Sale of Artwork Finances Couple’s Commitment to Nursing

By Nicole Wallace

Three years ago, Donald and Barbara Jonas sold 15 pieces from their beloved collection of

modern art, including paintings by Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko, for $44.2-million, which the couple used to start a donor-advised fund.

The Jonases considered concentrating their grant making on either education or nursing. The couple had a clear connection to education. Mr. Jonas was active as a volunteer in New York City schools, helping to start a new reading program, and had served as a board member for a charter school in the Bronx.

No one in the Jonas family had ties to nursing or had a medical crisis that drove home the profession’s importance, yet the couple decided to make nursing the focus of their giving.

“We were looking for an uncrowded beach, something that we could be very deeply involved in, because that’s what we wanted to do, not just to write a check,” says Mr. Jonas, co-founder and former chairman of Lechters, a now-defunct chain of housewares stores.

He says the couple wanted to make sure that their charitable efforts didn’t get lost in a cause that already benefited from a lot of donor attention.

So far, the couple has given $5.3-million to the Jonas Center for Nursing Excellence, an organization they created to improve the quality of health care in New York City. The center finances new efforts to recruit nurses and keep them on the job, increase the ethnic and racial diversity of the city’s nurses, develop innovative new approaches to the profession, and improve working environments for nurses.

New York City, like much of the country, is in the midst of a nursing shortage that is expected to get worse in coming years. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that by 2020 the health-care industry’s need for registered nurses will exceed the number available by about one million.

The Jonases, through their donor-advised fund, give smaller amounts to projects that focus on mental health and disadvantaged children and families.

Mr. Jonas says that initially he was drawn to nursing by his sense that it was an important, but underappreciated, profession.

“I thought about nursing as being the lowest man on the totem pole as far as philanthropy is concerned and as far as the public’s knowledge of the need to support nursing,” he says.

As Mr. Jonas began to do more research and talk to nurses, he says, he was touched by their commitment to work that he believes is often overlooked.

“I’ve had visits where I walk out with tears in my eyes,” he says, “listening to these young folks devoting themselves to the public health, and no recognition whatsoever in any form.”

A Dozen Partnerships

In May 2006, the Jonas Center awarded its first round of grants to 12 collaborations between nursing schools and health-care institutions. The three-year awards ranged in size from $200,000 to $500,000.

In one project, the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center and the nursing department of the City University of New York’s Herbert H. Lehman College are working together to increase the number of Hispanic nursing students at the school and improve their rate of graduation with tutoring and mentoring programs.

The decision to require partnerships was carefully thought out, says Marilyn A. DeLuca, executive director of the Jonas Center. Too often, she says, what nurses learn in school doesn’t fully prepare them with the skills they need in real-life health-care settings.

“There is an inherent tension, so we wanted to build the relationship,” says Ms. DeLuca.

Unfortunately, as hospitals and nursing schools seek to increase nursing’s ranks, an even more serious shortage in nursing faculty members limits the number of new nurses who can be trained. The Jonas Center wants to tackle the problem head-on in its second round of grant making.

Over the next five years, the center plans to spend $2.5-million on fellowships that encourage nurses to complete their doctorates early in their careers and go into teaching. The program will provide five doctoral students with fellowships of up to $70,000 annually for four years.

In addition, the center hopes to recruit other grant makers to support 20 more students who plan to become nursing faculty members.

Initially, the center planned to award grants every three years, but the severity of the faculty shortage has sped up that timeline, says Ms. DeLuca.

“Ten years from now it’s going to be too late for nursing to quickly educate the Ph.D. faculty we need,” she says.

‘More Attentive’

The Jonases share her sense of urgency. They worry that government officials and the public don’t understand how important nurses are in the provision of quality health care and how serious the consequences of future shortages will be.

“Our politicians — Washington, Albany, New York, etc. — should be more attentive to this issue,” says Mr. Jonas. “We have a big job ahead to get that message across.”

The Jonas Center’s advisory board has a media and communications committee that is discussing the possibility of a campaign to raise awareness about the nursing shortage. Mr. Jonas says that several ideas are “cooking in our heads,” but that nothing definite has been decided.

What is clear is the Jonases’ passion for nursing and their belief that the profession deserves more respect and a greater voice in health care.

Take the example of someone who needs a liver transplant, says Mrs. Jonas.

“The doctor comes in, does the transplant, and walks out of the room,” she says. “If you’re the patient or you’re the family, the person who’s there to really give you the substantive information, the person who gives you the TLC, is the nurse.”