Fund Raising From the Heart

Boston couple show each other how to help good causes

When Anne-Marie Fitzgerald had to plan a kickoff event with the first lady, Laura Bush,

for her charity’s national conference, she found the help she needed right at home. Her husband, David E. Hirschberg, had plenty of tips to share based on his experiences here as a fund raiser at Project Bread–The Walk for Hunger, where he oversees walks that draw tens of thousands of people.

Likewise, Mr. Hirschberg has been getting pointers on how to recruit high-level donors from Ms. Fitzgerald, whose easy manner with people has helped her more than double the amount raised in gifts of over $1,000 to the pediatric-literacy group she works for, Reach Out and Read, in nearby Somerville, Mass.

The marriage of these two development officers has meant sharing advice — and even the names of donors and other inside information — as part of the regular give and take of their lives.

Ms. Fitzgerald, 33, and Mr. Hirschberg, 35, say the support they get from each other far outweighs any potential problems involving information sharing or competition, and their employers agree. Other people in fund-raising couples feel similarly: Their work is strengthened by their partner’s knowledge, they say, and their domestic relationship benefits when each party understands the long hours, the short deadlines, the travel at a moment’s notice, and the emotional ups and downs that are inherent to a job in development.

“It’s wonderful to know what your spouse does every day, and to really understand it in your gut,” says Ms. Fitzgerald, who oversees fund raising and communications at Reach Out and Read.

A Rare Combination

Still, few development officers make homes together.

One reason may be that, unlike doctors, lawyers, and other types of professionals, people typically get into fund raising after their studies so they have fewer opportunities to meet others who are starting out in the field. Also, not everyone wants to be with someone who is equally stressed out by work, at the same times of the year, particularly when also trying to raise a family.

Trish Jackson, who oversaw professional-development programs in her role as vice president of education at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, in Washington, wonders if people in fund raising are naturally more attracted to less outgoing sorts.

“You tend to see a lot of extroverted development professionals marrying more introverted people,” says Ms. Jackson, who left the council in September to become associate vice president for individual and organizational giving at Dartmouth College. “You are ‘on’ so much of the time, especially with evening events,” she says. “I love going home to a shy person.” Ms. Jackson is married to a neuroscientist at Mount Holyoke College.

Art of Schmooze

Both Ms. Fitzgerald and Mr. Hirschberg have mastered the art of schmooze, but he is more reserved. They make a point of giving each other time for solitary pursuits — knitting and pottery for her, guitar for him.

They also share the stresses and joys of their jobs, something fund-raising couples say makes their unions stronger.

“You are always on the go, you are involved in a business with a lot of people whom the spouse never sees, never meets,” says Royster C. Hedgepeth, vice president of philanthropy at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, in Springfield, Mass. Job requirements, such as spending two-thirds of his time away from home, can be hard on a marriage, but Mr. Hedgepeth says it helps that his second wife, whom he met at a conference of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, is also a fund raiser and understands the dynamics of the job.

Ms. Fitzgerald and Mr. Hirschberg have the added benefit of sympathetic bosses. Their offices have given them flexible schedules to accommodate their child’s needs, allowing them to alternate leaving work in time to pick up their son, Coleman — named for jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman — from preschool by 3 p.m. each day. They make up the time in the afternoons at home, at night, and often on weekends.

“The flexibility is very important, and doing work that we believe our child or future children will be proud of is important to us,” says Mr. Hirschberg.

The couple met when they were both fund raisers at the Share Group, a telephone-solicitation company in Somerville that works for progressive causes. At the time, Mr. Hirschberg knew he wanted to make a contribution in human services, and saw fund raising as a way in. “I was interested in going into the nonprofit world,” he says. “Fund raising was a real area of need.”

Ms. Fitzgerald says it wasn’t Mr. Hirschberg’s fund-raising prowess that she found attractive, but his ideals. “The fact that we both wanted to be in the nonprofit world is one of the things that bond us,” she says. She is Roman Catholic and Mr. Hirschberg is Jewish. Social action, she says, “is the common religion in our household.”

Equal Partners

At Reach Out and Read, which works with pediatricians to put children’s books in the hands of parents, Ms. Fitzgerald is overseeing a growing budget that reached $4.1-million last year.

For Mr. Hirschberg, the job at the Share Group led to a year of work as an independent fund-raising consultant and then a position at Community Servings, a Boston charity that delivers meals to people with AIDS. He was hired by Project Bread in 1997 to coordinate logistics for the group’s fund-raising walk and quickly rose through the development department’s ranks. The charity’s budget has increased by 32 percent, to $7-million, since he began.

Ellen Parker, Project Bread’s executive director, says Mr. Hirschberg’s success in marriage and in working at her group stem from his respect for women and egalitarian style. “They have a partnership, they are equals, they are both successful,” she says of the couple. “The culture here is really noncompetitive and really organizationally focused.”

Trading Tips

Mr. Hirschberg and Ms. Fitzgerald help each other out whenever they can. They edit each other’s fund-raising appeals — “we usually tear each other’s stuff apart,” says Mr. Hirschberg — and they share information on printers, list brokers, and other vendors. They also provide expertise in areas in which the other is weaker.

Mr. Hirschberg’s greatest strength lies in event planning. The logistics of the Walk for Hunger are among his biggest preoccupations. “David has done a great job with it,” says David W. Bolio, a senior manager for community relations at John Hancock Financial Services, in Boston, which supports Project Bread, “managing it so it all runs together smoothly.”

Ms. Fitzgerald, who thrives on contacts with people, is best when cultivating large donors. “There is no one I will not walk up to at an event and talk to and introduce to the organization,” she says. “I like acquainting people with the program.”

Joan H. Parker, a philanthropist who is married to the detective novelist Robert B. Parker, says that when she needs the names of potential donors for her favorite causes she turns to Ms. Fitzgerald. Ms. Parker got to know Ms. Fitzgerald when she served as a trustee at the organization Ms. Fitzgerald worked for before Reach Out and Read — the now-defunct Dance Umbrella. “She is very thorough in her knowledge,” Ms. Parker says, and she knows exactly how to solicit each person — “approach this one personally, that one through a letter, approach this one through a mutual friend.”

The duo’s individual strengths complement each other.

Using his experience with multiple sponsors of the Walk for Hunger, Mr. Hirschberg advised Ms. Fitzgerald on Reach Out and Read’s June conference, which was attended by the first lady. He gave her valuable pointers on keeping her corporate donors happy while meeting the needs of Mrs. Bush, her security detail, and the journalists who followed her. “He is really fantastic at making each sponsor realize how important their individual contribution is and their role in the aggregate of the event,” says Ms. Fitzgerald.

Mr. Hirschberg is also helping his wife improve Reach Out and Read’s direct-mail campaign. When Ms. Fitzgerald took her job, the charity sent one mailing a year to 600 people. She has since added 1,900 names and increased the number of letters annually to four, in part with a $100,000 grant from the Verizon Foundation.

Mr. Hirschberg supplied her with the name of a direct-mail company to produce the mailings. And to help her gauge how successful her mailings might be, he shared his own projections for Project Bread’s solicitations, as well as the results.

Ellen Parker, Project Bread’s executive director, has no worries about the relationship, saying her group gains from it as well.

Building Relationships

Ms. Fitzgerald is using her own strengths to help Project Bread attract large donors. More than 65 percent of the money Mr. Hirschberg raises arrives in the form of checks written by individuals for less than $250, many of them from walkers. In the last three years, contributions from major donors — separate from walkers — have increased by around $300,000, a figure Mr. Hirschberg says he wants to continue to improve on.

He says he has learned a lot about building relationships with potential donors from his wife. “I tend to focus more on existing relationships and getting more out of them,” he says. “She has helped me connect.” Ms. Fitzgerald is particularly good at turning a prospect into a donor by figuring out that person’s needs and then finding a way for her organization to fill them, he says.

Project Bread is considering its first capital campaign and is putting together a group of people who can help the organization come up with the names of potential donors. To help plan, Project Bread’s executive director has invited Ms. Fitzgerald to join the discussion. “Before I even thought of it, Ellen said to me, ‘Well, I want Anne-Marie in the group,’” says Mr. Hirschberg.

The husband and wife have recommended many names of potential donors to each other over the years, they say, and have made a point of introducing each other to local philanthropists at events they attend. Their charities share a dozen or so large donors, and at least 15 foundations and corporations support both groups.

They also advise each other in how to pursue particular prospects. “We usually share what our own experience has been in terms of how much contact the donors want with the organization and what we perceive as their intent for giving,” says Ms. Fitzgerald.

Sharing Data on Donors

Such donor-information sharing gives some fund raisers pause.

Ms. Jackson, formerly of CASE, warns that people in fund-raising couples need to be careful about what they disclose to their partners. “I certainly as a hiring manager would want to have a fairly direct conversation about appropriate levels of disclosure about anybody who might be a shared prospect,” she says.

If her husband were in fund raising, Ms. Jackson says, she would be reluctant to discuss potential donors because of the possibility that some of those prospects might give to her husband’s group and, as a result, decrease the size of their gifts to her own.

Some charities require employees to sign confidentiality agreements, including those that cover information about donors, and such agreements could help avoid potential problems with fund-raising couples, says Kenneth M. Willner, an employment lawyer in Washington. Such statements sometimes include a provision stipulating that information about donors and prospective donors must be kept private, he says.

But because many jurisdictions make it illegal to discriminate against an employee based on marital status, he says, all fund raisers should be asked to sign such an agreement rather than just those who are married to other development officers. “Those restrictions would apply to someone who was disclosing information to their spouse just as they would apply to someone who was disclosing information to somebody else,” says Mr. Willner.

Ms. Fitzgerald says revealing her donors to Mr. Hirschberg has in no way hurt her group. “I don’t think that large donors choose one organization and support it and not others,” she says. “Large donors tend to choose a number of different organizations that address a number of things that they are interested in.”

Adds Mr. Hirschberg: “It’s not, She’s at the local food bank and I’m at Project Bread, where we might really be splitting the dollar.” He and Ms. Fitzgerald say their interests are different enough that it is unlikely they would ever work for groups with more crossover.

At the same time, Ms. Fitzgerald says she would never share the name of a donor who had expressed a desire to remain private.

Perri Klass, a practicing pediatrician who runs Reach Out and Read, says she believes that any ideas exchanged by Ms. Fitzgerald and Mr. Hirschberg will be handled to the benefit of both organizations. “There is something about the fact that both of them are in this because they believe in what they are doing — they believe that it matters — that helps the trust,” she says.

Which is good, because Ms. Fitzgerald and Mr. Hirschberg have many opportunities to share intelligence.

“We brainstorm a lot together,” says Mr. Hirschberg. “We bounce ideas off of each other.”

Adds Ms. Fitzgerald: “That’s what dinner’s for.”

Are you a fund raiser married to someone in the same profession? Tell us about what you’ve learned from each other about helping charities in our Fund Raisers online forum.