Much of my professional life has been spent as the chief executive officer of three institutions: the 92nd Street Y, an internationally renowned community and cultural center; then the International Rescue Committee, a leading refugee relief and resettlement agency; and finally Lincoln Center, America’s oldest and the world’s largest and most prominent performing arts complex.
I have also served as the architect and first president of the AT&T Foundation, at its founding one of America’s largest asset-based corporate philanthropic funds, and chairman of the board of two bellwether private foundations, Nathan Cummings and Charles H. Revson. The combination of leading top-notch public service organizations and directing over $1.5 billion of grants to hundreds of recipients left me with nothing short of a sense of reverence for what nonprofits and foundations can accomplish. The roles I played allowed me to encounter professionals and trustees at their very best: fully aligned, thoroughly committed, remarkably resourceful, and utterly devoted to the discharge of their missions.
The results? Countless lives saved, the sick healed, children educated, clients trained for jobs, and millions exposed to the very best in the performing and visual arts that our planet has to offer. Nonprofits can rescue refugees and displaced people and reunite children separated from their families. They can eliminate cholera, polio, malaria, and HIV-AIDS from the face of the earth. They can revolutionize the delivery of health, educational, social, and cultural services using the wonders of twenty-first-century technology. They can do all of these things and much more when leadership is encouraged and when vital energy is aimed directly at the client and the cause.
Sadly, I have also witnessed, up-close and personal, institutional disarray and dereliction of duty. It is very distressing to encounter professionals who do not measure up to the standard of conduct that those they serve have every right to expect. It is painful to observe trustees in positions of authority who permit such deficient behavior in those who report to them. When such trustees are themselves casual about the discharge of their own solemn responsibilities, I despair.
This memoir reveals the dynamics of some of these nongovernmental enterprises. Millions of employees and volunteers labor diligently to support them. They all deserve well-governed and well-led organizations, places in which to do their best work.
Those in positions of authority who fall well short of accomplishing what is reasonably expected of them are often not held accountable. How can that be? When customers and audiences are poorly served. When budgets are in deficit condition. When operations are off kilter. And when balance sheets are drained of assets. Such performance failures are hardly inevitable. They are the consequence of poorly monitored institutions and of inept management. They are examples of leadership gone astray.
Despite the lapses that I cite, I hope readers will come away from this volume with a palpable sense of why America’s nonprofit institutions are so important. The challenges of discharging their mission well are easily as complicated as running a commercial or governmental entity, and no less significant for the welfare of our communities and for the competitive standing of our country.
I wrote this book wishing that professionals and volunteers might find useful lessons from my experience. It will be a source of pleasure if there are takeaways in these pages that can help others who are striving for superior programs, healthier balance sheets, sounder operating budgets, and excellent governance.
This is my account, and I do my best in good faith to accurately depict Lincoln Center’s officials and other important figures, revealing their noble feats of leadership and their painful acts of omission and commission, the better to learn from them.
The three organizations with which I was privileged to be associated are highly regarded. Whatever their shortfalls, deficiencies, and blemishes, the 92nd Street Y, the IRC, and Lincoln Center continue to draw to themselves unparalleled levels of professional talent, voluntary expertise, and philanthropic resources.
The character, comportment, and competence of nonprofit organizations are not to be taken for granted. Eternal vigilance is the price we must pay for ensuring that valuable institutions like these will remain beacons of superlative service. America needs tens of thousands of public service agencies, each in its own way serving as a source of excellence and object of civic pride.
I hope my story assists and encourages those drawn to causes such as these.