Reading Is Fundamental to NYU Fund Raiser

Karen Smith, New York University’s director of major gifts, calls herself one of Naomi Levine’s

“fund-raising children,” and says she learned several major lessons from her mentor, the university’s chief fund raiser for more than two decades. The first: Read The New York Times every day.

“You cannot hope to be a successful fund raiser unless you are an informed citizen who has interesting topics of conversation at your command,” she says she learned from Mrs. Levine, who retired in February and is now teaching courses and helping to expand an education program at NYU for fund raisers.

Indeed, reading broadly is something Mrs. Levine urges all young fund raisers to do. But she emphasizes that it is not so important to read fund-raising manuals or books related to the mission of the organization where they work, but rather, it is important to read widely about a broad array of topics.

Her own reading regimen includes at least three daily newspapers, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, along with other magazines such as The Economist and The New Yorker. She also reads The New York Observer, a weekly that offers a feisty look at the city’s movers and shakers.

Each week, she also tries to read at least two to three books. Most recently, she has been drawn to books about the conflict in the Middle East.

Among the selections recently on her bedside table are The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years, by Bernard Lewis; Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, by Michael B. Oren; and A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, by David Fromkin.

She has also recently asked the university’s economics department to recommend books on corporate governance and accounting, and on the stock market, since these are topics she thinks are on donors’ minds these days.

“If I were doing a lot of fund raising now, I would certainly be reading up on that,” she says.

History and Shakespeare

Historical books are always of interest to her, and among her recent selections have been April 1865: The Month That Saved America, by Jay Winik; Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert A. Caro; and Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, by James Carroll.

Mrs. Levine, who is 79, says she also tries to read at least one Shakespeare play each year — her current selection is Hamlet — and books about his plays. “I like to see that my mind functions properly, so I try to memorize parts of the plays that are particularly moving.”

British Love Triangle

Mrs. Levine herself is a published author. In 1991, she wrote Politics, Religion and Love, a historical book about a love triangle involving Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, of Britain, in the early 1900s. She wrote the book over the course of five years in her spare time, doing research at the University of Oxford and NYU’s library.

“Once I got started, I was just carried away with original research,” she said. She was also drawn to anything related to English history in the early 20th century, and “anything on Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, or Virginia Woolf.”

“Now what’s that got to do with fund raising?” she muses. “I don’t know.”

Despite the long list of hefty books she tackles regularly, Mrs. Levine is not without her soft spots for a good mystery now and then, with a particular fondness for Agatha Christie and books that feature the characters Perry Mason and Nero Wolfe. “I read mystery stories when I have nothing better to do,” she says. “Some people love the movies. I love to read very, very much.”