October 27, 2005 | Read Time: 9 minutes
Until recently, F. Terry Stent has been called many things, but “pickpocket” was never one of them.
Of course, Mr. Stent — an art
collector, retired airline pilot, and chief volunteer fund raiser for Atlanta’s High Museum of Art and Robert W. Woodruff Arts Center’s $178.4-million capital campaign — is not and never was a criminal. In fact, the nickname was meant as a term of endearment, jokingly bestowed upon him by a donor from whom Mr. Stent has helped solicit $1-million in gifts.
“I laugh every time I think about her,” says Mr. Stent, recalling the five or six times that he and the High Museum’s director, Michael Shapiro, traveled the several hundred miles to meet with the donor at her home. “She refers to Michael and me as her ‘two favorite pickpockets,’ and I’m very proud to be called that by her,” he says. “She is one of the most generous friends of the museum, with an obviously wonderful sense of humor.”
Thankfully, Mr. Stent hasn’t had to resort to picking people’s pockets to achieve fund-raising success as the chair of the Board of Directors of the High Museum, part of the Woodruff Arts Center, which includes several visual and performing arts organizations (and sits at No. 168 on this year’s Philanthropy 400. Mr. Stent also holds a seat on the Woodruff Arts Center’s Board of Trustees.)
With the help of Mr. Stent’s leadership, the High Museum of Art and the Woodruff Arts Center surpassed its original $130-million goal in November 2004 and has raised a total of $163.9-million toward its new goal of $178.4-million since the drive was started in mid-1998. Next month, the Woodruff Arts Center will unveil its expanded facilities, the largest and most prominent of which are three new High Museum buildings, which will more than double that institution’s current size to 312,000 square feet and provide much needed space for new exhibitions and programs.
Mr. Stent plays down his role in the organization’s fund-raising successes, insisting that he is “just one of a marvelous team of people.”
Still Mr. Shapiro says the campaign would not have been so successful without Mr. Stent’s leadership.
“I really don’t think it would have been possible without Terry,” he says, pointing to 38 gifts of $1-million or more made to the campaign that he and Mr. Stent solicited. “Not only does he have a profound understanding of the mission of the museum, but, more importantly, he deeply believes in and cares about what we’re trying to accomplish. So when he speaks to people, he speaks with a sense of passion and commitment that influences others to care just as much.”
A Passion for Art
For Mr. Stent, 65, the love of art is in his blood. As the great-grandson of Michael H. de Young, co-founder of the San Francisco Chronicle and founder of the de Young art museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, Mr. Stent grew up with a deep appreciation for all things visual. (The de Young museum has also recently completed a capital campaign and this month unveiled new construction.) Indeed, Mr. Stent and his wife, Margaret, have been serious collectors of American art since the 1970s. In 2002 and 2003, they were named among the top 100 collectors in the United States by Art & Antiques magazine, and this year they were named among the world’s top 200 collectors by ARTnews magazine. Their collection, beginning with the Hudson River School artists of the 1850s, focuses on 19th- and 20th-century American art. Of particular interest to the couple are pieces from the Ashcan School of artists, led by Robert Henri, which sought to document street scenes and everyday life in New York.
The Stents’ pursuit of art for their own collection first brought the couple through the doors of the High Museum about 12 years ago. They met with its curator of American art to ask questions about their own search for artworks. and they began to develop ties to the museum. In 1993, Mr. Stent joined the institution’s American Art Collectors group, whose members offer support to the museum and enjoy educational trips and seminars.
Four years later, he was elected to the Board of Directors, and in 1999 he was asked to lead the capital campaign. Two years later, he was elected board chair. Being assigned both jobs, says Mr. Shapiro, testifies to Mr. Stent’s commitment to the museum: “It’s like choosing an architect — when you have the right person, you stick with him.” Over the years, the Stents have personally given more than $8-million to the museum; their gift to the current campaign is among its three largest, say museum officials, but Mr. Stent was unwilling to disclose the amount, and Mr. Shapiro would only reveal that Mr. Stent’s contribution has totaled “seven figures.”
“We very much consider Atlanta our home,” says Mr. Stent. “We’ve lived here for 35 years now, and we feel like we have an obligation to give back to a community that has been so supportive to us. It is just nice that we’re able to give back in an area that we ourselves enjoy so much.”
Mr. Stent came to Atlanta from his native San Francisco through a circuitous route. He graduated from Yale University in 1961, and then served in Vietnam as a fighter pilot for the U.S. Navy. Upon his return from the war, he attained his master of business administration from Harvard University in 1968.
But it was his desire to continue flying that finally brought Mr. Stent to Atlanta when, in 1970, he became a commercial airline pilot for Delta Air Lines, which has its headquarters there.
He retired from Delta in 1997 and now often puts in a full workweek at the High Museum. During the height of the capital campaign, he says, he often found himself toiling on weekends too.
“Fund raising is very hard work,” he says. “I spent a lot of time in a traveling show, and there were many times when Michael and I would be out making calls after 6:30 p.m. on a Friday, and happily so. If you want to be successful, you can’t just do it on the telephone, and you can’t just do it with hope. As our campaign consultant used to say, ‘Hope cannot be a strategy.’ You don’t hope for money — you have to go out and work for it.”
PowerPoint Presentations
This capital campaign is the largest fund-raising effort that Mr. Stent has been involved with, so he says he had to learn a lot about how to solicit donations for such a major building-expansion project.
One of the biggest challenges was finding concrete ways to explain the new architecture plans to donors, he says.
“We’d show drawings and PowerPoint slides, but then we also had a model that we’d lug around in the back of the car when we went calling on people,” he says. “It was necessary to have those tools so that we could translate the concept into reality for people.”
In his fund-raising role, Mr. Stent has gone above and beyond the call of duty, says Mr. Shapiro.
As an example, he describes one recent visit that he and Mr. Stent made to Jackson, Wyo., to talk with an Atlanta native who keeps a second home and an extensive personal art collection there.
“Having the chairman of the board and the director of the museum make a special trip to visit this one individual sends a pretty powerful message,” says Mr. Shapiro. “The fact that Terry is able to speak with enthusiasm about the projects we’re doing both as an art collector, and as a major seven-figure donor himself, is very persuasive.”
As it turns out, that visit has yet to elicit a gift. But in fund raising, he says, patience is a virtue.
“It takes a good 18 months to develop a good, secure relationship with someone before you will ever see a significant return on that time and energy,” Mr. Stent says. “It doesn’t happen overnight. Fund raising is a process.”
Keeping Promises
To that end, Mr. Stent advises nonprofit organizations that rely on volunteers to raise money to make sure that the lines of communication are kept wide open.
“It is very important for the staff and volunteers to keep each other informed about who has said what, when, and how to Mr. and Mrs. X,” he says. “You never want a donor to say, ‘Didn’t someone from your team talk to me about the same thing last week?’”
Similarly, he says, if a volunteer makes a promise to a donor — even something as simple as promising to send a follow-up brochure — that information needs to be transmitted to the right parties, so that the task can be completed.
“Promises are seldom forgotten by potential benefactors, and following up appropriately will build credibility,” he says.
Mr. Stent also advises that organizations ascertain as soon as possible whether their volunteers have any qualms about soliciting donations.
“I admired greatly those volunteers who would tell me right away that they just don’t like asking others for money,” he says. “That information was very helpful because I knew right away what groups not to put them in and could find other ways for them to be effective.”
In addition to his volunteer efforts on behalf of the High Museum and the Woodruff Arts Center, Mr. Stent is on the Board of Commissioners for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, in Washington, where he has previously served as chairman.
Mr. Stent also volunteers as a pilot for a charity called Angel Flight of Georgia, which provides emergency air transportation for people in need.
He has transported a child with severe combined immunodeficiency — commonly called “bubble baby syndrome” — to San Francisco to receive medical attention and, most recently, airlifted Hurricane Katrina survivors from New Orleans and Houston, reuniting them with family members in other parts of the country.
In recognition of his leadership at the High Museum, the institution has renamed its original building the Stent Family Wing.
Mr. Stent says that he hopes the honor will inspire his two children and six grandchildren to get involved in their own philanthropic efforts.
“I am humbled by it, to be sure,” he says. “But perhaps going forward it can provide an example for the generations that will come behind me to step up to the plate and help out where they can to return something back to this marvelous community that we belong to.”
