that need to get that feeling.”

The research foundation, which is based in New York City, focuses on Type 1 diabetes. The foundation supports efforts to translate basic research on diabetes into science that will lead to drugs, treatments, and therapies.

The foundation raised $223-million in 2008 through walks, galas, major gifts, and other activities — all of which counts toward its $1-billion campaign goal. The group expects to provide $195-million for research in the 2009 fiscal year, up from just $40-million a decade ago. The organization now supports 39 research approaches that are in human trials, compared with just five in 2003. (Based on the nearly $203.7-million the group raised in 2007, it ranks at No. 87 in this year’s Philanthropy 400, The Chronicle’s annual survey of the charities that raised the most money.)

Mr. Tyree says he grew up “dirt poor,” on the eastern edge of Beverly, on Chicago’s South Side. After his parents divorced, he shared a one-bedroom apartment with his mother. He worked his way through Illinois State University, earning an undergraduate degree and a master’s in business administration.

He started at Mesirow in 1980 as a research analyst. He visited a doctor at age 24 when a client told him that he had all the symptoms of diabetes — he was drinking water voraciously, going to the bathroom all the time, and had lost 30 to 40 pounds.

The doctor tested his blood sugar and came back with an ashen look. Mr. Tyree’s blood sugar was at 980, a dangerously high level.

Diabetes has taken a toll on Mr. Tyree’s body. He is 50 but looks 10 years older. In 1997, the disease nearly cost him his life. His blood sugar spiked while on a cruise ship in Mexico celebrating his mother’s 75th birthday. His heart stopped, and he was air-lifted to a Miami hospital. When he finally came out of a coma, he failed most neurological tests. But one day his mind returned, and he was back at work just a month after the scare.

A few years later, he briefly lost his eyesight due to complications from diabetes. The transplant in December 2006 was a success; he has had no complications from the surgery. But even though he no longer has diabetes, the disease still haunts him — a month ago, he had a toe amputated because of a diabetic ulcer on his foot.

Initial Reluctance

During his 20s, Mr. Tyree resisted suggestions that he raise money to support research toward a cure for diabetes, since he would be asking friends for money that might ultimately benefit him. “I thought that was selfish,” he says. He later realized that he had the tools — sales experience, public-speaking skills, firsthand knowledge of the disease, and a deep list of contacts — to raise serious money from friends and business associates.

When he joined the board of the Illinois chapter of the research foundation in the early 1990s, he agreed to serve as a fund raiser for the chapter’s annual gala in December. (He remains a lifetime member of the local board’s executive committee.)

He still focuses on the event today. He keeps a database of more than 3,000 friends and business associates, and around the holidays, he sends each one popcorn or pistachios, as well as an invitation to the banquet. Mr. Tyree has been the biggest fund raiser for the gala for several years running. The event generates $3-million per year and helps the Illinois diabetes affiliate raise more money annually — $6-million — than any other chapter in the country.

“That’s what I affectionately call the ‘retail approach’ to what I do,” Mr. Tyree says.

He then mines that information to determine whom he should approach for major gifts. A few years ago, Mr. Tyree persuaded one friend to “fund a cure” — make a significant gift at the annual gala — by making his own $50,000 gift.

The next year, he urged the same friend to join him in making a major gift; they would each contribute the same amount. The friend embraced the idea and came back with “a number well beyond my means,” Mr. Tyree says. The two ultimately decided to each make a pledge worth $1-million to the research foundation.

“You can always rely on Jim,” says Amy Franze, vice president for major-donor and planned-giving relations at the diabetes research foundation. “He delivers beyond what you expect. In life, those kinds of people are extremely valuable, and in philanthropy, they’re essential.”

Mr. Tyree’s net worth is unclear, since the bulk of his wealth is tied up in privately held Mesirow, which has a book value of $270-million. Mr. Tyree allows that the company’s market value is probably worth “significantly more than that.” Mr. Tyree owns 15 percent of the company, which conservatively puts his net worth at more than $40-million. (The company itself has given about $300,000 to the research foundation over the years, according to Mr. Tyree.)

Mr. Tyree has paid about half of his $1-million pledge to the research foundation. In total, he has given $1.3-million to the group since 2003, in addition to the donations from Mesirow. Ms. Franze says Mr. Tyree is among the organization’s top individual donors.

The time he commits to the organization may be even more valuable. Mr. Tyree estimates that he has given “hundreds” of speeches at research-foundation events. He also has traveled to New York for executive committee meetings monthly for the past nine years.

He is equally comfortable outlining the foundation’s research efforts to adults, or motivating children in a language to which they can relate. Louis Philipson, an endocrinologist at the University of Chicago Medical Center who has treated Mr. Tyree, recalls seeing him speak at an event with children, where Mr. Tyree gained instant credibility with the line, “Diabetes sucks.”

“Jim speaks from the heart,” Dr. Philipson says. “He has a tremendous amount of charisma, and people react to that.”

Economic Forecast

Mr. Tyree says the research foundation is his primary charitable focus, but it is just one of his interests. He is chairman of the boards of City Colleges of Chicago, and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce.

All told, Mr. Tyree says he and his wife, Eve, make cash gifts of between $500,000 and $1-million per year to charities. In addition to his gifts to the research foundation, he supports diabetes study at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Mr. Tyree says he manages his many commitments by trying to make business, philanthropy, volunteerism, and family seamless. He usually visits his office on weekends, often bringing his three kids with him. The children have put up their own name tags on vacant offices near his.

“You’ve got to be willing to do things from 7:30 in the morning until 10 or 11 at night, including weekends,” Mr. Tyree says. “I’ve done that my whole life. It’s very comfortable for me.”

Mesirow is not involved in any highly leveraged businesses, Mr. Tyree says, and the company has not suffered from the credit crunch as much as some other financial companies. That means his own capacity to give hasn’t been hampered by the weak economy, but he does see concern when he goes out to raise money from others. “Face it — charitable giving is discretionary,” Mr. Tyree says. “When times get tough, everyone likes to just freeze.”

Mr. Tyree says that the downturn is likely to hamper fund raising through walks and galas, and it will put pressure on the research foundation to do better at obtaining major gifts — an area in which it has not traditionally thrived.

In 2008, the research foundation has received major gifts ($10,000 or greater) totaling $34-million, only about 15 percent of the money it raises from private sources. Until recently, Mr. Tyree says, “we didn’t have the horses — either staff or volunteers — to develop a major-gift effort.”

He has pushed the organization to do better in the area. In 2004, the board created a new vice-president position focused on major gifts, and changed the bylaws to allow up to five former board members to return to the board for a special three-year term in which they would spend “substantially all of their time” as a board member raising major gifts.

Mr. Tyree says he is himself considering another major gift to the research foundation amid the economic downturn, but he does not yet know how big that gift will be.

Ms. Franze, the vice president for major-donor relations, chuckles when asked what she is likely to seek next from Mr. Tyree. “We’ll continue to keep Jim on the prospect list,” she says.