Persistence Pays Off for CARE Fund Raiser

No. 60

By Lauren Kafka

In 1986, when Marshall Burke applied for his first job at CARE, he received

more than a polite rejection letter from the international relief group. He received three. But his patience and his persistence turned out to be the qualities that eventually led him to a top job at the charity — and a key role in helping CARE rise from No. 92 on the Philanthropy 400 last year to No. 60 this year.

Soon after his fourth attempt to get a job at the organization, Mr. Burke got a call from CARE at 5:30 p.m. on a Friday.

During the phone interview, he explained that he and a partner were generating more than a million dollars a year in gross revenue as co-owners of the Shanty Bar & Grill, a jazz bar in Tucson, and that he had been seeking charitable contributions as chairman of the Tucson AIDS Project and chairman of the Tucson Jazz Society.

He also mentioned that he had a Ph.D. in ecology, and that he had gained some international experience while studying mammals in Tunisia during a Smithsonian research project.

His Tunisia trip also marked the first time he saw abject poverty and hopelessness. The experience helped him realize he had a passionate desire to help the needy. So did watching friends with AIDS in the 1970s and 1980s face discrimination and, eventually, death.

Both of those experiences inspired Mr. Burke to redirect a career that was originally focused on academe — when he wasn’t tending bar.

The CARE interviewer was impressed enough with his answers that the organization flew him to New York for more interviews, and soon offered him a job as assistant country director, the No. 2 position at the CARE office in Niger, a country in western Africa.

“The salary they offered was less than I was paying in taxes,” he says. Even so, Mr. Burke decided to give up his jazz bar after he completed his two-and-a-half-year stint in Niger, and has been working at CARE ever since.

In Africa, he directed CARE’s efforts to improve environmental conditions, started the charity’s first HIV and AIDS projects, and introduced women’s credit and banking programs in Niger, Mali, Togo, and Sierra Leone.

Communication Skills

Like all of the top executives at CARE offices worldwide, Mr. Burke, 53, had to devote energy throughout his career to helping the charity raise money and obtain other resources for its work.

His communication skills attracted the attention of Marilyn Grist, who saw him present information to potential donors about a reforestation project in sub-Saharan Africa. At the time, Ms. Grist oversaw the charity’s fund-raising work as senior vice president for external relations, and she was impressed by the way Mr. Burke made information about CARE’s programs as vivid as possible for donors who might never get a chance to see them firsthand.

Mr. Burke helped donors appreciate both the demands and the rewards of the project, Ms. Grist recalls, by explaining how CARE’s work would enable people to get firewood, which would make it easier for them to cook food. If their diets were more nutritionally balanced, he told the potential donors, children would become healthier and probably would do better in school, which would give them more educational opportunities.

‘Word Pictures’

Ms. Grist, who is now an independent marketing and development consultant, says she believes the ability to make a project come alive for a donor is more important than any other fund-raising skill. So even though she had the option of hiring people with more experience, she recruited Mr. Burke when she had an opening to oversee CARE’s fund raising in the southeastern United States, a job he began in 1998.

Ms. Grist’s instincts about Mr. Burke’s ability to relate to donors have proved to be accurate.

“He can paint beautiful word pictures,” says Ann Webb, an Atlanta resident who has been a CARE volunteer and donor for the past decade. “He has an enthusiasm that just draws people in. He’s seen emergency assistance. He’s been in refugee camps. He’s been involved in peaceful projects when the agency goes into villages to show people how to support themselves. He has the most personable approach of any fund raiser I’ve ever known.”

Mr. Burke, who had spent a decade working in 47 of the 72 countries where CARE operates by the time he started his first position at CARE’s Atlanta headquarters, says he was ready to put down some roots. He also thought fund raising offered him a great opportunity to use his skills and grow professionally within the organization. In 2000, he took on his current position, vice president of private support, where he now oversees a 49-person staff that last year raised $187.5-million, $53-million more than in 2002.

$28.4-Million Bequest

A key part of last year’s gain was a bequest of $28.4-million from Priscilla Bullitt Collins, a former chairwoman of King Broadcasting, and Mr. Burke says he hopes the charity will raise more big gifts as he and his colleagues work to carry out his No. 1 priority: building long-term relationships with its donors, large or small.

Ms. Collins had been supporting the organization for 20 years, starting with a gift of $500 in 1984. In recent years, she had increased that to $1-million a year.

“One of our fund raisers in Seattle had the sense to develop the relationship,” Mr. Burke says. “We have a total focus here on relationship development. Now we’re starting to see people who are regularly giving six figures annually. We’re seeing almost every year at least one million-dollar gift come over the threshhold.”

CARE has had much success with its smaller-sum donors as well. Sixty-two percent of the charity’s donors make repeat gifts.

However, Mr. Burke believes relationships with such donors could be bolstered, and he is focusing on ways to persuade loyal direct-mail donors who have significant wealth to make bequests or other types of planned gifts. Mr. Burke says in recent years he has begun to monitor the number of visits fund raisers make to donors and evaluates their performance in part on how many times they meet with donors.

The organization has also taken steps to make it easier for fund raisers in different parts of the country to share information about people who have the potential to make big gifts, and it is stepping up efforts to train all of its fund raisers in what works best in building bonds with potential donors.

“We should, at the very least, be visiting these people and saying, ‘I’m here just to thank you,’” he says. “It’s very easy to send you an e-mail. It’s very easy to write you a letter. It’s a little harder to pick up the phone, but it’s really hard to get out of the office to set up the appointment and begin that relationship. That takes tremendous courage.”

Mr. Burke cites courage as one of the most important traits he looks for in fund raisers he recruits. The others are patience and the passionate belief that poverty can eventually be eradicated.

“All of our fund raisers have that fire, certainly the ones I’ve recruited do,” he says. “And if you really want to be a successful fund raiser you need to make sure that the agency you work for really turns you on, that you believe in what they’re doing.”

Donor Trips

Perhaps because Mr. Burke has seen firsthand the difference CARE has made in the lives of people in developing countries, he believes that bringing those experiences to as many donors as possible will be the key to the charity’s fund-raising success.

The charity sends some of its biggest donors — those who CARE believes have the potential to give a six-figure gift — abroad to learn about the organization’s work. Donors pay for the trip, and they typically spend 7 to 10 days learning about programs the charity operates, such as those that promote conservation, reduce the spread of HIV and AIDS, or provide small loans to women who are trying to start businesses.

“There’s nothing that will change a donor’s perspective on their collective view like going to Calcutta and seeing what it means to work with the most marginalized of women or what it means to be setting up schools for orphans,” says Mr. Burke. “There’s nothing more bonding than an overseas trip.”

But not all donors can take the time to go abroad. Mr. Burke and his colleagues also have invited some of the charity’s biggest donors to its Atlanta headquarters to spend a day discussing CARE’s activities with various program people and then gather for dinner with Peter Bell, CARE’s chief executive. “These are very intimate conversations,” says Mr. Burke, “with no PowerPoint presentations allowed.”

In addition, CARE has also been bringing its overseas workers and beneficiaries of its programs to meet with donors throughout the United States. Last year, an Afghan woman, Nadia Hashimi, made a visit that prompted donations of more than $150,000, Mr. Burke says. Ms. Hashimi fled Afghanistan and lived in a refugee camp in Pakistan before returning to her native country to participate in an education program run by CARE, which helps young girls catch up for time lost under the Taliban rule. She later went to work in CARE’s office in Kabul and is now studying public health at a college in California.

The key for CARE to continue increasing its giving, says Mr. Burke, is to make sure the organization is listening to donors and showing them how their gifts are making a difference.

“The bond that comes with the relationship deepens their commitment and greatly increases their giving,” he says. “When donors say ‘we,’ as in ‘What are we doing in Haiti?’ you have successfully built the relationship and made them a member of CARE. And they are CARE’s for life.”

THE MAKING OF A TOP FUND RAISER

Marshall Burke, vice president of private support at CARE

EDUCATION: Earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and systems ecology at the University of Arizona; a master’s degree in environmental studies at the University of Dijon, in France; and a Ph.D. in ecology at the University of Arizona.

YEARS IN FUND RAISING: Six years at CARE, preceded by four jobs at CARE in which he ran programs and raised money; he also held volunteer fund-raiser jobs for 14 years before joining CARE.

PREVIOUS EMPLOYMENT: Owner and bartender of the Shanty Bar & Grill (Tucson), lecturer at the University of Arizona, and scientific researcher at UNESCO.

PREVIOUS VOLUNTEER ROLES: Chairman of the board of the Tucson Jazz Society, founder and chairman of the Tucson AIDS Project, member of the board of Tucson Business Committee for the Arts, and founder and member of the board of the Shanti Foundation, a charity in Tucson that helps people with AIDS.

CHARITABLE INTERESTS: Supports the American Cancer Society, Atlanta Union Mission (homeless shelter), Cherry Log Disciples of Christ Church (Ellijay, Ga.), Georgia Forest Watch (Ellijay), Human Rights Campaign, University of Arizona, and others.

MOST IMPORTANT LESSON LEARNED: “If you are passionate about the mission and vision of your organization, it is easy to ask others to contribute — to do their part in making the world a better place.”