Chapter 9
How to Get Results
I have a reputation for being difficult to work with.
Whether it’s raising money for a cultural institution or insisting on the maximum gallery space in a new museum, I prefer to think that I keep the ultimate goal in mind, and I’m impatient with anything that gets between where we are now and where we need to be. But you can’t just roll over other people—that would be irrational. You have to try to persuade them. I’ve learned how to do it in an artfully unreasonable way, in business and in philanthropy.
It’s a lot easier to persuade if you’re talking to the right person. When I needed capital to start our homebuilding company, Edye suggested that I ask her father, Morris Lawson.
Morris was a self-made businessman. He had grown up poor, the only one of his parents’ 10 children to make it to college, where he studied chemistry. From its sturdy brick headquarters in Detroit, his business—the Morris Extract Co.—sold extracts, bitters, liqueurs, syrups, and concentrates to hospitals, schools, cafeterias, and bars.
I knew Morris was a good person to approach because we had a strong relationship, he was an experienced entrepreneur, and, most important, he had the means and motive to help. He was a keen thinker and willing to extend himself to be part of a good idea. (Everyone should have such a father-in-law.)
Edye and I liked to have dinner with her parents once a week—not only because we were fond of them, but also because neither of us knew how to cook. I gave Morris my pitch at one of our weekly dinners. I wasn’t nervous because I was convinced that my idea to start a homebuilding company would succeed. In laying out my vision, I demonstrated to Morris how much homework I had done and how well I knew the housing market. I told him why there was a demand for homes without basements, who our target customer base would be, and why it made sense to set a low price for our product. I had worked out all the numbers and sketched out what our balance sheet and our cash flow would look like—something anyone starting a new business should do. I explained that I had an experienced partner on board, Donald Kaufman, who Morris knew because Donald’s wife was Edye’s cousin.
Morris could quickly see that we had a good idea, some experience, and a lot of drive, not to mention that our success would lead to a comfortable future for his daughter. He sold some stock to give us the $12,500 we needed. It was an enormous sum at the time, and he gave it to me with no more collateral than a handshake. As it turned out, we shared not only a deep love for Edye but also a disdain for conventional wisdom.
Without that timely first investment, I probably would have had to stick to accounting for quite a while before I had enough money to start a business. In return, Don and I gave Morris some equity in the company—and that proved to be one of his most lucrative investments.
Make Sound Promises and Offer Something in Return
Many years later, when Edye and I had settled our family in Los Angeles and collecting contemporary art had become one of my private passions, I was asked to help establish the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) and become its founding chairman. Los Angeles was one of the few major American cities at the time without a contemporary art museum, despite having great art schools and a significant population of talented working artists whose output was going into collections and museums all over the globe. The museum would be essential if Los Angeles hoped to become an internationally respected center of the arts and benefit from all the tourism, arts education, and other opportunities that would come with that status.
Getting MOCA off the ground was a major test of my ability to get things done, and it’s where I learned my technique for getting results—to go to the other guy’s turf, to have a stake in the deal, and to only make promises I can keep.
The opportunity to build MOCA grew out of a clever rethinking of city rules. Los Angeles required developers to take a small percentage of their overall costs and spend it on public art. Often that meant a bad piece of sculpture in a lobby—not exactly what public art should be. Fortunately, Los Angeles’s visionary mayor, Tom Bradley, was willing to combine all the developers’ fees from a massive project to rebuild Bunker Hill and put the sum toward a new museum—but only if we could raise a $10 million endowment through private donations. I joined forces with Judge William A. Norris, collector and arts advocate Marcia Weisman, and a few others to raise that money.
It was 1979, and although I was eager to see the new museum built, I had never been responsible for raising so much cash. I started by doing my homework, beginning with a visit to the grande dame of L.A.’s cultural philanthropy, Dorothy Chandler. I had met Mrs. Chandler, or Buffy, as a lot of people called her, only a couple of times at social events, but I knew she was a legendary fund-raiser for cultural projects like the Hollywood Bowl and the Music Center. I figured she could give me advice, and I thought it would be courteous to notify her of what we were doing.
I set up a meeting with her at her home—a stately old mansion in the Hancock Park neighborhood with towering columns that made it look like a branch of the Bank of England. Going forward with the MOCA campaign, I would always visit people at their homes or offices when I was asking them for help. It’s a gesture of respect to go to them when you’re asking for something, and you’re likely to get a more sympathetic ear if your listener is in his or her comfort zone.
Buffy helpfully told me the basics of putting together a fundraising campaign but declined to help, which didn’t surprise me. Members of her family and her circle of supporters were deeply committed to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and, perhaps, they feared our new museum would compete with that institution’s contemporary art program. In any event, it was clear we wouldn’t have her participation.
Without Buffy on board, I thought it might be best to put my money where my mouth was. I couldn’t convince anyone unless I clearly demonstrated my own commitment to the new museum, so I pledged the first $1 million, payable over five years, to an institution that did not and might never exist. I always like paying a pledge over time because I can keep the total sum invested and I’ve hedged my risk if the project collapses.
With L.A.’s old money beyond our reach, I knew we had to come up with a new approach. Fortunately, I had a great partner to work with—the MOCA campaign was where I first met Andrea Van de Kamp. We came up with an alternative to traditional capital campaigns. We reimagined the potential universe of givers and made provisions for a much larger donors’ pool. Anyone who gave more than $10,000 would be called a founder of the museum, and his or her name would be prominently displayed in the museum’s entrance. That was an easy promise to keep but a very enticing one that gave us access to more than the usual suspects from whom to raise our money. Within a couple of years, and boosted by a few seven-figure gifts from businesses like ARCO, our “founders” innovation raised $13 million from about 600 donors.
If you’re flexible about creating opportunities to participate in a good idea, you may be surprised how many people are willing to help you. That’s the thing about good ideas: People want to be part of them, so make sure that’s what you’re pitching.
Perfect Your Pitch, and Make It Big
Two decades later, I was asked to spearhead the fund-raising for a stalled civic project on Bunker Hill—Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall. It would require all the persuasion an unreasonable man could muster.
I knew the project held the potential to create not only a much-needed new home for the city’s world-class philharmonic orchestra but also a visual icon representing L.A.’s emergence as a global cultural capital. The problem was, despite the Disney family’s generous gifts to build the hall, other donations would be required and the campaign to secure them was going nowhere. People had begun to whisper that Gehry had designed an unbuildable hall—at least at a cost anyone could afford. The County of Los Angeles, which had granted Disney Hall its lease and had pitched in for a parking lot below the venue, threatened to declare Disney Hall in default if $50 million couldn’t be raised by July 1, 1997. But the New York Times and other media had covered the project, and architectural journals had lauded its design. We couldn’t just abandon it. It was a question of civic pride.
I first studied the mistakes the campaign had made so far—a lack of controls, poor budgetary discipline, and an inability to pitch the hall in a persuasive way. I decided to convince our donors by focusing on how important the hall was to Los Angeles. They didn’t have to care about the symphony or architecture—they just had to care about their city.
When it was time to pick my allies, I knew who to call. I enlisted my former MOCA colleague Andrea Van de Kamp again. She has a natural charm and an ability to get anyone on the phone. I also knew that a pitch based on the good of the city needed a particular kind of credibility, so I brought on Dick Riordan, then the city’s mayor.
Right away, Dick and I knew we would have to demonstrate that we believed our own pitch. We both contributed money immediately to signal our commitment to and confidence in the project. We told donors that their money would only be used for construction and gave them a guarantee: They would get their money back if the hall wasn’t built.
By the county’s July 1 deadline, we raised nearly $100 million, or almost double what the county had required to save the project. We got off to a great start, and we would go on to raise more than $200 million total. Even a good idea looks better when people can see that you’re tangibly committed to it—and getting your way is easier when people can see the direction you’re headed.