One of the best ways donors can preserve their intentions is to make their intentions as explicit as possible. The more a donor says about his ideas and passions, the harder it is for his successors to violate donor intent. In his memoir "Kick Up Some Dust." Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home...
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Marcus also has advice for prospective grantees. His basic lesson: Don’t waste his time by pretending the “chat” you came to the Marcus Foundation for is anything less than a fundraising pitch.
If you have a meeting with Marcus Foundation staff, he writes, “Don’t lie about your visit. Don’t act like you are just ‘in the neighborhood.’ Be bold and explain what you need and why. Success depends on making your intentions clear. Otherwise, nobody will trust you.”
His case study of bad fundraising is Rutgers. Shortly after Marcus co-founded Home Depot, he received a call from the president of Rutgers inviting him to give a speech to the business school. “But it became really obvious that he wanted me to donate millions to name a building,” Marcus writes.
Marcus explains that the Rutgers president should have let him give the speech, invited Marcus to meet members of the Rutgers board, and then gradually build a connection that would lead to a donation over the long term. Instead, Marcus writes, the Rutgers president “pulled a bait-and switch,” and the deception made sure that the Marcus Foundation checkbook would remain firmly closed to Rutgers University.
“I had two degrees from Rutgers and would likely have become an enthusiastic donor,” Marcus writes. “I was the very definition of low-hanging fruit.”
“I have donated millions to colleges and universities all over the United States for the past 30 years—Johns Hopkins, Emory, Case Western Reserve, and Duke. Note that Rutgers is not on the list.”