Seasoned Fund Raiser Trades Celebrity for New Challenge

Mitch Stoller’s career as a fund raiser nearly stalled before it got started. Two months after quitting his

elementary-school teaching job to work on fund-raising events for the Baltimore affiliate of the Easter Seals Society, he organized a casino night at a local hotel. Almost no one showed up.

“I didn’t understand getting the word out and marketing, and I didn’t engage a volunteer organization to help me,” says Mr. Stoller. “Clearly I was very naïve.”

But the group gave him another chance and Mr. Stoller proved a quick study. In the 26 years since, he has helped raise millions of dollars, through events and other means, for a series of health charities including the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, in Springfield, N.J., and the Lance Armstrong Foundation, in Austin, Tex.

Mr. Stoller, 54, now plans to use his experience to quadruple fund raising at the National Marrow Donor Program, to more than $20-million in the next five years. In the spring, he became president of the Marrow Foundation, the fund-raising arm of the Minneapolis charity, which, among other programs, maintains a registry of six million people worldwide willing to donate their bone marrow to help cure patients suffering from life-threatening blood diseases, including leukemia and lymphoma. In addition, the charity recruits umbilical-cord blood donors to help patients with the same diseases, assists some families with financial costs associated with transplants, and researches ways to make transplants more effective.

After the retirement of the Marrow Foundation’s longtime leader, Jill McGovern, the group sought someone with experience at a national organization who could get excited about the foundation’s mission, and who had a track record of significantly increasing donations, says Jeffrey M. Chell, chief executive officer of the National Marrow Donor Program, who organized the search committee.

“To say that Mitch hit this on all eight cylinders would be putting it lightly,” says Dr. Chell. “He was giving me ideas about how to raise money after knowing about the organization for just a couple of days.”

To some observers, Mr. Stoller’s new position, for which he earns $250,000, might appear a step down from his most recent job, leading the Lance Armstrong Foundation. The celebrity cyclist’s charity boasts instant name recognition and a $32-million budget, while the low-profile Marrow Foundation’s purse is currently about one-sixth that size. But Mr. Stoller, who helped quadruple donations at the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Alliance — now called First Candle, in Baltimore — relishes the chance to help a group grow.

“I’d like to look at myself as a builder, someone who tries to move things forward,” he says. “My father and grandfather were carpenters, builders. Maybe it’s something in my ancestry.”

In addition to raising money for its programs, Mr. Stoller is helping the National Marrow Donor Program in another way. By 2015, the group hopes to more than double the annual number of bone-marrow transplants, to 10,000, and is seeking to significantly increase its roster of people willing to become donors.

Mr. Stoller has already signed up.

“If I can give somebody a second chance, I want to be able to do that,” he says. “It’s important, too, to back up your words. If I am out talking to people about contributing dollars to the organization, I want to let them know I am a believer.”

In an interview, Mr. Stoller discussed his plans for the organization.

Why did you take this job?

I liked the challenge of building up an organization, and this group’s mission. Plus, my wife and I wanted to move back to the Northeast, where most of our friends and family live. While the organization is based in Minneapolis, I will work from a district office in Basking Ridge, N.J.

Is there anything you’ll miss about working at a charity with celebrity ties?

Because of the nature of Chris and Lance, because of their great advocacy for their causes, clearly there were opportunities that came about that may not come about for every organization. In the case of our foundation, people aren’t just calling us, because they don’t know the name. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t celebrities out there who won’t be involved. [Former soccer star] Mia Hamm’s brother passed away from a bone-marrow disease, and her foundation supports bone-marrow issues.

What is the Marrow Foundation’s greatest challenge?

The awareness factor is very low. I spoke to a group of business people in the Twin Cities who honestly were not aware that the National Marrow Donor Program was here. But once I told them the story of the organization, how six million people have signed up to donate part of their body to total strangers in need, they were engaged.

How will you raise the group’s profile?

I’d like to organize a sports event, possibly a relay, a “marrow-thon,” that generates income, awareness, and also attracts volunteers. At the Lance Armstrong Foundation we were able to mix our mission message with the event, where we constantly talked about cancer survivors and improving their quality of life. It wasn’t just people going out and riding a bike; it was riding a bike for a reason. I rode my bike in honor of my brother, who is a cancer survivor. That is what I’d like to do here: honor patients, honor donors, honor families that are in need of transplantation. I’m also looking into whether changing the group’s name and its logo would help increase our visibility.

Do you have any other ideas from past work experiences?

At the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Alliance, we included information about SIDS in packages of diapers sold at stores. It was a big success; we had never had any kind of national attention before. Those are the kinds of things we need to do here, where everyday people are going to see this message they are not accustomed to seeing.

How will you meet the $20-million fund-raising goal?

By this time next year my plan is to nearly double the staff members here to 10 people who will work on a variety of strategies, including direct marketing and foundation and corporate gifts.

I am a believer in Jim Collins’s philosophy — in his book Good to Great, he talks about getting the right people on the bus and the bus will take off. That is clearly something we did at the Armstrong foundation and we are going to try and do that here.

We are also planning to send more information, in newsletters and e-mails, about the group’s work to the six million people on the bone-marrow registry, in the hopes that more of them will become financial as well as physical donors.

People go to other organizations because this one hasn’t necessarily asked for help. We need to ask them to do more and give them the tools to do it. — Nicole Lewis