July 20, 2015 | Read Time: 7 minutes
Naomi Levine, a nationally known fundraising legend at New York University, points to a black-and-white photograph on the wall of her Washington Square home and office. The scene, she says, explains everything people need to know about fundraising.
It was taken more than two decades ago at a party for NYU scholarship donors and the students who benefited from their largess. Mrs. Levine, now a 92-year-old scholar, lawyer, and consummate fundraiser, is leaning above Julius Silver, a donor who made his fortune by investing early in Polaroid. In that moment, Mrs. Levine recalls, Mr. Silver asked if she would speak to his daughter Enid, a law student, and provide some advice about her career.
“Of course I said yes,” Mrs. Levine says. That, she says, was the beginning of a relationship that lasted more than a decade and culminated in Mr. Silver’s $175 million bequest to the university. The amount stunned Mrs. Levine, who knew the university would be included in his will but was expecting $5 million at best.
Long-term relationships that benefit both the donor and a nonprofit are “the heart of fundraising,” Mrs. Levine says. Known for being blunt and irascible, she says that too many people treat raising money more like selling a product or a one-time transaction.
After running NYU’s George H. Heyman Jr. Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising for more than a dozen years, Mrs. Levine is stepping down. She will remain involved with the university, where she served as chief fundraiser for more than two decades and played a strong hand in raising $2.5 billion. Mrs. Levine came to NYU after serving as the only female executive director of the American Jewish Congress.
Her fundraising work was critical in transforming a financially struggling university that was mostly a commuter school when she arrived. With leadership from people like John Brademas, the former Indiana congressman who became president of the university, and board members like the investors Laurence Tisch and George Heyman, for whom the philanthropy center is named, Mrs. Levine bolstered fundraising from $32 million a year when she arrived to more than $350 million. During that time, she led one of the earliest drives to raise $1 billion, marking the milestone in 1994, two years after Stanford became the first institution to achieve that goal.
Ethics Worries
As she plans to step down from her latest leadership post, Mrs. Levine says she sees two major problems hobbling fundraising. First, she worries that fundraising is still not viewed as a serious profession, like law or medicine. No mother tells her child to become a fundraiser, Mrs. Levine says. Changing that perception was a key reason she stepped away from front-line fundraising to build a center offering professional education in the subject.
The second problem on her mind these days: Many board members and nonprofit executives do not understand their legal, fiduciary, and ethical responsibilities. In response that concern, Mrs. Levine teaches a course on law, ethics, and board issues for nonprofits.
For her students, she saves numerous clips about nonprofit snafus, many involving lawsuits, in a fat notebook of materials. Recent cases she likes to point out: the New York attorney general’s investigation into how board members managed the endowment and made other financial decisions at Cooper Union, which was forced to start charging tuition for the first time in more than 150 years. Another case involved FEGS Health and Human Services, a Jewish social-service agency that recently filed for bankruptcy and announced it was closing because of a $19.4-million loss.
Both cases, Mrs. Levine says, suggest that the organizations’ boards failed to provide adequate oversight and take corrective action to avoid financial crises.
The examples in Mrs. Levine’s notebook, which stretch back over the years, include Bernadine Healy, who lost her job as chief executive of the American Red Cross after controversy erupted over her plans to spend the $1 billion donated after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Many donors and government officials grew angry when she said some of the money would be used to make the Red Cross better prepared for catastrophic events, rather than going to victims’ families. “She didn’t understand that you cannot take money raised for A and use it for B,” says Mrs. Levine. “Once donors lose faith in your organization, it’s over.”
Sharp Tongue
To avoid such disasters, Mrs. Levine continues to fight hard for a state requirement that anyone hired to raise money must take a course on ethical and legal issues. She has visited the state legislature or the Charities Bureau in the New York Attorney General’s Office every year for more than a decade to push for such a measure.
She says it’s dismaying that the biggest opponents to stronger ethics regulations are large charities that resist government oversight.
Mrs. Levine’s spacious Washington Square apartment serves as an office for her and an assistant with the Heyman Center, which is located in the building’s basement.
Her forceful personality undoubtedly helps account for her success over the years — even though it rankled some of her colleagues — and board members, donors, and others say they will miss her.
“She put together a fabulous program, and she’s made a remarkable impression on the nonprofit world. I feel very strongly about that,” says Doug White, who Mrs. Levine fired from the Heyman Center in 2011. Mr. White, who is now at Columbia University, attributes his dismissal to “founder’s syndrome on steroids,” and says he has no hard feelings.”
When asked why Mr. White was let go, Mrs. Levine responded: “I will not discuss that with you.”
Colleagues and donors marvel at Mrs. Levine’s keen intelligence. Asked what she’s reading now, Mrs. Levine darts into another room of her apartment, emerging with a tall stack of books and a triumphant smile. Most of the books are historical treatises like Bible and Sword: England and Palestine From the Bronze Age to Balfour, by Barbara W. Tuchman, and The Death of Caesar: the Story of History’s Most Famous Assassination, by Barry Strauss.
“Part of being a good fundraiser is reading,” Mrs. Levine says. “You must be someone people want to have lunch with.”
“She is an extraordinary woman and her mental acuity is a phenomenon,” says Larry Silverstein, a real-estate developer now rebuilding the World Trade Center, who has given at least $5 million to NYU.
An emeritus board member who accompanied Mrs. Levine on numerous fundraising calls, Mr. Silverstein says he was always impressed by her meticulous research. She strives, he says, to learn everything she can about a potential donor. “It was a beautiful thing to watch Naomi,” says Mr. Silverstein. As a fundraiser, he says, “she was exciting and stimulating, enormously prepared, and could discuss anything.”
Trouble Ahead
Mrs. Levine plans to stay active at the university as she leaves the Heyman Center. In addition to teaching her course of law and ethics, she also will serve as a fundraising consultant to the dean of the school of professional studies, which includes the Heyman Center. She is concerned about the high cost of getting a master’s degree — $64,000 at NYU — and wants to help raise money for scholarships.
As she considers what the future holds for the country, Mrs. Levine says she is deeply concerned about the desire and ability of wealthy people to set agendas that keep others from rising out of poverty. She says she worries about the corrupting influence of money in politics, as well as the sway billionaire donors have exerted.
“Look at Bill Gates spending millions on charter schools, but what does that do to teachers in public schools, which are very important along with unions?” she asks. “I don’t know the answer, but I am very concerned. Big money and big foundations have too much influence.” That is, she adds, “the price you pay for American philanthropy.”
