Baltimore Jewish Federation Leader’s Strategy: Getting to Know You

Darrell Friedman, president of The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, is the unofficial philanthropic guru to this city’s top Jewish families. He spends hour upon hour each week advising many of Baltimore’s biggest donors how best to devote their money to charitable purposes in the United States and in Israel — but not just through his organization.

A former insurance salesmen with a master’s degree in social work, Mr. Friedman, 55, has overseen a flourishing fund-raising effort during his 11 years as chief executive of the federation. The organization’s annual fund-raising drive grew by more than 10 per cent from 1991 to 1996, to $24.1-million, while other campaigns in the nation’s big cities dropped by an average of 2 per cent during the same period.

What’s more, the federation — which raises and distributes money to social services and numerous Jewish causes in Baltimore and overseas — has built philanthropic reserves of more than $310-million during Mr. Friedman’s tenure. That is more than double the amount held by the federation before he took charge.

Over all, the organization reported that it took in $50-million in private support last year, a 79-per-cent increase that placed it at No. 154 on the Philanthropy 400.

A large part of that increase was the result of accounting changes related to the implementation of Financial Accounting Standards Board rules. In 1996, The Associated’s federal informational tax return reflected contributions and pledges from two campaigns, greatly inflating the total.

But apart from the extraordinary circumstances of last year’s financial report, Baltimore’s Jewish federation has been successful year after year largely because of the way its top executive works with wealthy philanthropists.

Unlike most chief executives of Jewish federations, who tend to devote most of their hours to figuring out how to make their annual campaigns more lucrative and how to distribute the money raised by the federation, Mr. Friedman delegates most of those duties to others. Instead, he says, he spends most of his time getting to know and advising many of the wealthiest Jewish families in the Baltimore area.

”I am not involved at all in the day-to-day micro issues of this federation,’’ says Mr. Friedman. Those duties are handled by the federation’s chief operating officer, Richard Jacobs.

Freed from day-to-day demands, Mr. Friedman estimates that he spends 80 per cent of his time with wealthy donors, many of whom wind up contributing to the federation. ”I work with these families, these individuals, to help them realize their philanthropic aspirations,’’ he says. ”I am right there with them. I am their adviser, their confidant. I know them intimately.’’

One of the key relationships he established was with Harry Weinberg, a poorly educated Hungarian-Jewish immigrant who became a Baltimore real-estate mogul. Mr. Friedman invested a lot of time gaining the trust of Mr. Weinberg, who died in 1990, leaving a foundation worth approximately $1-billion.

That investment paid off, for both Mr. Friedman and the federation. The Harry and Jennette Weinberg Foundation gives $2-million directly to the federation each year.

The friendship with Mr. Weinberg and the trustees of his fund also proved to be a critical link for Mr. Friedman to some of the wealthiest families in Baltimore.

”The relationship he developed with Harry Weinberg placed him in a wonderful position to establish similar relationships with other foundations,’’ says Sanford R. Cardin, a Baltimore native who is executive director of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation in Tulsa. ”He convinced Harry that he was an honest broker.’’

Mr. Friedman continues to work closely with the Weinberg Foundation, both on its grant making in the United States and overseas. For example, when trustees of the Weinberg foundation go to Israel, Mr. Friedman often accompanies them. Before the trips, Mr. Friedman and federation staff members make all of the arrangements to meet with Israeli social workers, program administrators, and policy makers. ”He almost always takes care of the logistics of dealing with the various agencies overseas, so we don’t have to go through the detail work,’’ says Bernard Siegel, who was Mr. Weinberg’s accountant and is now president of the Weinberg fund.

Last year, Mr. Friedman accompanied a trustee of the Weinberg fund and the executive director of the Joseph Meyerhoff Family Charitable Funds, another Baltimore foundation, on a trip to Romania. His visit helped the foundations shape their grant making in the country and led them to pay for equipment that would enable ophthalmologists to perform cataract operations, and to help Jewish groups gain access to the Internet.

Mr. Friedman’s close ties to Baltimore’s prominent wealthy Jews is seen by many here as the key reason the federation has seen a bounty of multimillion-dollar donations. In Baltimore, the 30 largest donations to the federation’s annual drive account for 45 per cent of all dollars raised, compared with about 15 per cent at most of the nation’s other federations.

Fund raisers for Jewish federations and other charities have raised questions about Mr. Friedman’s approach, wondering if it is necessary or appropriate for him to become so deeply engaged in the lives of donors. To some, Mr. Friedman’s actions seem nothing more than a ploy to make himself so visible that donors will want to give to the federation, even if he never makes a direct pitch.

But some leading Jewish fund raisers say that other federation executives should adopt Mr. Friedman’s approach. ”My advice to all of them is they should follow Darrell’s lead,’’ says Brian Lurie, former executive vice president of the United Jewish Appeal, which helps organize fund raising activities and funnels nearly half of the federation campaign receipts to Israel each year. ”If you don’t you are kidding yourself, because the bottom line is raising dollars for Jewish needs,’’ says Mr. Lurie, who has run the San Francisco Jewish Museum since he left the United Jewish Appeal last year.

Mr. Friedman deflects any criticism of his personal approach, saying that he is genuinely interested in the lives of his organization’s supporters and that his many friendships are not simply a calculated way to raise more dollars. ”If it was just about fund raising, I wouldn’t do this,’’ he says about his philanthropic advisory duties. ”I couldn’t live with myself.’’

A great passion for his heritage also motivates Mr. Friedman to go beyond traditional philanthropy to advance other Jewish causes.

A case in point is his effort to find a way to encourage Americans to invest in Israel.

As Israel has matured and become economically strong enough to meet many of its own social-service needs, many American donors — as well as many Israelis — have begun to question whether Israel still needs the millions of charitable donations from American Jews that it receives every year. Some Jewish federations have cut the amount they have sent overseas, but very few have done much else to help Israelis become less dependent on American money.

In Baltimore, Mr. Friedman helped his federation found the Maryland Israel Development Center four years ago to foster business deals between companies in Maryland and Israel. The program operated under federation auspices for four years, but it is now a separate non-profit group that is financed largely by the federation. The State of Maryland provides office space at no charge, and the program is also supported by the government of Israel.

In addition to helping donors deal with issues that are not directly related to the Jewish federation or its annual fund-raising campaign, Mr. Friedman has also helped many wealthy people set up special endowments within the federation. Nationwide, many donors have become increasingly interested in setting up such reserves — last year those reserves received $757-million compared to the $789-million taken in nationwide by the annual campaigns run by Jewish federations.

Mr. Friedman’s boundless enthusiasm for his heritage is one of the qualities that has helped influence so many people to support the same causes he does.

When he visited the small town of Iasi in Romania as part of his grant-making tour with representatives of the Weinberg and Meyerhoff foundations, he visited a Jewish community center where he was served a steaming plate of varanakas, a dumpling that he often ate as a child growing up in San Francisco.

The dumplings were so extraordinary, recalls George Hess, executive director of the Meyerhoff funds, that Mr. Friedman declared to his hosts that he had the feeling that his grandmother had been raised from the dead to prepare them.

His hosts rushed to the kitchen to bring out the tiny woman who had prepared the dumplings, and when she heard the effusive praise translated for her, she beamed a broad, gold-toothed grin.

For Mr. Friedman, that moment was no doubt worth far more than a million-dollar pledge.