Fundraiser Deepens Donor Ties by Putting Them to Work

Years ago, Margaret Dodson Turner met Cab Calloway, the Cotton Club’s legendary jazz singer and bandleader, and his wife, Nuffie, on a project to document the Harlem Renaissance at historically black Fisk University. Ms. Turner worked with a curator on an exhibit of Mr. Calloway’s memorabilia, and the couple gave her a crystal swan as a parting gift.

“They said I reminded them of a swan because I appear cool and collected on top but am furiously running under the surface,” Ms. Turner recalls.

Now she’s using those same traits to raise money for the Smithsonian Institution’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture. In addition to helping secure donated artifacts, Ms. Turner, a senior major gifts officer, has brought in one $2-million gift, 10 others of $1-million, 26 donations of $25,000 to $500,000, and many smaller contributions since she took the job five years ago.

Formally proposed by black Civil War veterans in 1915, the museum now being built on the National Mall has been a long time coming. It received a $250-million Congressional appropriation in 2003 and is now on a quest to raise another $250-million in private support.

With nearly $175-million in gifts and pledges to date, it’s well on its way.

Ms. Turner has proved adept at finding new sources of support. Eight of the million-dollar founding donors recruited by Ms. Turner are African-American individuals, families, or organizations that are also first-time Smithsonian donors.

Those new supporters include: T.B. Boyd, president of R.H. Boyd Publishing Corporation, started more than 100 years ago by an ancestor who was a freed slave, and his family; the Links Foundation, a grant-making organization started by black women professionals; Earl and Amanda Stafford, the couple who hosted the People’s Inaugural Ball after President Obama’s first election; and the family of Mark and Brenda Moore, a former technology-company CEO and his wife, a former nurse.

“So much of what Margaret does is in the African-American community,” says Gasby Brown, a fund-raising consultant who met Ms. Turner last year. “The wealth of that community is often overlooked.”

‘My Dream Job’

Ms. Turner, who could be mistaken for white is “African-American and proud of it,” she says. Her skin color “goes back to slavery,” she adds. “With masters taking liberties with their slaves, you end up with a range of colors. This is part of our history and our culture.”

Ms. Turner remembers growing up in segregated Virginia, where bus drivers would invite her light-skinned mother to move up from the back of the bus. “I’m where I’m supposed to be,” she would reply.

“My parents taught us to be proud of who we are,” she says.

Her position at the African-American museum, where she has worked since 2009, is “absolutely my dream job,” Ms. Turner says.

She is often moved to tears by the historic importance of the artifacts donated to the museum and the generosity of its donors, many of whom want their names listed as a record of their support for future generations.

“My wife said, ‘We didn’t come here to give money,’ " recalls Leonard Powell, who gave $25,000 with his wife, Denese. “I said, ‘I am giving and if you give, your name can be up there, too.’ She said, ‘I’m in.’ "

The Powells, Ms. Turner notes, are among several donors who gave after touring exhibits in a temporary gallery the museum created at the nearby National Museum of American History. As the couple saw photographs in an exhibit called “Changing America” with the fundraiser, Mr. Powell recalls, “I was looking at a March on Washington photo, and there was my college freshman roommate right there! I took a photo of it and sent it to our class.”

Ms. Turner tells a reporter she is fortunate to work with “an outstanding staff of museum professionals” assembled by founding director Lonnie Bunch.

One colleague she sometimes teams up with is Jacquelyn Serwer, chief curator. After one visit to a donor whom the two women persuaded to give $1-million, Ms. Turner says, “we went back to the car and screamed and cried” with joy.

A former teacher, Ms. Turner took her first fundraising job in 1983 at Meharry Medical College, another traditionally black institution, where she was working on the annual fund. “I learned fund-raising from the bottom up,” she says.

The learning curve was steep, she says: “I cried every day for two weeks. I didn’t know what I was doing and wanted to quit. But then I really got into it.”

In five years, Ms. Turner helped increase net donations to Meharry’s annual fund from $900,000 to nearly $1.5-million while reducing fundraising costs by $250,000 annually. (The college had been paying up to $750,000 a year to a direct-marketing company.)

“She did a remarkable job,” says Walter Strong, her boss at Meharry, now chief executive of the Miller-McCoy Academy, a New Orleans charter school for urban boys.

It was Ms. Turner’s idea to ask the comedian Bill Cosby—who played a doctor on his 1980s sitcom, which cited Meharry in one episode—to sign a letter asking recipients to give to the college. Mr. Cosby also agreed to speak at a Meharry commencement after signing the letter.

A couple of years later, she asked Alex Haley to sign another fundraising appeal. Mr. Haley, author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family, happened to be friends with Jessie Carney Smith, dean of the library at Fisk University, where Ms. Turner worked previously.

Mr. Haley “called me back late one night, and I almost fell out of my seat,” recalls Ms. Turner. “He said, ‘You used the magic words: Dr. Jessie Carney Smith.’”

At Meharry, Ms. Turner got calls from donors about an endowed scholarship and a bequest, which taught her how to handle major and planned gifts. She moved on to senior fundraising positions at the Smithsonian before returning to Meharry.

Ms. Turner, who declines to state her exact age, says she took a pay cut to move to her current job, which will probably be her last before retiring. “I’m where I’m supposed to be,” she says. “I have come full circle.”

Her experience plays to what she and others say is her most pronounced talent: forming and nurturing close ties with individual donors and organizations.

“One of the good things Margaret does is put her donors to work,” says her boss, Adrienne Brooks, director of advancement. “After she gets their involvement, she asks them for introductions or to host gatherings.”

Ms. Turner spent years deepening the museum’s relationship with the Links Foundation. “It was three years before we ever got the official request,” recalls Margot Copeland, its president, who also heads the Key Bank Foundation, in Cleveland. “I see development officers from all around the United States,” she says. “Margaret is one of the finest.”

Treating Donors Well

Ms. Turner makes a point of befriending staff at a handful of Washington restaurants, she says, to ensure that donors and potential supporters she brings there get attentive service, good food, and a quiet table where it’s easy to talk.

“You are forming a lifetime partnership with donors, so you have to treat them very, very well,” says Ms. Turner. “Otherwise they won’t tell their friends about you.”

She also keeps meticulous records, compiling thick notebooks of information arranged chronologically about her most generous donors.

Says Mildred Carrethers, a retired Exxon executive in Dallas who gave the museum $50,000: “Once you make a commitment, Margaret doesn’t stop there. Just this week, I was invited to a dinner in D.C. That shows you’re not just a dollar sign.”

No ‘Dialing for Donors’

Ms. Carrethers helped Ms. Turner plan a fundraising event with Charley Pride, the country-music star. Like other museum supporters, Mr. Pride donated artifacts; then he gave money.

That’s a familiar turn of events for Ms. Turner, who says people become more invested in the museum that way. And it gives her the chance to work closely with curators and other museum staff as well as donors.

Ms. Carrethers and Ms. Turner, for example, worked together on a Dallas fundraising event to showcase the artifacts Mr. Pride gave, including his cowboy boots, records, and concert advertisements. About 100 people attended, including the Pride family. That gathering led to a gift from the family and several other donations, as well as new members, who can join the museum for as little as $25.

As she goes about her work, Ms. Turner says she draws on techniques she learned early in her career by attending fundraising conferences and workshops.

But the veteran fundraiser says she doesn’t always follow what others say are best practices.

For example, fundraisers are often told that they must call a certain number of donors every month. But “anyone can make 20 calls,” Ms. Turner says. “I don’t do dialing for donors.” Instead, she says, she focuses on making each interaction with donors meaningful by customizing it to their interests.

Aided by project-management colleagues, for example, Ms. Turner sends photographs of the museum’s construction site, artifacts, or gatherings such as curator presentations to show donors what she and her colleagues are doing with their money.

“I send the same photos to prospects and say, ‘This is why we need your support,’” she says.

Unlike her other fundraising jobs, Ms. Turner says, she has to do very little “selling” to convince people why the museum deserves support.

“We are making history,” she says. “This will never be done again.”