Foundation Leader Is on a Roll With an Unusual Fund-Raising Tool

On this Wednesday morning, Brian Payne, president of the Central Indiana Community Foundation, starts off his group’s monthly staff meeting with an unusual question.

“What was something wonderful or meaningful that happened to you this summer?” he asks the assembled collection of employees, grant recipients, and visitors.

The next half hour or so is consumed with each person in the room answering the question. The answers are diverse: a son graduating from a physician’s assistant program. A baby daughter’s first birthday party. Vacations: Prague, a local lake, doing nothing at all. A first grandchild. A Dave Matthews concert.

The “question of the day” is something that Mr. Payne started posing at his very first staff meeting when he joined the foundation back in 2000, after stints as managing director of the Indiana Repertory Theatre and managing director of Shakespeare Santa Cruz, in his native California.

The questions can be timely: Around the time of the Indiana presidential primary, the question was, If you could hold any elected office, which would you want and why? Or they can be personal: What is your favorite book? And they can be professional: What would you change about central Indiana if you could wave a magic wand? It is an unorthodox way of helping to break the ice.

Later today, he will use another untraditional tool, this time in the service of warming up potential supporters of his personal brainchild: the Indianapolis Cultural Trail.

Mr. Payne — who, at 49, appears a bit windswept and athletic even when, like today, he is dressed in a suit — came up with the idea while biking. When completed, the eight-mile cultural trail, designed for biking and walking, will connect six neighborhoods and also join on either end with the Monon and White River Wapahani trails.

Ground broke on the project in 2005, and organizers hope it will be completed by 2010, in plenty of time before the city plays host to the Super Bowl in 2012. The cultural trail will snake through Indianapolis’s downtown — which has involved logistical hassles that have extended the construction schedule — and planners hope it will help showcase and stimulate this Rust Belt city.

Although Indianapolis has outperformed many other Midwestern cities during the national economic downturn (Forbes magazine ranked it sixth among the best cities in the country for jobs in 2008), it is still widely underappreciated, say civic leaders.

The cultural trail will cost $50-million, of which $9-million still needs to be raised. The community foundation has been the sole fund raiser for the project, garnering $26-million from a mix of private sources and the rest from government grants.

Mr. Payne has used a few unusual tactics to raise money for the trail — and, in fact, has one of those planned for later in the afternoon.

‘Barrier Busting’

The morning staff meeting rolls on, with a presentation by three of the foundation’s grantees — charities that work in some of Indianapolis’s more troubled neighborhoods.

The charities were given what the foundation called “barrier busting” grants of $10,000 each, with the direction to do whatever they thought was necessary with it to help families move toward financial stability. The groups’ officials describe how their organizations have used the money, including paying a college-application fee for a needy student, helping a client move to a new apartment that is wheelchair accessible, and providing after-school care.

The next part of the meeting is consumed by a discussion of the foundation’s finances, led by Kay Whitaker, the group’s chief financial officer. The Central Indiana Community Foundation, which employs 40 people spread over three locations, made more than $46-million in grants in 2007, and it holds $625-million in assets.

Although the stock market is shaky, the foundation is holding its own, Mr. Payne says, in part because the institution’s gifts often are the result of life landmarks — such as the settling of an estate and other events that are not timed with the market. “The question of how the economy affects the community is different than how it affects the foundation,” he says.

As the meeting wraps up, several people around the room announce their appreciation for other staff members — for hosting a retreat at a cabin, for a stellar annual report, for handling things smoothly during a vacation — by saying they will be making gifts to the Employee Fund in those employees’ names.

It is an actual fund, not just a metaphor. Although donations usually range between $20 and $50, the Employee Fund provides grants totaling up to $5,000 to charities annually.

After a break for lunch, Mr. Payne next meets with Adam Thies, a local urban planner and architect, in his office, to discuss ways that the community foundation could stimulate more projects in Indianapolis like the cultural trail.

He and Mr. Thies bat around ideas. They finally settle on the notion of a fellowship program — a retreat of urban planners, architects, and the like — to begin hatching ideas for the foundation’s Inspiring Places Initiative. The project will involve the building of eight places around the city, over the course of the next few years, that will attract tourists and residents alike.

Mr. Payne also suggests creating a giving circle — asking 10 wealthy donors to give $250,000 apiece and then mixing them together with the fellows, he says, “to discuss possible good investments.”

With the meeting over, Mr. Payne changes into khakis and a golf shirt. He and his assistant, Kendra Patrick, drive 10 minutes downtown to White River State Park to pick up some most unusual fund-raising tools: three Segways.

Riding Lessons

Almost as soon as he started fund raising for the cultural trail, Mr. Payne realized that there was a big difference between showing prospective donors maps of the proposed trail and really showing them the area where the trail would be built. But few people have the time to walk an entire eight miles in the middle of the day, so, as an avid cyclist, Mr. Payne quickly concluded that the best way to show the whole vision would be via bicycle. The problem with that, he notes, is that not all prospective donors are willing — or sufficiently fit — to ride a bike. And that’s when he had the idea: put them on Segways.

In 2001, the same year the cultural trail was conceived, the Segway, a two-wheeled electric vehicle, was promoted with a great deal of hoopla — it was to revolutionize human transportation, which generated a lot of buzz in the urban planning world. Today, the Segway, with a top speed of about 12 miles per hour, is used in many tours of paved areas around the world, by some municipalities (such as police departments), and by a few individuals.

Three years ago, Mr. Payne started giving Segway tours to prospective donors. To date, he credits it with helping to land $3-million in donations. (One donor bought a Segway for herself after the tour.) The Central Indiana Community Foundation now owns two Segways and borrows more when it needs them from a rental kiosk operated by Segway of Indiana in White River State Park, which does not charge the community foundation for vehicle rentals because the group has helped the kiosk generate so much business.

Today Mr. Payne will give a Segway tour to two prospective donors: Lance Chrisman, program director at the WellPoint Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the national health-benefits company that has its headquarters in Indianapolis, and Bill Kingston, president of the Community Health Network Foundation, also in Indianapolis. Along for the ride is State Sen. James Merritt Jr. Mr. Merritt is one of several government officials whom Mr. Payne has taken out on Segway tours to enlist their support, including representatives from Sen. Richard G. Lugar’s office and from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Today’s tour group is assembled in Mr. Payne’s office when he returns with the Segways. Mr. Payne and Ms. Patrick hop off their Segways and start to help the others climb onto the machines, teaching them how to ride.

The training takes place in the hallway, under the gaze of a bemused security guard. Mr. Payne and Ms. Patrick stand in front of each machine, bracing it and facing the student as he awkwardly climbs on to the base, which wobbles alarmingly at first. As the student grasps the handlebar with a death grip, the foundation officials issue instructions and encouragement.

“Lean forward to go, lean back to stop, you’re doing great,” echoes in the hallway. The Segway moves forward, backward, and side to side by using a computer-controlled gyroscope to detect a rider’s shifts of body weight. Soon all the rookies are confidently — or at least bravely — whizzing around the hallway.

The half mile of the cultural trail that is already built starts outside of the community foundation’s office; a map laying out a complete plan for the trail stands next to the pathway. Everyone climbs off the Segways to look at the map, and Mr. Payne shares the history of the trail and its plans for future completion. Then it is time to hit the trail.

In contrast to the city’s sometimes crumbling sidewalks, the cultural trail is laid smoothly with paving stones, its intersections marked by broad curb cuts and clear space delineated for bikes, pedestrians, and Segways. The trail also has $2-million budgeted for public art, and at the first completed intersection, at Alabama and New York Streets, sits an installation: a piece by the artist Julian Opie, called “Ann Dancing,” which is an outline, in orange LED’s, of a woman dancing.

A Light-Bulb Moment

At about eight miles per hour, a half mile goes pretty fast, though, so it is soon time to leave the smooth trail for the much bumpier regular sidewalk and smaller curb cuts, roughly the path of the proposed trail. Over the next two hours, the Segway group rolls on, stopping many times along the way to discuss various attractions or special issues in trail construction.

The first stop, on a street that bisects a park that is flanked on one end by the city’s Central Library and on the other by its War Memorial, Mr. Payne pauses to explain the difficulties he is having with the state historic-landmarks office. Mr. Merritt expresses surprise and offers his assistance. Mr. Payne thanks him — a key supporter has been brought aboard.

Although Indianapolis has seen the odd Segway before, the sight of several speeding through downtown at once constitutes a novelty. Kids poke their mothers and stare, and passers-by pepper the riders with questions: How does that thing work? Is it scary? How do you stop?

The group rides around Indianapolis’s Monument Circle and eventually makes its way to the city’s prime cultural attractions — past the Eiteljorg Museum (which specializes in Southwestern art), the Indiana State Museum, and down along the Canal Walk, where the Segways ride past families strolling, artists painting the scene, and restaurants filled with people.

“I never think to bring my family down here,” exclaims Mr. Chrisman. “I think I will do that soon.”

That kind of light-bulb moment is exactly why Mr. Payne leads these tours, and indeed, an important reason for the trail to exist at all. While it will be a tourist attraction, it also will help to bring local residents to places they take for granted. And that, he says, will help the city to become more vibrant.

Before long, it is time to head back to the foundation’s office. The donors are ready to relinquish their attention-getting transport. After climbing off the Segways at the rental booth, the riders find that walking feels absurdly slow, and Mr. Payne comments that his legs feel funny.

“It’s ‘Seg Leg,’” calls the teenage attendant as the group walks slowly back to Mr. Payne’s car.

It is too soon to say whether this Segway tour will lead to donations for the trail. It is after 6:30 p.m., and as the day’s shadows grow long, that answer will have to wait for another day.