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| Best Practices: Philanthropy |
Fade to Black?
Randy B. Hecht
11/01/2007
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Peter D. Kiernan was already
badly overscheduled when Dana Reeve called him on March 4, 2006, to ask him to
meet with her. "Sure, how’s next week?" he recalls asking. "And she said, ‘Well,
I’d prefer today.’" So he went to her room at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer
Center in New York, where she was undergoing treatment for lung cancer. She
looked ill; in fact, that evening Kiernan told his wife he feared the flowers he
had brought Reeve would outlast her. In their meeting, she said she needed to
devote all of her energy to battling the disease, and she asked Kiernan, who was
board vice chairman of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, if he would
take over her role as chairman of the board. Less than 48 hours later, Reeve had
passed away.
 Within just 12 hours the board met and confirmed Kiernan as the
foundation’s chairman and the man who would lead the organization beyond the
deaths of its two founders. He resigned from his presidency and partnership in
the hedge fund Cyrus Capital Partners to work full time in his new role.
Kiernan, an 18-year veteran of Goldman Sachs, was not in entirely unfamiliar
waters. Long active in philanthropy, he had served for four and a half years as
chairman of the board of the VIP-studded Robin Hood Foundation, which assists
more than 200 poverty-fighting nonprofits in New York. He also had been
cochairman of World T.E.A.M. Sports, a nonprofit best known for taking 100
disabled veterans of the Vietnam War—50 from the U.S. and 50 former Viet Cong—on
a 1,400-mile bike ride that was the subject of the documentary film,
Vietnam: Long Time Coming.
But his credentials notwithstanding, people
questioned whether the Reeve Foundation would survive without its celebrated
founders. It is a painful question that any philanthropy founded by a celebrity
or other high-profile person will have to face eventually, although most do not
have to absorb the double body blow that the Reeve Foundation took over the
course of just 18 months.
Today the foundation is in the relatively early stages of
rebranding itself for life after the Reeves. To some extent, it still relies on
its celebrity connections to carry out its mission. Actor Robin Williams is a
member of the board, and an annual gala is its single biggest source of
fundraising. (This year’s event, to be held November 12, will honor actress
Meryl Streep.) However, in a bid for its long-term survival, the organization is
consciously moving away from its Hollywood pedigree, turning the spotlight
instead toward its support of the most promising research into a cure for
paralysis, as well as therapeutic and quality of life initiatives. "We have
really strong science, in my opinion; the half-life of sympathy for Chris and
Dana Reeve is passed," Kiernan says. "There are a lot of organizations where the
celebrity passes, and two years later the thing is out of business."
Sustaining Momentum
Structured as public charity, the Reeve Foundation depends on
donations to continue its funding of scientists. It raised $15.4 million in
2004, the last year of Christopher’s life. The next year, the total grew to
$16.7 million. Following Dana’s death last year, the organization saw a slightly
more modest gain to $17 million. For the first half of 2007, the foundation
recorded more than $5 million in donations. Assistant controller Anne Homa
acknowledges that this is slightly below budget, but notes that the revenue
stream is heavily geared to the end of the year, particularly with the November
gala. And the organization is encouraged that supporters include a growing
number of major donors who never knew the Reeves.
TOP VIEW
If posterity remembers Christopher Reeve for his support of paralysis research and Gilda Radner for a chain of clubhouses that welcome
anyone with cancer, it will be thanks to the trustees who built Reeve’s foundation after his death and the friends and family who honored Radner’s final
wish. A foundation connected to an ailing celebrity can continue to do high-profile good deeds after the famous founder dies, but it takes a dedicated board and staff ready to do whatever it takes to keep the mission relevant. |
Kiernan has been pleased by the number of donors who want their
money to go into specific research areas. "What I’ve said to people of means
who have come to us is, ‘Don’t just write a check and take a table,’" he says.
"That is what I would call ‘disconnected philanthropy.’ We have increasingly
said to high-net-worth individuals, ‘Let’s search for a program or a scientist
or a quality of life initiative that really moves you, that really touches you
in the heart or in the head, or it relates to a family member that you had, and
fund that. And it doesn’t have to be with your name on it necessarily, but it
could be.’ I’m trying to encourage greater passion and connectivity between the
people we’re trying to cure and the people who are donating for that cure."
Until Reeve suffered his injury, most people regarded it as a
forgone conclusion that being paralyzed meant being paralyzed for life, Kiernan
says. "Chris began to say, ‘Well, I think that’s an obsolete assumption, and we
can raise money and do things to prove it.’" The foundation’s mission is, in
effect, to arrive at the day when it can say, "See? Chris was right."
The foundation supports research into therapies such as
locomotor training, the treatment used by Reeve to regain movement in his
fingers. While it does not work in all cases, Kiernan calls the therapy "the
most rewarding and edifying thing we are doing." It requires the patient to hang
from a set of braces and clamps that hold him in a standing position just above
a treadmill, while physical therapists "walk" him—thus sending messages to the
brain that help the body remember how to walk. "It’s hard work, but if you do it
for hours day after day, the memory returns. We’ve seen people make astonishing
progress," Kiernan says. One example he cites is Chase Ford, who at age 2
suffered paralysis from the neck down when he landed on just the wrong part of
his neck while bouncing on a couch. Now 3½, he walks with the aid of ski
pole–like aids.
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