How a Generous Donor Decides Where His Money Should Go

When it comes to multimillion-dollar gifts, Ronald O. Perelman, the head of the New York holding company MacAndrews & Forbes, and the chairman of Revlon, says he rarely seeks out charities to which he might like to give. Instead, he waits until a group approaches him with an idea, a need, or a program that grabs his interest.

His greatest pet peeve? “I hate when an organization does a favor for you, or honors you in some way, and their expectations are tenfold of what they should be,” he says. “I find that annoying and so bothersome that I don’t respond to it.” He doesn’t consider himself a particularly hands-on donor but says he likes to see his money used well and for the purpose for which it was given.

Staying Connected

Michael J. Fox, the actor whose Parkinson’s disease research foundation has received about $1-million from Mr. Perelman, seconds that assessment, adding that the donor’s style is to ask a lot of questions about the foundation’s work and occasionally to act as a sounding board for Mr. Fox’s ideas about the foundation. “I can float any proposal by him,” says Mr. Fox.

If an organization badly needs the money right away, Mr. Perelman will give all of the donation at once. But with larger projects — for example, his gifts to create a heart institute at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and a center for reproductive medicine, at Weill Cornell Medical College — he thinks it’s important for philanthropists to follow closely the progress of a gift and to structure a donation in a way that makes monitoring such progress possible.

One way he does this is by making payments over a specified time — he usually pays off a large gift in about five years or so. He stresses that donors should in most cases stick to their payment schedule.

“There’s a great pressure brought about by the institution to shrink the length of time, and I like to lengthen the length of time, in large part because you retain a greater control of the gift,” he says, adding, perhaps only half jokingly, that if a donor gives $50-million up front to a university and years later wants to help a student get accepted into that institution, “you’ll have a harder time getting the phone answered than if they’re looking for $10-million this year from you.”

Mr. Perelman — who in addition to Revlon, owns or holds a controlling stake in 11 other companies — doesn’t always have time to track all the charities he supports. Instead, he dispatches Christine Taylor, MacAndrews & Forbes’s senior vice president of communications, to see how his donations are being used.

Focusing on Results

Ms. Taylor says she contacts each organization to which Mr. Perelman has pledged or given a substantial donation, no matter how many years have passed since he gave the money.

Even in cases in which a pledge has long been paid off, says Ms. Taylor, such visits or calls help her understand how a charity is faring, if new programs have been added or removed, and what Mr. Perelman can do to help.

Ms. Taylor says she also makes a point of asking beneficiaries about personnel. Mr. Perelman, she says, likes to know if anyone has left the institution or if someone new has joined. “He’s very interested in who’s fulfilling the mission,” says Ms. Taylor.

Mr. Perelman takes a slightly different approach with smaller gifts. About once a year, Ms. Taylor says, she asks the office of New York’s City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, to put together a list of about 50 of the city’s most needy social-services charities. Ms. Taylor then combs through the list, researching each group and talking with their directors to learn more about their programs, selecting about a dozen she knows will ignite Mr. Perelman’s interest. After that, he decides which charities to support.

Ms. Taylor says her boss likes to support underdogs, charities that don’t usually get a lot of support from big donors.

“If I say to him, ‘This group does great things, but they’re not on the top-10 favorite lists that people usually give to,’ that’s the people he’ll give to,” says Ms. Taylor. “Tell him someone’s not the most popular kid on the block and that’s the one he wants.”