Leadership Is Key in Raising Money

To the Editor:

It was fascinating to read Richard L. Moyers’s insightful piece (“‘Non-Profit’ Label Limits Charities’ Effectiveness,” My View, October 16) only to read two pages further Gil Mangels’s letter reviling big salaries for non-profit C.E.O.’s (“Big Non-Profit Salaries Are Demoralizing,” Letters to the Editor, October 16).

Mr. Mangels’s museum sounds exactly like one of the organizations for which, as Mr. Moyers suggested, “low salaries, shoestring budgets, and obsolete equipment are badges of honor” and whose personnel “equate low overhead with effectiveness” and lack of resources as an “excuse for poor performance.”

As a 20-year development veteran with experience in museum fund raising and administration, I have to wonder why a 13-year-old museum with “the largest collection of artifacts on permanent display in Montana” has failed to obtain more than $50,000 in grant money. I am also given pause at the statement that the museum’s board receives no compensation. Good heavens, I can’t think of a 501(c)(3) museum that does pay its board members.

Mr. Mangels is unhappy that his museum is having trouble finding grant support for its expansion project, yet an $80,000 capital project is not really an overwhelming goal in 1997 — if the plans are sound. I’ve assisted very small church congregations in Hawaii achieve much larger goals, in spite of a difficult economy and the many limitations that corporations and foundations place on gift giving to religious entities.

Thriving non-profits have top-notch leadership. Even several hundred thousand hours of volunteered labor is no substitute for a visionary executive who knows how to crystallize a group’s mission, create and promote substantive programs, attract skilled and contributing board members, shape institutional image, inspire donors, and manage.

Either those connected with the Miracle of America Museum don’t understand how fund raising is done in museums, or the museum’s mission, image, and management is so weak that foundations and other donors are reluctant to take a chance. Maybe potential donors are uneasy giving to a museum already more than a decade old that still has no paid staff. Maybe potential donors wonder if the organizational mission is preservation and interpretation of history or providing work experience for various segments of the community. I have a hunch that Miracle of America’s failure to attract adequate funding is not because a bunch of highly successful non-profits located elsewhere see fit to pay their executives competitive salaries

Patricia R. Bjorling
Development and Planned-Giving Consultant
Kailua, Hawaii