Board Member Applies a ‘Light Touch’

The Jewish Federation/Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago draws such a high number of donors to its annual fund-raising campaign that nearly any charity would envy it. Nearly 40,000 people give to the organization each year, from a community with roughly 100,000 Jewish households whose incomes exceed the poverty line.

So when David A. Sherman became chairman of the federation’s annual campaign in early 2007, he knew he had to come up with some innovative ideas to move the needle even higher.

Mr. Sherman, a 48-year-old real-estate executive who has been on the federation’s board since he was 29, has for many years volunteered to take young doctors, lawyers, and other professionals on trips to Israel. As part of the campaign, he proposed offering an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel to more than 30 affluent Jewish men in their 40s and 50s who either weren’t engaged at all with the federation or who had some negative feelings toward it.

The trip had no strings attached. The hope was that the group would see what federation dollars supported in Israel — such as fortifications to day-care centers to protect children from terrorist attacks, and services for the impoverished Ethiopian Jews who have been resettled there — and want to start giving to the federation for the first time or increase the modest gifts they were currently making.

“It was common sense because what we do is so compelling,” says Mr. Sherman, who became chairman of the federation’s board last month. “I couldn’t imagine someone going to see the work we do, and then saying, ‘Whatever.’”

Even so, the federation’s board weighed the plan carefully before ultimately giving approval. It’s not unusual for charities to offer their best supporters free trips and other rewards, but in this case the federation was being asked to pay $7,000 per person — an investment of more than $200,000 — with no guarantee that it would see an increase in giving.

The gamble did pay off. The 2007 trip generated pledges of an additional $900,000 for the Jewish Federation over three years, and a trip with a different group in 2008 produced $700,000 more in pledges than the donors would otherwise have provided, says David Sternberg, an investment manager who helped Mr. Sherman handle the trips.

“It really turned them on to an understanding of Israel,” says Harvey Barnett, the federation’s prior board chairman. “One of the fellows came back and told me he’s now a card-carrying Zionist.”

The additional revenue helped the federation raise a record $80-million in its 2007 campaign, $3-million more than it raised in 2006, also a record year. The federation describes itself as the largest nonprofit social-welfare institution in Illinois. During its most recent fiscal year, which ended in June, the federation provided $48-million to local organizations that serve 300,000 Chicago residents of all faiths, and it sent an additional $32-million to Israel and other countries. (The group, which raised a total of $196-million in private support in 2007, earned the No. 91 spot on this year’s Philanthropy 400, The Chronicle‘s annual ranking of the charities that raised the most money.)

Deep Roots

Mr. Sherman comes from a prominent Jewish family in Chicago, and he has been heavily involved in the federation since he was a child. On the same day in September that Mr. Sherman was sworn in as chairman of the board, his father, Leonard, who fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and chaired the Chicago federation’s 1975 campaign, received the organization’s Julius Rosenwald Award, its highest honor.

For David Sherman, the importance of giving was instilled at an early age. The Shermans lived near a public golf course, and David Sherman and his sister, Miriam, would find golf balls in the woods and then sell them on the 18th fairway. Leonard Sherman insisted that 50 percent of the profits go to the Combined Jewish Appeal.

As a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Sherman traveled to the Soviet Union during a year studying abroad. He took supplies and clothing to the refuseniks, Soviet Jews who had been refused visas to emigrate abroad. That was an eye-opener for someone who had had few direct encounters with anti-Semitism. Mr. Sherman’s grandparents had emigrated from the Soviet Union in the early 1900s.

“There’s that observation that ‘there but for the grace of God go I,’” Mr. Sherman says.

Around the time that Mr. Sherman agreed to become chairman of the federation’s 2007 campaign, he reassessed the strategy of Benj. E. Sherman & Sons, the real-estate company that he chairs and that his grandfather founded. Mr. Sherman settled on a slower growth rate that would allow him to spend more time with his family (he and his wife, Susan, have five children), and on charitable and other interests. Mr. Sherman has run 20 marathons, coaches his kids’ sports teams, and is writing a children’s book about a girl who embarks on a tour of other castles, only to discover that the castle she is most comfortable in is her own.

The less-demanding work schedule allowed Mr. Sherman to conduct more than 200 face-to-face solicitations — a record for a campaign chairman — during the 2007 campaign. Friends say Mr. Sherman uses a light touch in persuading potential donors of the reasons they should want to give, rather than a scolding approach that holds up giving to the Jewish federation as a duty.

“He does a phenomenal job of saying to people, ‘There’s a place for this in the realm of success that you’ve created for yourself,’” says Peter Holstein, a real-estate investor and Mr. Sherman’s running partner. “He gets frustrated seeing the bling that people will hang around themselves, and he wonders why philanthropic bling isn’t part of that success.”

Mr. Sherman met primarily with business executives — many of whom were sophisticated investors — and he used language to which he thought they would relate. “If they were looking to invest in mutual funds using certain criteria, I encouraged them to do the same thing in the philanthropic arena,” he says.

He argued that the Jewish federation possessed quality management, low costs, and diversification, with funds flowing to hundreds of local Jewish organizations and a variety of causes abroad.

He also pointed to the thousands of lives touched by the federation’s giving.

Steven B. Nasatir, the federation’s president, says Mr. Sherman’s 200 face-to-face meetings increased the campaign’s total. “He literally added a couple of million dollars to the campaign that I think might not have been there had he not done that,” Mr. Nasatir says.

Youth Appeal

Mr. Sherman’s relative youth plays well with both older and younger donors.

“There’s no question that when your contemporary says, ‘Here’s what the needs are and here’s what we’re going to do,’ that’s more effective than having someone older putting a figure in your face and saying, ‘You should be doing this,’” says Wendy Abrams, a federation board member who has known Mr. Sherman since they were in preschool together.

Meanwhile, older donors were happy to see their life’s work in the hands of a capable young leader, Mr. Nasatir says. “We get both bites of the apple here.”

Mr. Sherman declines to say what he gives to the federation, but he notes that he and his wife tithe, giving 10 percent of their annual income to charity.

The couple also supports the World Wildlife Fund, Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo, and a number of other Jewish organizations.

Mr. Sherman, who contracted hepatitis C from a blood transfusion during a surgery at the age of 17, is also on the board of the American Liver Foundation, and he supports research on the disease at the University of Chicago. Hepatitis C can cause cirrhosis of the liver.

“I tried treatment, and it wasn’t successful,” Mr. Sherman says. “I’m very interested in helping find a cure.”

Mr. Sherman is taking over the chairman role just as the economy appears headed for a recession. He says the federation’s biggest donors will need to step up. Already, 12 families have made matching grants worth $250,000 apiece to the 2008 campaign, on top of their regular gifts. The $3-million pool is being used to match gifts from others who agree to increase their pledges to certain designated levels.

“That has been absolutely fantastic,” Mr. Sherman says. “We know next year will be a tough one.”