New outlets for charitable giving are popping up faster than you can say Booming Economy. What are these so-called hybrid organizations all about? In future issues of Foundation News & Commentary,“Way to Give” will continue at look at how people with new approaches to giving are changing philanthropy.

Marc Pollick saw how powerful celebrity could be for championing a cause. So he created a hybrid that looks like a cross between a talent agency and a community foundation. How’s it going?

Marc Pollick can come across as obsessed and harried as a dot.com CEO. But he doesn’t spend his days seeking personal financial gain. His business card quotes Winston Churchill: “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.” And Pollick’s living is all about trying to entice, then assist, entertainers, athletes and wealthy individuals into philanthropy through a nonprofit he established in 1997, the Giving Back Fund.

Giving Back is a hybrid which Pollick characterizes as a “national community foundation.” He explains: “We haven’t found another organization that does exactly what we do. There are no blueprints.”

Just how much of a pioneer is Giving Back? It takes in donations, and manages investments and grantmaking for donors much like a community foundation would. And yet, because of the way it provides entertainers and sports stars with publicity opportunities connected with charitable fundraising events, Giving Back at times seems like an extension of a talent agency or public relations machine.

On Giving Back’s Web site (www.givingback.org), the organization describes itself as a “pooled-asset community charitable foundation.” As of mid-October, Giving Back counted 35 separately named funds--although Giving Back prefers to characterize them as individual “foundations.” This has much more appeal to donors, says Pollick, than calling them “named funds” or “donor-advised funds,” as most community foundations would. “We’re following all the laws that govern community foundations, but in some ways we’ve created the illusion of a private foundation,” says Pollick, who adds that he’s consulted with the IRS about this and received IRS permission to do so.

And there are some big names on those named funds: chart-topping teen singers Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake among them since last year; Cher and basketball star Jaylin Rose since just last month. In fact, Giving Back is adding two or three new “foundations” every month, says Pollick. About half of them are associated with sports stars--including athletes in basketball, football, hockey and Olympic skating. Several deals with other celebrities--including baseball’s Sammy Sosa--are being negotiated.

These funds focus grants and attention on an array of causes: autism, melanoma, Parkinson’s Disease, racism, music education, sending kids to camps, and more.

To date the foundations have aggregated about $5 million in assets. While Giving Back won’t reveal how much each holds individually, Pollick confirms that nearly half that amount is in one fund (the Doug Flutie, Jr. Foundation for Autism). Besides, says Pollick, money comes in and goes out every day, because a fair amount of Giving Back’s funds are designated as pass-through, going straight on to recipients instead of to endowment. The Giving Back Fund made a total of $4.2 million in grants in 1999, and will likely grant close to that amount by year’s end 2000.

For nearly all of Giving Back’s three years Pollick and a handful of staff have operated out of a cramped office in the shadow of Boston’s Fleet Center arena, home of the Celtics and Bruins. All along, Giving Back has received pro bono services--legal, accounting, public relations and Internet help valued at $1.6 million over the last three years--that help get the work done while keeping annual overhead expenses at about $750,000. (Pollick didn’t take a salary for the first two years, though he does now).

This year, Giving Back has been staffing up: in Boston there’s a newly hired COO, and the hiring process is underway for a development officer and a comptroller. There’s a part-timer in Philadelphia, and just this fall Pollick hired help to open offices in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles.

Among community foundations, $5 million used to be considered a magic number, known as the “take-off point,” when a foundation gains enough recognition and credibility to attract more donors and more dollars. And now that Giving Back has reached this point, Pollick declares: “It’s ready to explode.”

The Inspiration
Pollick says the idea for Giving Back germinated during his association with Elie Wiesel, winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. Pollick was founding director of the Elie Wiesel Institute for Humanitarian Studies from 1985-1987, and later worked as a consultant to the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.

Pollick was astounded by the impact of Wiesel’s celebrity, and that world leaders returned phone calls made in Wiesel’s name. He surmised that the potential for leveraging the fame of athletes and entertainers among their loyal fans, on behalf of philanthropy, would be even more astounding.

He learned, too, there was a definite need for professional management of celebrity philanthropies. Even giants like Michael Jordan and, more recently, Sammy Sosa, have faced embarrassing regulatory and media scrutiny for the misdeeds of their foundations. Allegations of transgressions by various celebrity foundations have run the gamut from failure to file tax returns to inappropriately benefiting family, relatives and friends.

It’s just this kind of highly visible problem that Pollick hopes Giving Back can address.

Working the Network
It all began when Pollick had breakfast with a Boston neighbor who happens to be a venture capitalist. Pollick had asked to pick his brain about running a new organization. The man, who requests anonymity, liked what he heard enough to call the next morning and offer $250,000 in startup funding.

A fundraising dinner for the Flutie foundation at the New Jersey home of rock star Jon Bon Jovi in June, 1999, illustrates how Pollick’s circle of connections began to take on a life of its own. Celebrity attendees at the glittering event included Superbowl coach Bill Parcells, actress Heather Locklear and designer Donatella Versace. The evening was highlighted by a spectacular auction. Field passes to watch Flutie warm up before a game went for $10,000. Four Britney Spears concert tickets brought in $38,000. A private gig by Bon Jovi’s band at the bidder’s home fetched $50,000. By night’s end, the dinner and auction raised over $600,000 for the Flutie fund.

It did even more. During the party, Pollick met prominent entertainment lawyer Larry Rudolph. Three months later, the connection with Rudolph led to the formation of Britney Spears’ foundations, and Justin Timberlake’s right after that. (In fact, Timberlake announced the launch of his foundation while sitting next to the First Lady and President Clinton during the White House philanthropy conference.)

In short order, Giving Back’s Web site had broadened to feature two of the hottest teen rock stars of all time. Earlier this year, Spears’ sophomore CD Oops! I Did It Again broke all-time records for a single female artist, selling 1.3 million copies in one day. Shortly after, *NSYNC’s No Strings Attached CD sold even more, 2.4 million copies in a day, a new sales record for a band.

Spears’ lawyer, Mark Steverson, says Spears intends to actively co-brand her charity’s Web site on her CD music packaging, and on millions of pieces of paraphernalia. Last May, when Spears’ foundation was the featured charity on Yahoo, Spears fans bid $1,600 for a signed letter and $1,500 for a signed CD. MTV.com auctions Spears concert tickets with proceeds going to her foundation, and, correspondingly, raising the foundation’s profile. Similarly, eBay has auctioned Timberlake’s basketball shoes, with the proceeds donated to his Giving Back foundation.

Board Connections
Critical to Giving Back’s viability is building a board with people who have valuable contacts in the sports, entertainment and business worlds. Co-Chair Lou Weisbach wears several notable hats. He is chairman of HA-LO Industries, Inc., a brand marketing and promotion conglomerate with more than $650 million in sales last year. Weisbach also heads the Democratic Party’s Jefferson Trust, an elite group of its 165 largest donors. In fact, Weisbach’s connections even include sharing a long driveway with Michael Jordan.

The Weisbach contact came to Pollick through www.Givenation.com, a Web site that facilities direct contributions to charities for a fee. Givenation President Steve Grossman mentioned he happened to be meeting in Chicago the next day with Lou Weisbach. “I’ve been waiting two years to find someone who knew this guy,” Pollick said. Within two days, Pollick was in Weisbach’s office, telling him he was ideally suited for Giving Back’s board. Within a week, Weisbach agreed to accept the role of co-chair.

Weisbach had initially balked, saying he was overcommitted. He was won over by Pollick’s passion, the aim of running celebrity foundations “beyond reproach,” and Giving Back’s “potential to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for charities using athletes and entertainers at the forefront.” Once enlisted, Weisbach opened doors to his own contacts. “Within a week, I was having breakfast at his house with the First Lady,” Pollick says. “Shortly thereafter, he invited me to a reception of the American Film Institute honoring Harrison Ford and sat me next to Rob Schneider and Ernie Banks.”

Last spring, a crucial piece in building Giving Back’s IT infrastructure fell into Pollick’s lap, this-time based on a connection with Doug Flutie’s foundation. Pollick had received a call from Prashanth Rao Palakurthi, the CEO of a Boston beltway software firm, Techlead. Palakurthi wanted to donate to Flutie’s foundation and asked if Pollick would drive to his office, about an hour west of Boston, to meet with him. Pollick wasn’t thrilled about agreeing to the distant meeting, but he sensed it might be worthwhile.

Palakurthi greeted Pollick and began the meeting by telling him about the pain he and his wife experienced when their five-year-old daughter Amitya was diagnosed with autism. He handed Pollick a $100,000 check for the foundation, and asked for more information about the Giving Back Fund. Then Palakurthi asked what he might do to help. Pollick wondered if Techlead could provide software to help Giving Back respond to hundreds of e-mails for people like Britney Spears and Doug Flutie. “Prasanth called in one of his aides, spoke in Hindi, and looked at me and said ‘Okay, that’s taken care of, what else do you need?’” Pollick recalled.

“We could use software to generate automated thank-you notes for donors,” Pollick responded. Palakurthi called in another aide, and this too became a done deal. “What else do you need?” Palakurthi asked. “We could use some new computers,” Pollick responded. “You will have four computers next week,” Prasanth replied.

With three wishes granted, Pollick was stunned to see that Palakurthi was just warming up. He prodded Pollick to talk about his Web site and how it might be nice to add e-commerce, Web auctions and on-line grnatmaking capacity. Palakurthi said he wanted to provide these capabilities.

In an interview, Palakurthi explained his intent is to transform Giving Back “from bricks and mortar to a cutting edge Web-based philanthropy.” His motivations, he said, extended beyond his daughter’s autism to valuing the way Giving Back’s model can bring a “semblance of responsibility to charity, to use the money for the purpose it was set up.”

Since then, Giving Back has pursued several e-philanthropy deals, aiming to connect with millions of young, tech-savvy fans. In addition to the partnership with Givenation.com, Giving Back has made a deal with eGenerosity.com that will pay $1 for every user who registers at its site. Since Britney Spears’ fan list has more than 1.5 million names, making this kind of connection has the potential to channel thousands of dollars into her foundation. Now in the works is a partnership with Ultimate Bid.com, which auctions experiences with celebrities. Giving Back is looking at offering experiences with Justin Timberlake and with some of the eight NBA basketball players who have Giving Back foundations.

Struggles Ahead, Struggles Behind
Even as Pollick has landed key celebrities, board members and infrastructure help, he wrestles with a start-up’s overhead and staffing challenges.

“The struggle is how to find money so we can grow,” he states. Charging a management fee of 3 percent of assets to tiny, incubating foundations as they did in the beginning turned out to be far too impractical to assure Giving Back’s own survival. Pollick introduced a new fee scale last June, raising charges to 5 percent for foundations with $1 million or less in assets. As assets grow, the Giving Back fees gradually fall to 1 percent on $5 million or more. He also instituted a new $50,000 minimum asset base to join Giving Back, and now requires asset growth to $250,000 within a year.

Pollick won’t say how many of his funds are folding due to the new minimum. Madison Square Garden broadcaster Bill Daughtry says his asthma foundation is one potential victim; Daughtry says he had only $6,000 or so in his has already spent most of that to send eight kids to summer camp.

Pollick tried to sustain Giving Back’s low-overhead concept through supplemental fundraising. Early on the Points of Light and Ford foundations provided some support. But getting funds to cover operating costs proved to be frustrating. Given the choice, most donors want to attach to specific programs, rather than behind-the-scenes operating costs of a fledgling organization.

So this year Pollick created the Foundation to Promote and Encourage Philanthropy (P.E.P. Foundation). It is intended to serve as Giving Back’s own endowment in the hope of covering operating expenses and marketing itself to new donors. The goal is to raise $10 million for this purpose as quickly as possible.

An ongoing frustration has been Pollick’s inability to boost Giving Back’s coffers by attracting existing charities of mega-stars. It’s not clear whether athletes like Tiger Woods or Shaquille O’Neil, or celebrities like Michael J. Fox, would want their causes to share a home page with those of a 39-year-old NFL quarterback, two teen heart throbs, and Nancy Kerrigan.

Ralph Stringer, the volunteer director of former Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino’s foundation (and Marino’s agent), says he was approached by the Giving Back Fund but weren’t interested in switching. “We decided to keep control, keep it close to home, and do it on a day-to-day basis right here in South Florida.” He added that Marino doesn’t require grantmaking assistance. Last year they raised $425,000 from a pro-am golf tournament and a promotion with MTH electric trains, and most of the proceeds were donated to the Dan Marino Center at Miami Children’s Hospital.

Another challenge lies in how well Giving Back can apply the national community foundation model, making grants far beyond its Boston home base. When foundation executive Lisa Borges was asked why the preponderance of Flutie foundation fundraising events are near his Boston home, and why no similar events have been held in Buffalo, where Flutie has a loyal fan base, she replied, “We don’t have anyone in Buffalo.”

While Pollick points to the growth of the Flutie fund to more than $2.5 million in two years, that level of success hasn’t yet been replicated by others in Giving Back’s stable. More than half of Flutie’s funds have come from cause-related marketing deals--with MCI long distance, Flutie Flakes cereal, and a western New York supermarket chain. These were all set up through his marketing agent. Similarly, if money rolls into Spears’ and Timberlake’s foundations, it will be due to their own marketing machines. Giving Back serves as a repository.

Fundraising, in fact, is not something that Giving Back makes pretenses of offering. The Giving Back materials talk about “work[ing] in concert with your marketing agents, event planners and fundraisers to ensure your foundations’ compliance with ‘best practices’ in philanthropy.”

Meanwhile, as Pollick attempts to add a mix of non-celebrity foundations, he risks that they will feel lost in the limelight of Giving Back’s stars.

Mel Reuben aligned his new Massachusetts Melanoma Foundation with Giving Back last May. Reuben retired from running a ladies’ garment business, lost his 32-year-old son recently to melanoma. His wants his foundation to develop educational prevention programs for a cancer that is on the rise. “I don’t know how good they are going to be yet. I hope the emphasis is not on famous people,” he stated in a phone interview shortly after joining the Giving Back Fund.

Pollick faces a challenge to hire and retain “the highly skilled foundation management personnel” that the brochure promises. Most of the Giving Back staff have no philanthropy experience. Nor do they have training in the health or social science fields that encompass the complex maladies that many of the funds were set up to support.

An exception is Nina Biggar, who handles ten charities including Spears’ and Timberlake’s. Biggar joined in March after nearly five years as a program officer for Associated Grantmakers of Massachusetts where she organized professional training for grantmakers. In describing her Giving Back work she explained, “A lot of donor education goes with this. We are not only trying to educate the donor on being a philanthropist and making good grants. We also are working with everyone around them to make sure they understand the process.”

Florida Panther Mellanby says he is a satisfied client, but he never regarded Giving Back’s services as anything more than “secretarial.” He explained: “They are there to answer the phones and handle the money, so my wife and I don’t have to deal with the everyday part of it. I don’t expect them to go out to drum up business, like an agent.” A $100,000 donation from the team’s owner Wayne Huizenga seeded Mellanby’s foundation, and the remainder of $90,000 or so has come from Mellanby’s golf tournament, which is organized locally. (It may be that Doug Flutie would paint a very different picture of Giving Back’s service. Repeated requests for an interview with him proved fruitless.)

Moving Forward
Despite the growing pains, the mood at Giving Back remains upbeat. Weisbach speaks about its potential to aggregate hundreds of millions of dollars within a few years. “If the right pieces fall in place, it could happen very quickly,” he says.

This may not be just wishful thinking. Evidence suggests that powerful agents and lawyers have a high enough regard for Giving Back’s service to anticipate adding numerous athletes and celebrities to its “family” in the near future.

Chicago sports agent Herb Rudoy says he expects several of the more than 200 athletes he represents--many of them NBA stars--to form new Giving Back foundations. One of Giving Back’s first donors was a client of Rudoy’s: Arvydas Sabonis, the Portland Trailblazers’ starting center. Sabonis gave $3.5 million to build a school with a medical clinic in his native Lithuania. And last summer a new connection was initiated with Michael Jordan’s agent David Falk, who brought the NBA’s Elton Brand to Giving Back in July.

Recruiting help may also come this fall from the fund’s co-chair, NBC announcer Bob Costas. Costas had agreed join the board some time ago, with the proviso that he wouldn’t take up active involvement until after completing his obligations at the Sydney Olympic games.

Britney Spears’ lawyer, Mark Steverson anticipates his firm--Rudolph and Beer--will enlist several more clients. Moreover, Steverson believes the Britney Spears and Jason Timberlake foundations can attract millions of dollars within a year’s time. “If Tiger Woods raised nearly $10 million in one year, can you imagine what Britney and *NSYNC can do?” he asks. (It’s a fair question, especially when giving by many of the rock stars’ fans is limited to the size of their allowances; whereas many of Wood’s fans weekend at places like Pebble Beach.)

In the meantime, Pollick remains in overdrive, with his sights set partly on recruiting more millionaire athletes, and partly on setting up his Los Angeles and Silicon Valley base camps. About the high net-worth demographic, he notes, “We need to do better at educating people new to wealth that if they sign a $20 million contract, they can be a significant donor. We are not saying anyone has to do it. Giving should be totally voluntary. It has to come from the heart.”

He’s also planning a Philanthropy Hall of Fame awards gala for next April--hoping it will be televised, like the Oscars. In addition to offering a lifetime achievement award, honors will be given in categories such as corporate giving, children under the age of 16, and per capita giving. (There’s even an award to honor an individual who does his or her philanthropy anonymously.) By making doing good more visible and by celebrating role models, Pollick says he hopes this event will inspire “copycat acts” of philanthropy around the nation.

This month Giving Back plans to announce its first-ever holiday matching gift campaign. Giving Back donors will match dollar-for-dollar any contributions made to their individual funds between November 1 and January 1.

And that, in a nutshell, captures the reason for inventing the Giving Back Fund: to tap the potential (and the wallets) of a few celebrities and a few million of their fans, to become philanthropists themselves.

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Mission, Not Impossible?

The Giving Back Fund’s stated mission is written as follows: 

• To encourage and support philanthropy by offering professional, efficient and cost-effective foundation management  
• To help establish philanthropic role models who will inspire others to give back to their communities  
• To create a high-profile, mutually supportive community of foundations that work together, when appropriate, in support of common missions and goals  
• To honor philanthropy in all of its aspects, whether manifested by the giving of time, talent, or money to assist others.