Retiring Leader of Mentor Charity Looks Ahead

After 30 years of leading charities, Allan Luks figures it’s time to move on to a new challenge.

Just don’t call it retirement. Mr. Luks, who is leaving the top job at Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City, prefers to think of it as “re-potting” time.

After all, isn’t that what happens when a mature and thriving plant outgrows the old pot?

“I don’t know what the new pot will look like, but I like the idea,” says Mr. Luks, 65. “I wanted to have one more chance to have a major impact on society.”

Many would argue he’s already done that.

In 18 years at the helm of the nation’s first organization designed to provide mentors to children, he helped push the State of New York to pass a law giving mentoring programs access to criminal-background checks handled through the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services.

He also worked with Fordham University to create a groundbreaking, semester-long program that has provided formal training to mentor supervisors from hundreds of nonprofit organizations since its founding in 1998.

Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City had a budget of less than $1-million and was running a deficit when Mr. Luks arrived, says Chuck Posternak, a board member of the charity for four decades. Now the organization’s budget is more than $10-million, and it is branching out to attack a variety of social problems, such as the challenges facing immigrant youths and teenage mothers. Mr. Posternak says Mr. Luks’s passion for helping children, and his high-energy personal style, have been key to driving that growth.

“His incredible spirit just resonates through everything he does,” Mr. Posternak says. “He just has this uncompromising conviction that one person can change the world for the better.”

Before coming to Big Brothers Big Sisters, Mr. Luks served as executive director of the Alcoholism Council of New York. There, he helped lead the fight for an antidiscrimination law protecting recovered alcoholics, and pushed for a law requiring the display of posters warning of the dangers of drinking during pregnancy. (Both efforts were successful.)

He’s also the author of four books, the last of which, The Healing Power of Doing Good, is credited with putting the term “helper’s high” in the nonprofit lexicon.

Despite all that, Mr. Luks says he has plenty more work to do. By the time he finishes his last day at Big Brothers Big Sisters on June 30, he hopes to have lined up a new challenge that lets him apply his three decades of experience to what he believes to be philanthropy’s defining challenge: how to keep donors and volunteers engaged when a declining economy leaves them less inclined to give their time and money to charitable causes.

Mr. Luks cites books such as Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone in asserting that Americans seem to be losing their sense of social cohesion, the belief that the problems facing them are shared — and surmountable if people band together to attack them. He says he sees less of that now than in the 1960s and 1970s, when his fellow law-school students still routinely passed up high-paying jobs at law firms to work for charities.

“The cost of living is so much higher. The cost of student loans is so much higher,” he says. “You don’t look around and see your friends and colleagues going off and working in charities. You don’t see a huge social cry to go out and do it.”

That diminished sense of civic engagement may prove especially troublesome for groups such as Big Brothers Big Sisters, which rely so heavily on volunteers.

He says Big Brothers Big Sisters recently commissioned a survey of volunteers in which 30 percent said they had less time to volunteer than they did before September 11, 2001.

Mr. Luks fears organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters might have to make do with fewer volunteers or find a new approach if current trends persist.

“Can we make Americans realize that the way to feel good in a stressful time is not to retreat into yourself but to connect with others?” he asks. “I want to be a part of reversing this.”

On July 1, Michael Corriero, a juvenile-court judge and longtime trustee of Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City, will take over as executive director. Mr. Luks will stay on part time as a senior adviser to help with the transition; the full-time job he is leaving pays $240,000.

He says he is talking with several organizations about projects that could produce his next adventure, but the discussions are still just preliminary. He feels strongly that nonprofit leaders his age shouldn’t take the wealth of knowledge they’ve gathered and stroll off into retirement with it. That knowledge should be spread as widely as possible, for as long as possible.

“I’m leaving a job I like very much to take one last shot at that idea,” he says.

In an interview, Mr. Luks discussed his career and future plans.

What do you hope to be remembered for?

Helping the organization to recognize that its responsibility is to lead the field, not just judge itself by its own services. For example, this led to our statewide leadership, which produced passage of the New York State Safe Mentoring Act, and our creation of a graduate-level training center to train new mentoring programs, which also will compete with us for money and volunteers.

What’s the one project you wish you could do over and why?

We established a program to help Arab-American youth, which also would hopefully reduce tension toward Arab-Americans. However, the Arab-American families became uneasy and told their local community agency not to partner with us. I should have personally pushed more to make this program happen.

How has the challenge of getting mentors for children changed over the years?

The difficulty of getting mentors hasn’t changed. If anything, it is more difficult as Americans today are more nervous about their jobs, money, and free time. The challenge is to get through this thinking and show Americans that helping others is a way to feel good about themselves at a time of stress.

What’s the biggest problem needing attention in the philanthropic world today?

Getting Americans to realize that their future — safety, the taxes they pay, quality of schools — is linked to addressing social problems. People need to feel that not contributing and being involved directly hurts their children. We apologize for asking for funding instead of reminding Americans that they chose this system — compared to Europe and Scandinavia, which have higher taxes — that depends on philanthropy and volunteering to compensate for our lower taxes.

You coined the term “helper’s high.” What’s the best “helper’s high” you’ve ever received?

Just as a jogger continually experiences the “runner’s high,” I continually experience “helper’s high,” a real physical uplift, whenever I personally help others for a sustained period.