When $25,000 Was Insignificant

If charities in Los Angeles are suffering their own recession, one big reason is their failure in the late 1980s to think through the future of their catering to newfound newly rich donors, trustees and board members: the real-estate speculators and Wall Street traders.

Now, as charitable institutions are having their budgets reduced dramatically, the names of ‘80s donors are coming off gallery and hospital walls and charity boards. But who will replace them? In a July 20 Times article about this dilemma, the answer was, bring diversity to the charity scene. But how to mix together wealthy Mexican Americans, Taiwanese immigrants and African Americans?

My own experience as a newcomer to Los Angeles is instructive.

Back in 1987, I could not get the most prestigious hospital in Los Angeles to take my donation seriously. In several meetings with the vice president of the hospital, I expressed my desire to give money in the hope that one of the hospital’s guilds would acknowledge and include my name in their group. He faintly listened. Then, one morning, hospital’s public-relations person called me to say, “Your contribution is insignificant to us.”

Indeed, $25,000 was not all that much. Most of the hospital’s gifts were $1 million and up. The donors’ wall and its board of directors were peppered with big name (but never-give-money) celebrities, real-estate moguls and junk-bond kings.

In February, 1993, I lunched with an ‘80s acquaintance who is now only a remnant of that golden era. Six years earlier, I could not have gotten her for lunch. But in 1993, she was no longer running from one charity board meeting to another or entertaining in her Beverly Hills mansion.

We talked about my hospital encounter and why I had been refused admission into her social circle. At the time, the hospital was (and still is) reconstructing its committee boards, governing boards and women’s boards. On that day in 1993, she told me: “Your $25,000 donation will be most welcome now, but your address is still a problem.” (I own a small condominium in Century City, not the usual showy million-dollar-plus home her group enjoys--or, rather, enjoyed.)

L.A. charities might ask themselves: Was chasing the new money/big money people while losing touch with smaller donors worth it? Their insatiable appetite for donors rich in mansions, cars, art collections, jewels and Armanis has now placed charitable institutions in a precarious position. The record of mansion foreclosures in Los Angeles and in Beverly Hills is staggering.

Bankruptcies of gilt-edged donors are continuing, and the shattered fund-raisers are working overtime to make up the losses of unfilled ‘80s pledges. They’ve had to drop down a tier to seek out new donors. I have one friend who receives on average 14 calls an evening soliciting donations.

My initial inquiry into this maze was to discover why my charitable offers were turned down in the 1980s.

Overuse of such words as diversity and ethnic to explain why Los Angeles lags behind the nation in charitable giving ignores the real problem: exclusion. Your address isn’t north of Sunset. Your $25,000 is “insignificant.”

We need charitable donors. When giving fails, programs stop. It is that simple.

Fund-raisers will have to look more closely at the public and for smaller amounts in donations.

One of the greatest challenges for 1995 will be to persuade the children of “old money” to fulfill the mission of their parents’ charities. These 40- and 50-year-olds, who sat out some of the decadence of the 1980s, need to be nurtured into thinking that charitable giving is important.

Herbert Carter, president of the United Way, asks, “How do you get people to understand that the things they wish for themselves can’t be secured if other people don’t have a basic quality of life?” It is a difficult question to answer. However, getting back to the solid foundation of why money is given to charities--to serve the public institution, not the egos of its Escada-ensembled donors--may be easier as we enter the year 2000.