Public Gifts, Private Donors

Giving is better than receiving, or so we are reminded, especially at this time of year. The two often are linked in modern philanthropy, where money often must come with names attached-not necessarily because the donors demand the attention.

Case in point: Publicity-eschewing philanthropists Robert Pritzker (and his brother, Jay) and Robert W. Galvin planned to quietly donate $120 million to the Illinois Institute of Technology last year. The donation was a matching grant, so the school would have to come up with another $120 million to get the Pritzker-Galvin money.

To attract the matching funds-a formidable task-school officials prevailed upon "the two Bobs," as IIT officials call their longtime trustees would give away a combined $1.5 billion. Another reason donations could be up this year is the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, which contained a new provision for the tax deductibility of charitable donations of appreciated stock. Naming or renaming in return for donations has its critics.

Some wondered whether gratitude devolved into something ignoble when Northwestern University's Dyche Stadium in Evanston was renamed Ryan Field this year. The Ryan family made the major donation to the school's fundraising drive for athletic facilities, which had a goal of $20 million.

It wasn't the Ryans' idea to wipe Dyche from the stadium's name, said Ronald D. Vanden Dorpel, vice president for development and alumni relations at Northwestern. It was the university's decision.

William A. Dyche was not a donor; he was the school's business manager, for whom the stadium was named in 1926, Vanden Dorpel said. After the Ryan's contributions, the university's board of trustees "felt it was appropriate" to rename the stadium.

"We believe that when we do receive a gift and it involves a naming of a facility, that that is a perpetual contract of sorts, and certainly a moral contract with the donor." Vanden Dorpel said.

Institutions have assumed a more aggressive role in securing donations, Vanden Dorpel said. "It is so proactive now that rarely do you have someone coming to you out of the blue saying, "I'd like to give you $10 million, but you have to name this after me." Vanden Dorpel said. "No institution is that passive."

As for changing the name on a building, Vanden Dorpel was blunt. "Nothing lasts forever," he said.

Yet, an enduring place in history or politics-sometimes out of vanity, sometimes not-is precisely Pritzker and Galvin, to allow their names to be publicized.

"We acquiesced, reluctantly," Pritzker said. "I prefer giving anonymously or at least quietly. [But] we wanted to encourage other people to give. The school pleaded with us to not make this anonymous or they'd have trouble raising more money."

With such social and psychological forces in flux, do the old ideals of charity always apply? Twelfth Century Jewish scholar Maimonides said it was more virtuous to give anonymously, and without being asked. But many would say the more visible way has earned its place and is worthy of praise-one person's largess can spur others into action.

Even stealth philanthropic strategies, of course, can be motivated by something other than modesty. Anonymity is frequently employed by well-to-do philanthropists to avoid the pleas of other charitable groups or institutions, which invariably come looking for their own pieces of the pie. Others, like Pritzker, will accept publicity only when the causes they are funding outweigh the preference for privacy.

Ego-driven concerns about mortality seem to retain their place in donating. The National Charities Information Bureau, based in New York, says most Americans donate during November and December, unless there is a disaster earlier in the year that inspires a gift. Though many are moved by the holiday spirit, perhaps some of the generosity comes from knowing that the year's opportunities for good deeds, penance and tax deductions are dwindling.

The charities bureau expects donations to be up perhaps 5 percent in 1997 over last year for various reasons: the health of the economy, higher wages, the deaths of Mother Teresa and Princess Diana and the mega-donations of moguls Ted Turner and George Soros, who have publicly stated they what is sought when some share their wealth.

Chicago lawyer and philanthropist Robert A. Clifford was one who insisted on name acknowledgment in exchange for one of his donations. After quietly supporting his alma mater DePaul University Law School for years, he gave DePaul $1 million in 1992 to endow a chair-but this time there was one condition: It had to be called the Robert A. Clifford Chair on Tort Law & Social Policy .

"I tend not to be public with my donations, but this one was deliberate because I had an agenda," Clifford said last week. "I don't think I could have accomplished quietly what I did publicly."

He is convinced his gift-with his name attached-and the subsequent tort law discussions led others to join his crusade.

"At the time the gift was made, I was very, very active-daily, hourly-in the tort-reform debate here in Illinois," said Clifford , who was president of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association when he made the gift. "It was our thinking this would lend credence to the verbiage I was using."

Despite his often-public persona, even media tycoon Turner tended to be like Clifford when it came to giving away his money. Turner appeared to have no qualms about stepping into the spotlight without a moment's hesitation when he announced in September that he was donating $1 billion to the United Nations.

Turner even pledged to raise more money by hitting up other rich people, and a keep-up-with-the-tycoons spirit might have helped his cause. There were some undesirable side effects-Turner was challenged in mid-December by Leo J. Hindery Jr., president of Tele-Communications Inc., to donate another billion dollars to education. Turner told Hindery he couldn't do everything. Challenge grants or matching gifts, like the one IIT received, apply "creative pressure," said Tom Garrow, IIT's vice president of institutional advancement.

"It says to anyone who had been considering giving to the university but was sitting on the sideline, ÔNow is the time because your money will be doubled,'" Galvin said. "Generally speaking, it's better for the organization to make very big donations public. I can say, ÔYour classmate just gave $50,000 and we'd like you to consider joining him . . . If I say, ÔI got a $50,000 gift from an anonymous donor,' you don't know who that came from. It has a less specific meaning."

Another reason an organization would want to publicize a large donation is to show that it has been deemed fit for someone's funds, which could make others feel the organization deserves their money, said Kathleen Carpenter, editor of Chicago Philanthropy magazine.

"You want people who are prominent in the community who stand up and say, "This is a good program. It's worth my million dollars. Help me support it,' "Carpenter said. "The other side is that some people do good work and don't need the publicity or visibility. They don't need it for their ego and just enjoy doing good things with their money."

Many such patrons are unmoved by the arguments in favor of publicity.

Joan Kroc, Ray Kroc's widow and heiress to the McDonald's fortune, anonymously pledged $10 million last may to victims of the North Dakota floods; her name surfaced only later and much to her chagrin.

Another who preferred philanthropic privacy was Charles Feeney, a New Jersey businessman. His 15-year history of donations - $600 million worth - was exposed only because his company was sold and the donations would have been revealed in a lawsuit over the sale Few of the recipients of Feeney's money had known his identity.

Locally, in November, the Condell Health Care Foundation of Libertyville and Victory Memorial Hospital in Waukegan each received donations of $1.2 million in negotiable stocks from one benefactor - anonymously.

Mark Foley, director of development at Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, said it was just as well that the $1.2 million his hospital received came from an anonymous source with no strings attached.

"It's always surprising when you get that kind of money from anyone, but when they want no recognition, it really makes you regenerate your belief in the goodness of people," Foley said. "It's a better thing that we are not held to naming a pavilion or a wing after someone or building something they want. They've left it up to the experts. That's a blessing in that sense."

A non-profit organization might be inclined to cater to donors even if such expressions of gratitude come at the expense of the organization's best interest, said Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy in Bethesda, Md.

"By doing it anonymously, you're avoiding them being tempted to redirect their efforts in a way to please you," Borochoff said.

Unlike some others in the fund-raising business, Foley said he doesn't necessarily rush to publicize large donations, because people might think their much smaller contribution would not make a difference.

Borochoff said many people were inspired to contribute to the flood victims in North Dakota even before they knew Kroc was behind the $10 million donation. "People do have to understand that you need the masses to support something," Borochoff said. "They need to get out of the mindset that giving is something only for the wealthy."

Linda Barbanel, a New York City-based psychotherapist and expert on the psychology of money, had a different view on the matter. She said philanthropists, large and small, have ulterior motives: to memorialize a loved one, feel power, receive public adulation or just "get that good feeling inside." "Altruism is dead," Barbanel said, "or it never existed."

Steven J. Stark is a reporter in the Lake County bureau of the Tribune