November 28, 2010 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Sometimes the best way for small charities to raise money from a gala or other event is to let another group handle all the arrangements. That’s the lesson from a Chicago event that, in only its second year, raised more than $1-million in November for local children’s groups.
The event copies one in New York—it rounds up nationally known financial experts who volunteer to give people advice; the speakers rotate and each give investment tips for 15 minutes during a four-hour session.
The reason the new event has achieved success so quickly is that it is run by Invest for Kids, a separate nonprofit group set up solely to make the evening work. Its two co-founders are Ronald Levin, a managing director at Goldman Sachs’ Chicago office, and Ben Kovler, who runs the Blum-Kovler Foundation, a family philanthropy, also in Chicago.
The New York event raises money to fight cancer, but Invest for Kids decided to help children’s charities with budgets of less than $2-million.
From the start, the event was intended to help a varying group of small, local charities each year, says Mr. Kovler. “It is really stunning to walk into these organizations and see how many kids they are helping with just four people,” he says. “It is not really our focus to get behind one group for $1-million. That could disappear into a big budget.”
Invest for Kids absorbs all of the costs of putting on the investment event, this year about $65,000. Most of the speakers, nationally known investors such as Bill Ackman, Meredith Whitney, and Sam Zell, cover their own costs to travel to the event, Mr. Kovler says.
To attend, people pay $1,000 per ticket, or $500 for people age 35 and younger. In its first year, the event collected $800,000 after expenses from 500 ticket buyers. This year’s gathering was moved to a larger space, drawing a crowd of more than 700 people whose gifts will benefit seven children’s charities.
One of them is Snow City Arts, which provides accredited arts education to children who are hospitalized and forced to miss school. This year’s donation from Invest for Kids, close to $150,000, equals a big chunk of the charity’s $700,000 annual budget, says its executive director, Paul Sznewajs “This is the most well-conceived fund-raising partnership we have come across in some time.”
