An Admiral Gets His Fund-Raising Crew in Line at the Naval Academy

When Stephen Chadwick was a student at the United States Naval Academy, he confesses, he didn’t fully

appreciate the training and education he was receiving.

Although he graduated in 1962 and eventually rose to the rank of admiral, “at the time it was really about academic survival for me,” he says. “I was never that great of a student. The military training and athletics were a piece of cake, but calculus, physics, and engineering, they were another story.”

But the longer he was out of the academy, says Admiral Chadwick, now 66, the more his respect for the quality of the training he had received as a young cadet grew. “We were inculcated with values and ideals,” he says. “I began to value that more and more.”

In 1985, Admiral Chadwick further deepened his ties to the Naval Academy, accepting the post of commandant for midshipmen, a position that is roughly analogous to the dean of student affairs at a university. The position required that he live on the campus in Annapolis, Md.

That experience, he says, ended up being among the most rewarding jobs he held while in the Navy: “It really built up my affection for and my debt to the Naval Academy.” Eventually, his two sons followed in his footsteps and graduated from the academy.

When he retired from the military in 1990 and took a job in the business world — since 1992, he has been chief executive officer of Secant Medical, a Perkasie, Pa., company that manufacturers specialized textiles used in implantable medical devices — he decided that the time for him to show his gratitude to the Naval Academy was long overdue.

“I do volunteer work in my own community,” says Admiral Chadwick, who lives with his wife in Doylestown, Pa., and has served on local school boards and as a hospital trustee. “Raising money for the Naval Academy seemed like a natural fit.”

In 1999, Admiral Chadwick agreed to become the chairman of the academy’s annual fund. The next year, the fund was rolled into the newly created Naval Academy Foundation, the academy’s nonprofit fund-raising arm, which was designed to bring in private donations to support the institution’s mission (and which ranks No. 348 on this year’s Philanthropy 400).

As part of his new responsibilities, Admiral Chadwick helped to plan an ambitious capital campaign, known as the Leaders to Serve the Nation campaign, an effort started in 2001 to raise $175-million by this year to pay for the construction of new buildings and renovation projects, and to establish graduate scholarships and academic positions. At the time, he notes, that figure seemed extraordinarily ambitious, given the economic downturn that occurred in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11: “It was a pretty tough market when we started.”

As of October 1, however, the campaign had brought in more than $240-million.

Battling Perceptions

Admiral Chadwick, along with volunteers and the foundation’s staff members, also had goals beyond raising money for the academy. They wanted to create a culture of philanthropy among the institution’s alumni, graduates who often share Admiral Chadwick’s deep appreciation for the academy but don’t necessarily support it financially. They also sought to create a broader, deeper pool of donors that would far outlast the capital campaign itself.

To accomplish their goals, says the admiral, he and the other volunteer and staff fund raisers had to combat the notion that, because the Naval Academy is principally supported by the government, private donations are unnecessary.

“The goal of the capital campaign was to increase the amount of funds we get from private donors in order to ‘increase the margin of excellence,’ as we like to say. But that can be a hard sell,” he acknowledges. Private donations have been used to pay for construction of the academy’s soccer facility and Jewish center, as well as to renovate such major campus structures as the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. “Most of our graduates don’t realize that even when they were midshipmen they were taking advantage of programs and facilities that were funded with private money.”

So began a four-year long process of educating potential donors. In letters, on the phone, and through countless face-to-face conversations, Admiral Chadwick encouraged current and former students to support their alma mater. He reached out through the existing lines of communication: class presidents, the alumni magazine, and class reunions. “We have an organization that’s already set up,” he says. “That takes some of the difficulty out of getting the message out.”

And whether he sought large-scale donations or smaller contributions from active duty Navy or Marine Corps officers, his message was the same: Government money for the Naval Academy fluctuates every year and isn’t enough to provide the quality of education and experience that its graduates prize. More often than not, Admiral Chadwick says, this information was new to the potential donors that he was approaching.

“I had a classmate that was giving an amount of money well below what I knew he was capable of, and I happened to know that he and his wife were giving a lot of money to Stanford University,” says Admiral Chadwick. “We had a long conversation and it turned out that he never had any idea that the shells he crewed while he was a student at the Naval Academy were paid for privately.” The classmate ultimately gave a significant gift, says the admiral, though he and the foundation refused to disclose the amount. “He needed to be told,” Admiral Chadwick says. “He was able to relate it to something that he had benefited from.”

That process of individually educating students, alumni, and parents of Naval Academy graduates appears to have paid off in a major way. Admiral Chadwick and the other fund raisers met and exceeded their original goal of $175-million, and are now steaming toward the campaign’s end December 31. The campaign’s take includes a donation of $1-million from the admiral’s own class of 1962, which paid for the scoreboard that now graces the academy’s Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.

Richard Johnson, executive vice president of the Naval Academy Foundation, has worked in college fund raising for more than three decades and says that Admiral Chadwick easily belongs in the “top ranks” of the volunteer fund raisers with whom he has worked. And Mr. Johnson’s choice of a military term is no accident. He maintains that the admiral’s military background is a key part of his ability to inspire the troops to give.

“He’s committed to the Naval Academy, but he’s also an experienced military leader and a successful business executive,” says Mr. Johnson. He characterizes the the volunteer as a “leadership donor.” However, citing a foundation policy against disclosing the amounts of individual gifts, he refused to reveal how much the admiral has contributed, and also refused to estimate how much of the capital campaign total the admiral can be credited with raising.

Admiral Chadwick also refuses to indicate how much money he has given to the campaign. However, he says, he has made a five-year commitment to contibute an amount in excess of what he would earn annually in the Navy.

While the Leaders to Serve the Nation campaign is winding down, he has no plans to stop raising money for his alma mater. “It’s a mission for me. What time I have to give, I give to the Naval Academy,” he says. He visits the campus up to four times per month.

In the meantime, he is shifting his focus slightly from bringing in gifts to what he terms the “softer sell,” spreading the word about the academy to business colleagues, many of whom are unfamiliar with the institution.

“I always sell the Naval Academy no matter where I am,” says Admiral Chadwick. “I’ll explain to people I meet that the mission of the Naval Academy is to provide leaders. I try to convey to them that it’s a place that every American can be proud of.”