When Nonprofits Are Asked to Be the ‘Morals Police’

Vladimir Weinstein/BFA.com

Clyde Jones is confident about his organization’s fundraising, but he has his hands full.

The 100 Charities That Raise the Most in Cash and Stocks

See which groups’ fundraising was up in 2018 and whose dropped, how donor-advised funds are doing, and the data behind our exclusive rankings.

• America’s Favorite Charities Worry the Boom Won’t Last: Our Analysis
• Explore the Numbers With Our Interactive Database

As senior vice president for institutional advancement at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (No. 75), Jones leads a team of roughly 50 fundraisers at a moment when cultural institutions face intense scrutiny about the sources of their big donors’ wealth. He says that seeing boisterous protests and news stories everyday about donors and board members being called to task are bound to give supporters pause, but whether they’ll hold back on their giving remains to be seen.

“Donors are looking carefully at how institutions respond to that, and I think that they will make their giving decisions based on how they think that an institution will treat them,” he says.

For now, his donor base is staying rather quiet. “I just don’t know how that’s going to affect fundraising at the highest level if all of a sudden organizations are somehow being asked to be the morals police.”

At the moment, he’s optimistic about the fundraising climate, he said in an interview. The Met is the only cultural institution on our list of the charities that raise the most cash support. The museum brought in more than $267 million in cash support in 2018, a 9.1 percent decrease from 2017.

He attributes a large portion of the 2018 haul to an $80 million bequest from Herbert Irving, husband of longtime museum trustee Florence Irving. The couple, who were major collectors and donors during their lives, left a large portion of their estate to the museum after Mr. Irving died in 2016. The bequest supports an unrestricted art-acquisitions endowment fund, as well as several endowment funds for the museum’s department of Asian art. Ms. Irving passed away last year.

The museum, along with many of the other organizations on our America’s Favorite Charities list, increasingly relies on large, generous donors. Individuals account for about 80 percent of the museum’s revenue, while the remaining 20 percent comes from corporations and foundations. Of those individual donors, “the vast majority of the money comes from a small number of people,” Jones says.

Economic and political uncertainty has some donors feeling nervous, Jones says. “We have some very major gifts that are maybe taking a little longer as people really think about what they want to do and when’s the right time to do it,” he says. “But nobody at this point has said, ‘I don’t want to talk about giving.’ "

Controversial Admissions Change

In 2017, the museum, which continues to operate at a deficit, launched a three-year financial transformation plan which aims to lead the institution toward a balanced budget by 2020. That involves rethinking all revenue streams, including philanthropy, retail, and restaurants, and making a controversial change in admissions. Since 1970, the museum had a pay-as-you-wish admissions policy for visitors from outside of New York State. Now the Met charges $25 for adults, with discounts for seniors and young people. New York residents don’t pay the set admission fee but are encouraged to make a contribution.

When the change was announced, critics argued it would make the museum less accessible. But the museum has not seen a decrease in museum visitors.

“All of those dire concerns that somehow we were going to upend the way people use the museum have turned out not to be the case,” Jones says.

Admissions fees continue to grow as a percentage of total revenue. They represented about 16 percent in fiscal year 2018, and the museum expects that to stay about the same in 2019.

But whether those visitors who enter the door for the first time and “entry-level donors” who give in response to an appeal on social media or through the mail will stick with the museum and become the midlevel and major givers of the future remains a concern.

Some factors, like changes in tax policy, are out of fundraisers’ hands, he says. But figuring out how to develop meaningful, sustainable relationships with donors who give online is an imperative, Jones says. “That will be the thing that the successful organizations in the future will learn how to do.”

University Background

Jones joined the museum in 2015 after serving as president of the Medical and Health Sciences Foundation, which raises money for the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. A theater-studies major in college, Jones says he fell into fundraising. He was working as an actor when a friend asked him to help out with back-office tasks at a fundraising company. Jones enjoyed the work, moving from gift processing into data management and then into major-gift fundraising, working in higher education and health sciences for the bulk of his career.

Aside from a brief stint as a fundraiser at a dance company, the top job at the Met marks his first major development role in the arts. Fundraising at the Met is not that different from fundraising at a hospital or university because of the museum’s many departments and large staff, Jones says.

“I treat the curatorial and conservation departments like I would treat a school in the university, and the curators the same as faculty members,” he says. “What was successful in academia was paying attention to those individual departments as their own entity and having fundraisers who, if not embedded in those departments, were at least devoted to those departments.”

This approach lets curators and conservators build stronger relationships with fundraisers. But the institution has to constantly balance departmental needs with broader organizational priorities. That might mean waiting to make an ask for one gift when a donor is being cultivated for something else.

Raising money for art-lovers’ specific interests has long been a bright spot for fundraising. The museum continues to expand affinity groups on subjects like Egyptian art and European sculpture. And fundraisers are increasingly bringing in money from collectors living abroad.

But raising money to support staff salaries and other expenses remains a challenge. “Over the course of the last several years, unrestricted giving is becoming increasingly difficult at a time when it’s even more important,” he says. The museum recently launched a “Friends of the Met” group, which, like the other affinity groups, holds special events and programs to strengthen ties with donors, to grow the pool of general operating support. “Their affinity group is all about learning more about all of the museum in greater depth,” Jones says.

He hopes that in time greater understanding of the museum’s work will lead to the holy grail of fundraising: more unrestricted giving.

Eden Stiffman reports on nonprofit trends and fundraising for the Chronicle. She recently interviewed MIT’s Epstein Whistle blower about her own lack of fundraising ethics training, and other topics. She also writes a popular weekly fundraising newsletter. Email Eden or follow her on Twitter.