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- [00:00]
Eileen Heisman
We need to invent new and different approaches to address social problems. But it takes inventiveness and resources to kind of let that incubate and happen. And some are going to work and some aren't going to work. And there's nothing wrong with an idea not working.
- [00:15]
Jay Frost
Welcome to the PM Podcast, brought to you by Donor Search, the show that takes you inside the lives of thought leaders, innovators and change makers in fundraising, philanthropy and civil society. I'm your host, Jay Frost. Eileen Heisman is one of philanthropy's most influential leaders. As the founding president and CEO of National Philanthropic Trust, she grew it into a global powerhouse, facilitating over $63 billion in charitable giving. A 10 time honoree on the nonprofit Times Power and influence top 50, she's advised world leaders, taught at Penn, and shaped the future of Donor advised funds. In this conversation, we trace her journey from childhood lessons in inclusion and innovation to her early years in politics and through more than three decades at the helm of one of the nation's leading engines of giving.
- [01:03]
Unknown
I usually start by asking people about where it all began. And in your case, it all began in Pennsylvania, where you are now. Right.
- [01:11]
Eileen Heisman
I am. Even though I left for college and graduate school and an internship in Washington, I came back to where I grew up and I liked my parents. I, I, not everybody likes their parents. I didn't want to go to Penn because I didn't want my mother to visit me all the time because she grew up in West Philadelphia. So I needed to get at least a long car ride away. But I, I AM Living about 20 miles from where I grew up.
- [01:39]
Unknown
Where is that?
- [01:40]
Eileen Heisman
I live in Elkins park, right outside of Philadelphia.
- [01:43]
Unknown
And you're, and your hometown is Horsham?
- [01:45]
Eileen Heisman
Little tiny town. It was very rural. My, my father was from the Bronx. He was really a city kid. And my mother was from a city kid, also West Phil, which is where Penn is. And there they moved to this really rural place. We were the only Jews. I was the only Jewish girl in my grave my whole life. We got the New York Times and when I tell people that, they'd say, you mean Time magazine? And I said, no, we get the New York Times at our house, right? And my father was really worldly in National Geographic and talked to me about pygmies and thermodynamics and how inventions and innovations get generated and what their benefits are. And my mother did all this legal voters and door to door canvassing for politicians. And you know, I was a Girl Scout troop leader and so I had this intense community engagement from my mother and this kind of vast curiosity from my dad. And neither of my parents did what they wanted to do. My mother wanted to be a doctor, and her father told her women to become doctors. So she became a nurse. And my father got an offer to work in Capitol Hill. And my dad was born in 23 and my mother in 22. They're a couple of months apart part, but it's straddled to calendar years. And my grandmother told my father that no respectable person goes and works in Washington. And so they both got denied what they wanted to do. So they made a really big deal about me finding what I really wanted to do, what my heart led me to do, and not what they wanted me to do. And so that was really. I mean, I benefited from their disadvantage of my mother wanting to be a doctor, my father wanting to work in D.C. and it's funny because I did an internship in D.C. and I loved politics always, and my mother loved politics as well. So I had this great. I wanted to run for office for a long time. And then I worked for US Senator and also councilwoman in Philadelphia. And I saw how public their lives were, and I just said, you know, not for me. I don't want my life to be quite that public. But I loved working in politics actually early in my career. So I benefited from these really worldly, thoughtful people. But I was really a fish out of water always. And I was voted when I was a senior in high school, most individualistic. There was a male and a female that got that vote. You know, as part was like a. And it was a write in vote. It wasn't like you got nominated, people just write in. And so I got the most votes for the female in my high school graduating class, which meant I was the weirdest person, absolute girl in the class. And I was, I was always like, you know. And I think it actually liberated me ultimately in my life to not feel like I had to conform necessarily. But, you know, when you're younger, those aren't always easy things to think about.
- [04:39]
Unknown
When you have parents who are both really intellectually curious and are interested and both local, very hyper local, but also the world, and they have unrealized dreams. Sometimes they will encourage their kids to pursue the dreams that they had that they couldn't realize. But it sounds like in your case it was a little different.
- [05:00]
Eileen Heisman
Well, I think that they didn't want me to pursue their dreams. And I was never that good at science. So I knew that being a nurse or a doctor Was, like, not my thing. And my father ended up becoming an eye doctor, which he really didn't want to do. He never liked his job, but they did both want me to figure out what I wanted to do. My father was much more vocal about that. I think the pain of having this thing dangled in front of him, and his mother saying no was really. I think he lived with that pain. And my mother went to nursing school, but she had had a full scholarship to Penn, which is where her brother and sister had gone before her. And when they found out she was Jewish, they pulled it. So she lived with that. That was really painful. She talked about that her whole life. And so, you know, here they both had things that they wanted to do that they couldn't do. So I think they didn't want to tell me what to do, but they wanted framework for me to figure out what I wanted to do. And that was really, I don't want to say liberating, because I had the message from such a young age that, like, what do you like? And my mother, when she was coaching me about how to be a parent, she said, lean into their strengths. Whatever their strengths are, whatever they want to do, lean into them. And I took that advice, actually, when I was parenting. But, you know, I liked. I went to dancing school at age three. Like, I loved to ballet and dance, and I still like to dance a lot, actually. And I did a lot of theater, and I loved the arts always. And. And they were really supportive of that, even though they. We were very middle class, that we weren't wealthy at all. And my brother ended up being a chess master, and he's written about 14 chess books. And he's coached. He coaches Howard. He has coached Howard Stern, the radio person, on chess. And my brother's been mentioned. I think he's actually been on the show. And they're, you know, so they both leaned into our interests. And, you know, and Dan likes Broadway. Like, I'm a big Broadway fan, you know, and I appreciate chess, but we don't. You know, we weren't supposed to. We didn't feel like we were supposed to do anything but work hard, have a high bar for ourselves, be really ethical. We both have this strong ethical backbone. My brother told me when my nephew's now 40, right? So. But he. When he was a teenager, a young teenager, my brother told me that he made him declare his babysitter sitting money on his federal income tax. And I thought, wow, you know, and I have this. I have an equally strong background that manifests itself in other things. But this idea about doing the right thing, like the morally right thing, is really a part of my. Integrated into my DNA, I think. And so when Danny told me that, I was just laughed. I mean, I thought, wow, what did they feed us? Like, what was that? Oatmeal. What was in that oatmeal at home? So that's good. But I. I was really lucky to have really loving parents who supported me and encouraged me. And my dad used to tell me I could be President of the United States. He was really invested in me. And he died. He had congestive heart failure from having rheumatic fever as a young boy. And they told him he wouldn't live past 27 or 28. And he lived till he was 63. He died when I was 31. And I had this feeling, when I look back, that he consciously and artfully and with great intentionality invested in me. The dense teachings that you would expect maybe over a lifetime, I got in those 31 years. Because the stuff they would make me not make me think about, but encourage me to think about, expose me to the arts and other cultures and how to make friends, how to. How to be interested in people, how to think about the other politics, Just all the things that he really, really supported me in learning. It just felt, in retrospect, it didn't feel like it was an accident. Nothing was accidental. And I was a real sponge for all those things. When I was really little, really little, my feet didn't hit the end of the couch. He used to open Popular Science or Popular Mechanics magazine and go through all the inventions that had been approved, that had been highlighted. They have a little pull out like this. You could like pull it out. It was this little book that you remember that. And. And he used to go over each invention and what it was for and why they invented it and the value it was going to have to whoever used it and what it was going to shortcut or help people do faster, better, easier. And then we would finish it and he would talk me through that and really patiently, and then we would look at the next one and he would say, this is what this person invented, this and this is the problem it's going to fix. Then when we were in hardware stores or kitchen gadget departments, he would do the same, looking at mechanical things in either hardware stores or kitchen gadget stores of inventions and things that help to do something that otherwise used to be a hard thing to do. I actually believe. And this is going to sound maybe unbelievable, but My. When I was at NPT and, you know, I've been gone for less than a year, I felt like that spirit was with me always, which is there's the way it used to be done, and then there's other ways to do things. And there they can be more efficient or. I hate the word clever because it sounds like something the Pharisees in there, but more inventive or more like what, how they can be easier. They can be. And, you know, it's this whole thing about fundraising, about making it easier for the donor to give, you know, and I teach fundraising and I'm a fundraiser at heart. And a lot of my thinking about shaping what NPT was going to be like for the donor, from the donor experience was taking those principles that dad imbued in me mostly in mechanical things, but. And, and applying it, Applying it. And I didn't say to myself, oh, this is because of dad, but over time I just realized that the. A lot of people don't like change. You know, a lot of people are afraid you do it X and you have to do X for the rest of your life. And it was like, well, the spirit of X is good, but maybe we can find another way to skin the cat or approach it or think about it, or maybe there's new technology or maybe there's people in other. Other industries that do something like this that we could borrow from. And I was always, like, really curious and like, no stone unturned, and let's just keep pushing that envelope. And I know I drove some of my staff. I didn't drive them crazy. The people who liked it would stay around a long time. Other people who, like, this is the way we always did it, I'm sure found working with me challenging at times because I was always sort of looking over the horizon. But I look back to those times with dad and that encouragement to appreciate invention and innovation as just, yeah, I get it, you know, And I, you know, I don't know, if he had been an athlete or something, maybe I'd be doing something else. And my mother was very compassionate and used to take food over to really secretly to people in our community that didn't have Thanksgiving meals or things would tell me in the. We had a couple people in our Girl Scout troop that were really low income, and I think my mother paid their dues and was very compassionate in a very quiet way. And one time when I was about six or five, pretty young six, I think we were getting ready for school and we were in this place where they were selling school supplies, kind of like a discount store, kind of like a dollar store, but they wasn't called that at the time. And there was a little girl who came over to me who I was in school with. She was a year older and she had a really badly repaired cleft lip. And she came over to me and she started to say hello to me and talk to me. These two little kids are moms or her mother was like on the other side of the store, but was very small store. And I didn't. I ignored this young girl and she did it a couple times. And my mother, who had stuff in her hands and maybe a little basket, I never forget that she, like kind of dumped everything, left it on whatever counter we were walking by. And she grabbed me by my wrist, not like mean or hard, but it was like in very. With a great intentionality. And she pulled me outside and she said, I never want to see you treat anybody like that again. That little girl was coming over to talk to you. She said hello to you. You didn't say anything back to her. She is a problem with the way she looks. You have. You're pretty and cute and little and, you know, you don't have that problem, but she has a problem. And I never want to see you treat anybody like that again. And we're not going to buy any of these supplies. We're going home. And I want you to go to your room and think about it. And boy, I was like. I mean, the fact that I remember.
- [14:08]
Unknown
It now, you were quite small.
- [14:11]
Eileen Heisman
Yeah, I was small, but I was probably six. And it was like. It was this idea about humanity, you know, and between the food delivery, which was always done really quietly and that, and, you know, her standing on election day at the League of Women Voters and giving out, you know, encouraging people to vote. We went. I went to door to door with her, like, doing distribution of political flyers. You know, it was mostly legal. Women voters was just encouraging people to vote, not telling people who to vote for, you know, and so that I would often accompany her with that. She'd say, come and do that with me. And I did. And she also. Oh, you know, this is interesting. She was part of the team that distributed the Salk vaccine in our community in 1960. Yeah, and she was a nurse. She was public health nurse when I was small. And I remember she said to me, do you want to come and help me? And I was. In 1960, I was six years old. I said, okay. And she. I don't know if you Remember? But they had these little cups, these little paper cups, and my job was to line all the cups up and so the people could put the droppers, the polio vaccine in the cups. And then. And there was this long line out, and my mother was there, and I was there about, I would say, a good half the day, and then I think I got tired. And it was. And then. But it was. Everybody in our community died. Because when COVID vaccine was coming out, there was all this, like, pushback and no. And, you know, in this big lines, you know, like we couldn't get one. And how difficult it was you to know somebody to get a vaccine. It was crazy at the beginning of COVID But I flashed back. I had totally forgotten about that. And I flashed back to the lines going out of the high school. It was actually where I ended up going to high school, which was right on the corner from our house of how all the community just being in line to get this polio vaccine, to be so happy about it because polio is such a terrible disease and how it affects people. My mother using me as like a, you know, child labor, but in a really positive way, you know, of having me help. Like there was a way I could help. And I did line up, and I was. I though I could line these things up, you know, and I did it. And I was very. She taught me how to do it. And I was really good at executing, you know, straightforward instructions. I was very cooperative. I was really well behaved. And I don't think she ever got a note back from a teacher. Like, Eileen didn't behave like I was just. I did, like, whatever, you know, and I. My homework was always on time and everything. But I just look back at those things and think at the. The. The part of philanthropy that is the giving back part was from her. And the part of the donor advice fund. How do you scale it? How do you do it better? Was from dad.
- [16:51]
Unknown
It's funny when you talk about the invention part of that, I don't necessarily think of fundraising or even nonprofits as. As the place where invention and innovation often occurs. Not that they shouldn't, but they don't really.
- [17:08]
Eileen Heisman
I think about that all the time.
- [17:10]
Unknown
And so how. I mean, I know you went and you studied social work after you did your.
- [17:17]
Eileen Heisman
I was in the social work school, but I actually studied social program evaluation. I was the first cohort at Michigan. And it was at that point in time the federal government was attaching their HHS grants that had an evaluation measure. And the Michigan people Thought, you know, people that do program evaluation should understand what social programs are about. So wouldn't it be great to get people understand social programs to actually learn how to do evaluation and studied statistics and public policy and, you know, research methods and things so that you got people who were not just number crunchers to be looking at social programs. Like accountants. Right. You know, kind of audits. And so I was. There were six of us. We were experimental. So I didn't study clinical social work. I was never doing, you know, it was never about that. It was always about Mac. We called it macro. It's always about macro work, which is what, how organizations work, the administration of how nonprofits need to be run. It wasn't about frontline work.
- [18:19]
Unknown
Data solutions, essentially, I guess.
- [18:21]
Eileen Heisman
Yeah. Not. Not data. Well, data. The program evaluation is data for sure. But the overall part of the school that I studied in was called the macro side of social programs and social. And so, you know, one of the things about evaluating programs is it gets you to think about what's not working. And how do you do this better? Right. I mean, that's where my brain goes. And so I ended up not doing it ever. I mean, I got two job offers to do it. And I just realized I wanted to be in a part of the social sector where I talk to people more that I felt that I was stuck in a room looking at data wasn't going to take advantage of some of the things that I really love doing, which is interacting with other people. I didn't find fundraising for a number of years. I ended up becoming a legislative aide in City hall to a newly elected councilwoman.
- [19:19]
Unknown
This was Joan Specter. Is that.
- [19:21]
Eileen Heisman
Yeah. Joan Specter who just died. She just died. She was one of my great mentors and she was a business owner, owned a cooking baking company. And she ran for office and she was elected and she went. She was spent three terms in city hall, four year term. So she was there for 12 years. I was her chief legislative aide her first term in City Hall. And then while I was there, her husband got elected to the US Senate.
- [19:46]
Unknown
This is.
- [19:47]
Eileen Heisman
Yeah, Senator Specter. And then I went to work for him and I ended up becoming a political fundraiser for his 86. I was the finance director for his 86 reelection campaign to the U.S. senate when I was 31. That was a really hard job. And he was a tough guy. She was delightful. He was difficult. He's kind of a perfectionist. He's hard to work for. But I learned a lot. Really smart, really ethical. But Not. I wouldn't call him a compassionate person. I think he was compassionate to constituents. He really liked older Americans. He really liked that part. But I think his staff, you know, he had a very high bar, and he expected everybody to hit it all the time, you know, non stop. And, you know, he just. He had a more demanding way about him. Joan. You know, I always think about the, you know, the movie the Devil Wears Prada. I always think of me being the young assistant and Joan being the Meryl Streep. But I said, I always say, imagine if that she was nice. Imagine if Meryl Streep was really nice, but still a mentor. That was my experience a lot. And when Joan died and I went to the funeral and, you know, her son Shane Shannon gave the eulogy. He started talking about her work in City hall. And I just was like. And he said to me, afterwards, I saw you nodding. I said, yeah, it was a really powerful experience. And then she has four granddaughters. And I went through the line to express my condolences. And I told them what I just told you. I said, did all of you see the Devil Wears Prada? Yeah. Even though they're young, you know, that's an old, old movie to them. And I said, well, I worked for your grandmother. And it was like she was a nice version of Meryl Streep. And they just, like, they loved that. And so I got really lucky to have a mentor like that. A businesswoman, an entrepreneur, you know, public policy. Interested in public policy, very much community minded. So I could like, take all these little pieces of things. My, my program evaluation, my mother's compassion, my dad's innovation, and my interest in politics in general and current events. And then my, you know, my most individualist. Eileen's not like everybody else and kind of spend four years by her side, just devoted to her. Like, I worked all the time. And I just decided after four years that I sort of had enough and then worked for Ireland for about a year and then decided that politics wasn't for me anymore.
- [22:11]
Unknown
So I did want to ask you about that, because on Capitol Hill is not like local politics.
- [22:17]
Eileen Heisman
No. And I was really, you know, I worked for him. I did constituent service, like VIP constituent service in his Philadelphia office, spent a little time in Washington, and then pretty quickly he moved me over to the campaign because I'd worked on Joan's campaign. And Joan told him I was a really good fundraiser. And I guess apparently good fundraisers, political fundraisers then were pretty hard to find. And when Joan told me that I Remember her telling me that. She goes, people make decent money being a fundraiser. I said, what? I said, people get paid to do this. And I said, there's not. This is actually what I said. I said, there's not a lot to it. That's how. That's how natural and kind of compatible it was with just who I was as a human, you know, talking to people, listening to them, you know, incorporating things they're interested in, kind of integrating what they wanted with what the world might need. I mean, and I morphed eventually into being a charitable fundraiser, but it just didn't feel. This is going to sound so bizarre because I ended up working so hard for so long, but that initial description of it, it didn't feel like hard work to me. It was just like, oh, I could. I could do that, you know, and it was. And, you know, and harkens back is, find something you really like and work really hard at it. Which is the message I got my parents. And I think maybe this is.
- [23:47]
Unknown
Sounds like that was very relational with her. But when you went and then worked with Senator Specter and did the campaign fundraising, was that like today's fundraising, which can be highly transactional, big volume, you know, quick request bundling.
- [24:02]
Eileen Heisman
It was, you know, before the Internet, right? It was 85. Right. He was, you know, his election was 86. So it was 85 and 86, and there was no Internet. And, you know, we used to use this. I forget what they were called. Before faxing, there was like those machines you could like, sort of like, what was it? There was a name for those machines. And that was what Arlen, we used to do to talk to him when he was in Washington. It was kind of the big time. Like, I wanted to have, you know, being on the national. Being on a national platform, having him be in the national platform, being, you know, this hundred senators, you know, being in that world was really appealing. Learning from him was really appealing. Understanding what it meant to me in that level of politics, the people that I met, you know, when I was going to college, my dad told me something. He said, you know, you can go to most colleges will give you a good education. So when you're picking colleges, you know. You know, he basically said, go to the best college you can, not of the education, because you get a good education at many, many schools, but it's who you're going to meet. So go to the best school you can, because who you're going to meet. And I remember thinking about that principal when I was working for Arlen, Senator Specter. Is that the kind of people I was meeting? I was 31. I mean, I was so young, were very formidable. And I had already worked for Joan for four years. And, you know, I was the gatekeeper for. When CEOs of Philadelphia companies wanted to talk to Joan. I was the gatekeeper to get to her. And then when Arlen became a senator, often Arlen knew me, you know, I worked for him afterwards. But he would say, you know, call Joan's office, talk to Eileen, tell her what you know. And I was always like this kind of arranger of things. And, you know, I just. It was just an exposure at a level that I, you know, I grew up in this really rural part of suburban Philadelphia. The only Jewish kid. I was always a fish out of water. I was voted. I was editor of my high school newspaper. I was voted most individualistic. I was like, weird and then. But when I was there, I wasn't weird. And I. And when I got to Carnegie Mellon, I wasn't weird either. I was like everybody else. But it was finally, I was like. It was almost like I could, like, open my wings. I could almost finish my. Feel like my wings expanding. Like. Like I, you know, and I loved. And I worked all the time. We work. Politicians work weekends. We work evenings. You know, I wasn't a parent yet, so, you know, going community meetings and evenings, I would go for Joan, I would go with Joan. You know, I would, you know, there were weekend things, and I didn't know the difference between weekends, evenings. The work didn't end at 5. You know, I just, you know, and it was important for me to know people. So sometimes doing the stuff after work is when you would meet people or you would, you know, that was a. You know, there was all these lobbyists always hanging around, but there was also other aides that you, you know, other political aides or people that ran things that you would often see. And instead of them just meeting you when they walked in the office, you would always already have these relationships. And so. And of course, since I represented a politic, people wanted to meet me, you know, but I went out of my way, you know, you know, the cleft lip story, like my, you know, treat people with kindness and respect and, you know, and I just would always try to bring that to life as much as I could. But I. And, you know, I was. That was so more ingrained by that. It wasn't like I was consciously thinking about that. But I. I loved all the meeting. I loved all it. I loved it I loved it. I thought it was the best job. I would never have a better job in my life.
- [27:39]
Unknown
Being a gatekeeper, though, isn't often the person who's the kind, you know, little girl who's saying hello to another little girl. It's often pretty fierce position. In fact, everything you've just described is more often the Meryl Streep figure in the of where is Prada?
- [27:59]
Eileen Heisman
Right. Of course, I try to have a very kind way. Like, you know, I'm not a Pollyanna, and anybody who's worked for me might. Might say that I'm tough. I'd say there's a toughness. I, you know, I, I don't mind, you know, when it's, you know, things you can't do or things that don't work or, you know, and if I wasn't go between and John would say, no, I don't think it's a good time to do that now. I don't think I want to talk about that. Or can we read it? You know, I was, you know, I would take those thoughts and have to reinterpret them and say them in my own words, you know, and I would, I would. I never like, you know, if she said she didn't want to do something I didn't like, try, you know, I could try to sugarcoat be a news. She actually said to me when I was leaving her, she said, you're gonna. She told me I was going to be successful in life. And I said, why? And she said, for two reasons. One is you get so much done. Like she said, a lot of people don't do anything. You get a high volume amount of work done, number one. And number two, you have a way of saying no to people and they still like you afterwards.
- [29:02]
Unknown
Oh, there's a. I remember an old expression back from the 80s, the velvet hammer. So I don't know that's what you're talking about, but yeah, to be firm but kind is. Is a real. Is a real skill and not just in politics, but certainly in charitable fundraising. So how did you make that transition?
- [29:21]
Eileen Heisman
I wasn't able to. So I started to try to have kids, and I wasn't able to have kids. And I went. I had 12 surgeries. I went through massive of infertility treatment when I was in my early 30s. Massive. And nothing ever worked. I did three in Vitros. I had 11 embryos transferred that were already fertilized into my uterus, and nothing took. And my mother finally said to me, you're going crazy. You Got to stop this. I got a book about adoption in the Barnes and Noble and how to do a private adoption. I started working on it in the fall, and my daughter was born in February, and she's now 39 and as a police officer in North Carolina. But we adopted her when she was a newborn. And it was all about this book that I got, and it was like a marketing challenge. I ended up reading this chapter about how to make a private adoption happen. And I followed every inch of the instructions with great passion and great leaning in is what you say now. It was before the Internet. The way that you got to people is very different. But so I became a parent and I said, I can't do this work anymore. I can't work every night, every evening, all this stuff. Little did I know that I ended up kind of keeping that work style the rest of my life. But when my kids were really little, I really tried to curb it. So I thought. So Joan said, you're really good fundraiser. You should think about. And people get paid for this. And then a friend of mine or I ran into some woman I knew a little bit, and she said, one of my friends works in the fundraising area at Penn. Would you want to meet her? She invited her to her house for dinner. And me and this woman's Carol Thompson, she's still a friend of mine. I spent the evening doing essentially, what color is your parachute? Informational interview with this woman. I realized I had done direct mail, I had done special events. I had worked with individual donors, did bundling stuff. You know, bundling. People bundle in charitable fundraising. They don't call it that. Right. And that there was most elements of it that I had done. And I already. And I kind of knew. And I thought, well, I could do that and, you know, and I could get benefits. Thing about working on political campaigns is there's no benefits. Right. No vacation. And you're sort of an itinerant worker. You're like a farm worker, right? Except the campaign worker. You often go from, you know, campaign to campaign. That's really changed now. Now there's consulting firms that. That instead of hiring individuals, they'll hire a firm so you can get more benefits and make more of a life. But it's a very. It's a job for young people. Like, I, you know, there I was, 31, new parent. You know, it pretty. Was pretty traumatized by all the infertility treatment. And my father died right around that time. Liza was about eight months old when my father died. So he had congestive heart failure. And so he was really an anchor for me my whole life. So that was like a. You know, when Liza was born, we got the announcement that she was being born, and the phone call, the last birthday he was alive to celebrate. So their birthdays are a day apart. So Liza was born on the 16th, and my father was born on February 15th. And so Liza used to say when she was little, you know, I was born to replace Grandpa. And I was like. It was very prophetic in a lot of ways. It was. It almost feels like it wasn't an accident. And so I had to get it. So I took some time. Time off, but I had to get a job, and I started interviewing for charitable fundraising jobs. And some of my interviews went really well, and some of them didn't go well. So I got some offers that I didn't really want. And then I was about to get an offer at Penn Medicine, which is a hospital part of University of Pennsylvania. And I got. And the guy from the hospital side really, really liked me, and both my parents from the medical field. And then the head of fundraising at Penn was a guy named Rick Nas, who I just looked up the other day, and he called me in. Do you know Rick Nam?
- [33:24]
Unknown
Well, wasn't he at Columbia for a long time?
- [33:27]
Eileen Heisman
No, he went. He ran. He ended up leaving Penn and going to a college, a small college in Kentucky, and then he went to some big retirement community in Michigan. I just looked him up. But he brought me in, and I thought that it was going to be like, a job offer. And instead of a job offer, he told me that. That political fundraisers never made good charitable fundraisers, and sort of who did I think I was? And he was really belittling. Like, I was in tears when I left. And I thought, why would anybody bring me in to belittle me and tell me that there's no way I would ever make it in a field that he had mastered? And I was like, wow. And I left, and I was really, really upset. I mean, like, I think I left and I would. Kept it together in the office. But as I left, I was cr. And I was really, you know, and I worked for Arlen and Joan, and when I was working for Senator Specter, they told me I was the best finance director they had on that round of, you know, every three. Every two years, a third of the senators get reelected. So those. That group of people that they would put me in the top of the. Of all the fundraising that year, I was the best finance director there in the country for the Senate. I was kind of like, you know, I mean, I'd never done it before, so I was, I said, wow, thanks a lot, it's hard work. And so to go from that to like, you're never going to be anything, you know, kind of. And it was so mean spirited. I kind of, I look back at it now. The reason I looked him up was to see what ended up happening to him. But I don't know if he's still alive or not. But I just thought, you know, and then I pivoted and I thought, you know what this guy, like, I'm not going to let this guy ruin my life or like I just, I'm not going to let this guy ruin my life or diminish my belief in myself. And so I kept looking. And then somebody told me that on a political campaign there was somebody who knew what the Community foundation in Philadelphia was looking for, somebody to be their first fundraiser. And so I started, I interviewed, I had six interviews at the Philadelphia Foundation. So you know, community foundations have a public support test. And I went through six interviews and I got offered the job. And this is pretty funny, so I got offered a job. I go into the Community foundation and political fundraising is very fast paced, very quick. Money in, money out, buying media, the money comes in, you buy the media, the election, September, whatever it is, and you're like, you go in this cycle. Community foundation fundraising was at that point largely bequest driven, right? Which is your seeding bequest for some future date. And the donor advice fund world was in its nascent say like it's, they were like the thread of that this thing called a daf. Nobody called it a DAF then a donor advised fund was just coming into its own. And so, so when I got to the Philadelphia Foundation, I took the job. I, I said how, you know, just, I thought what am I going to do? And, and I couldn't, I was like, this has nothing to do with what I know, like direct mail, all the things that I knew, special events. And so I decided I would interview. I asked who the fastest growing community foundations were in the country and I made telephone appointments with all the CEOs or their development officers and I took and I interviewed them over like a four or five month period. And I, and I took notes on voracious notes and all these different topics that there was a lot of commonalities. And I from that created a marketing plan for how that I thought the Community foundation could grow based on the experiences of the fastest growing Community foundations in the country, as you were doing.
- [37:15]
Unknown
That, what kind of reaction did you get from them? Because you said you were their first development officer, which is pretty remarkable.
- [37:21]
Eileen Heisman
They didn't know what to do with me. They wished I would go away. I often thought it was a very program officer driven entity. And they had a very strong philosophical bent at the time. They called it the empowerment criteria, which was that kind of indigenous community people should be running the entities, the charities that are helping their own communities. And it shouldn't be like suburban others coming in and telling, you know, people of color what to do. And they called it the empowerment criteria. I don't know what one would call it right now, but. And it was, you know, it was worthy and I not worthy. I mean, it wasn't like I was fighting that, but. But just starting of a fundraising program from scratch with nothing was really like, what is it? I didn't want to waste time, I didn't want to waste money, and I. But I wanted to know. Other community foundations had had development officers for maybe up to five years. It was still pretty new, and there was enough success. And then there was something where the executive directors were really committed and interested. The one who was the Philadelphia foundation, the gentleman who was at ED, had no interest in fundraising. So I was really bowling alone there. And the program officer sort of didn't know what to do with me. Interestingly, when I worked for Arlen, I was considered like a liberal, like, really liberal, like Eileen with all her liberal thinking. And when I. And then my next job was at the Philadelphia foundation, and I was considered like a right wing conservative, I had the same set of beliefs. And I went from being like an ultra liberal right wing conservative. I'm like, wow, this is pretty weird. But the first six months. But I started to think, this is not for me. I need to go back to my political work. It's so interesting. This is really boring. This is really tedious. And then we got a single check for $650,000. I realized bequests had come in, in. In my first six months there, even though I'd been doing all this work. And I. When I saw that check, I was like, I was riveted. I'd never seen a check with that many zeros because I never, you know, in politics, the max you could do at the time was 10,000 if you get money from a pack. And. And I looked at this check. I literally took the check in my office and I stared at the check and I thought to myself, I was riveted by. It's like my mother pulling me out of that store, right? I was like. And I thought it was like, one day I was calling my friends, asking how I could get back in the political world. And the next day I said, I'm going to figure out how that check got to and got to the Philadelphia foundation and what the path was and what triggered the check and why the person made the decision and what happened and who did that, how did that work? And I'm going to figure out how to do it, and I'm going to figure out how to do it really well. And I said that to myself, I'm going to figure out how to do that really well. And so I worked at the Philadelphia foundation for about five years, and I took all my notes from all my interviews, and I put together what I thought was really an excellent plan, knowing that I was going to be bowling alone, that I was going to get almost no support, and the board didn't care. It was nothing. I had no support internally. Like, I was always on my own. I did it for about four and a half or five years. And I just, I didn't like some of the things that were happening at the board level. And I just. And I didn't have any support. And I just thought, you know what I have to, like, do. I can't. I can't be beating my head against the wall. But I fell in love with planned giving. And I really learned a lot about donor advised funds, and I really understood how they worked, all the needs. I understood, like, the path. I understood how bequests. I mean, I didn't know much about life income gifts, but I. I got really. I went to as many plan giving seminars as I could. I did a lot of immersion. I just was like, okay. And I. And I never looked back. I never wanted to go back to political fundraising after that. I was really fascinated by gifts of illiquid assets, life income gifts, bequests, you know, legacy issues of families, how, you know, the accumulation of wealth, how wealth got moved into the social sector to benefit people and causes. And I just thought, this is like the greatest. And so I thought political fundraising was great. And then all of a sudden I'm like, no, this is great. And then I worked in hospital philanthropy for a few years, about five years in two different hospitals. And I got really good at life income gifts, did a lot of gift annuities, charitable gift annuities. But I always. And then I heard from a person that I knew that NPT was getting Created. Did. And I. And I cold called them, and I said, I think I might have something to offer. I know about donor advice funds. I know a lot about plan giving and gifts of illiquid assets. I did. I basically did a startup development at the Philadelphia foundation, even though the entity was old, and I'd love to see how I might be able to work with you. And they hired me pretty much not on the spot, but within a couple of weeks, and I left my hospital. Philanthropy, and that was 1996.
- [42:33]
Unknown
But I didn't even realize there was a whole movement to found this before you got there. So who were these people? Why were they doing this? And then how did you make that marriage where you could really accelerate and innovate?
- [42:46]
Eileen Heisman
Yeah, I got. Well, you know, this was this whole theme of, you know, I grew up in a town called Horsham. It was really small, really rural. Well, the town's not small. There's a lot of farms, but not that many people. Now it's much more populated. But it was always, like, wanting to get out of there and sort of hit the. Being a bigger stage, being a grander stage, being a bigger, grander stage. Bigger, grander stage, more interesting people. My father's saying it's not, you know, go to the best thing you do because of who you meet, like, and then the impact you get on these bigger stages. But how did I meet them? Or how did I find.
- [43:25]
Unknown
How did you find each other?
- [43:26]
Eileen Heisman
And who were these people?
- [43:28]
Unknown
They must have been pretty innovative, too.
- [43:30]
Eileen Heisman
Yeah. Did you know a woman named Roberta distaccio?
- [43:34]
Unknown
Oh, of course. Yes.
- [43:35]
Eileen Heisman
Right. So, Roberta. I was on the advisory committee for American Benefactor magazine. And through that, I met a lot of people that I wouldn't have. So she would have these things in New York. And I was on a double. Like, a single spreadsheet. Spreadsheets, the wrong word. The inside of Chronicle Philanthropy. There was a double ad, and it was me on one side holding an American Benefactor magazine, and on the other side, why people should subscribe to it. Like, so she. I got to be, like, a poster person for that. And the Pitcairn Trust Company and the Pitcairn family were investors in the American Benefactor magazine. And so even though the magazine didn't ever really materialize in the way that Roberta envisioned it, it was eventually bought by Worth magazine. And I was pretty involved in the magazine, even, like, the editorial content. Roberta called me and whispered in my ear, and she was a complete stranger. She just came in to do, like, a. Almost like a Focus group in one to one. Like, if you had to buy a magazine to help your donors give, would you do that? And, and we started talking and she's like, I really like you. I want to get you more involved. So I was like, you know, so I, so she. So I get involved with a magazine. Magazine gets bought by Worth. They. I got a job offer then to do with a magazine. I'm really glad I didn't do that. And then I stayed. And then I stayed in my job at Abington Hospital, which I was the hospital I went to as I was growing up as a kid. And I. And when Roberta called me with the second thing of like, I hear that Pitcairn is launching this entity called the National Philanthropic Trust, and it's going to be kind of like a national community foundation. And I know you worked at the Philadelphia Foundation. Maybe you should go work with them. And I had go to see if you can get a job there. I'm like, oh, that's a good idea. And it turned out that because a couple of Pitcairn Trust company and family members would show up at these events, Roberta would host. I'd actually met them and Abington Hospital is a well respected hospital in this region. And so I would talk to them, but I wasn't like, you know, I wasn't like hanging out with them. I'm not like a groupie person. I'm never like that. Right. I just wouldn't like. If I had something to offer, I would talk about it. It was on the Advisor Advisor committee. They would show up, I'd raise my hand, I'd say, I have some thoughts about that, you know, and I'm, I, you know, my outspoken, you know, most individualistic, Eileen doesn't conform person would show up a lot. Right? I mean, not, you know, it's like it's a blessing and a curse sometimes. And so I, I sent my. I called them, I cold called them and I asked if I could come and talk to them, I sent a resume and they said yes because they knew me a teeny bit fit. And, and so I thought, wow, wouldn't it be cool to do a national. I was getting a little bored at the hospital, but I'd gotten promoted. Would it be cool to be involved in like, in a national donor advice fund, like what I did at the Philadelphia Foundation? But. And then, so I went in and they brought me in for the interview. So I went in for the interview and I was talking to this guy who was the CEO at the time, and he told me that. And they were going to bring me in as the first, First Development officer, which I'd already had that role locally, right? So. And I said, so talk to me about what your aspirations are. And he said, he said, my goal was to raise a hundred million dollars in three years. A hundred million dollars. And, you know, I remember feeling, like, choked, like getting choked up, like nervous choked up. And I, but then in my head, literally, like, in about 40 seconds, I went from, I don't think I can do that. That's a ridiculous amount of money to, well, wait a minute. This is like a private bank. They probably have contacts with people of wealth. I already have a plan for my Philadelphia foundation days. I understand how major gifts work. I just stole these major gifts at the hospital. I know there's a lot of wealth out there. I might be able to do that. So in about 40 seconds, I went from they're crazy to in my head to, I think I might be able to do that. I actually said that I might be able to do that.
- [48:00]
Unknown
Eileen, what was the context in terms of the whole marketplace for this? For, for donor advised funds at the time? For those who, who don't know that.
- [48:09]
Eileen Heisman
Nobody. Fidelity had just launched. Fidelity had launched about two years before. Vanguard and Schwab had not launched yet. We were second to the marketplace. They were more kind of retail. This was going to be more sort of a white glove, private banking model. But it was like, it was, it was a product that nobody knew, understood, had language around. There was no technology. There was, technology was old DOS space. There was no knowledge about how it worked. It was all, you know, kind of doing it in these old trust form documents. I mean, it was, you know, but I, I just knew, I knew the business. I had, I had worked at the Community foundation for almost five years, and I had already interviewed nationally, all these people around the country about what they were doing to raise money. I mean, I kind of. And I knew that I had this plan, and I knew that I could take the plan and make it national. I knew that. I knew that.
- [49:10]
Unknown
Did they have that list of people that you imagine they might have, or did you have to go out?
- [49:14]
Eileen Heisman
No, not really. No. It was like, it was the most bombastic thing that I, I, it was. So, you know the word chutzpah? I mean, for those of you listening who don't know the word chutzpah, it's a Yiddish term that means guts, like, kind of gutsy, right? I've always had chutzpah, and it's a blessing and a curse, truly. But I said yes, thinking, I just want to take a shot at this. I just. I want to take a shot at this. I want to be at a national stage. I want to do something that's like a pioneer. I want to see if I could do it. But there was a part of me that I knew I had the tools to do it in my intellect and my organizational skills and my fundraising experience and my knowledge of the product, but I just didn't know all the pieces it was going to take. Ignorance was bliss because I look back, and if somebody would have told me all the things I was going to go through for the next 12 or 15 years, I probably would have said, no, too hard. Don't do that. But I just. There was, like, dangling this opportunity also. I loved being in the charitable world. I loved thinking I was going to make a difference about humanity. The alleviation of human suffering, which is my easiest way of talking about what feels right to me in my own sense of mission, my own personal mission is really important. I get a chance to be on a national stage in a charitable entity that would in some way alleviate human suffering and take advantage of things I was good at. And I knew enough about fundraising and plain giving, and I understood their vision, and I just thought, maybe I can make this happen. And I didn't know. And there was a couple times the first four or five years that I was so shaky on whether it was going to work, work, that I called, you know, when we had assets by then. So I ended up raising $30 million in three years. I didn't raise 100, but there was a few times where I just thought, this is not going to work. And I would call and make an appointment with an entity that I thought would house, because I knew I'd have to rehouse the assets of my Right, you can't just abandon them. And I. And I thought, I'm not going to leave these donors high and dry. So I would. I had calls into people and set up appointments to ask, if this didn't work, could they, you know, could I house the assets with them? And every single time, I think I had three appointments when I was really worried at three different junctures, by the time I got to the appointment, because they were never tomorrow, they were always like, three weeks, a month or something. And by the time I got to the appointment, something good enough would have happened that it would make me feel like I could be optimistic again. And so I would. I would just use Another pivoting reason to talk to them. Oh, I'm just checking in. How's your work going? Let's compare notes. I would just like. And I love these relationships. You know, I. My father used to tell me, if you want somebody to like you, ask them a lot of questions. And so I was really good at doing that. And he was way better than I was. Like, my husband always makes fun of me. He said, you know, the checker in the grocery store or the person you're riding the escalator with, you know, at the train station, like, by the time you finish the escalator ride or your groceries are checked out, you're, like, completely engaged with this person, which is true. I do that a lot. But so I just thought I could do it. And so year four, so we have $30 million. Year four, two really, really important things happen. One is from a cold call that I made to an opinion leader in the nonprofit legal sector in New York. I made a cold call to this woman. About a year later, she called me and referred a gift that she told me was $100 million. And it turned out it was $200 million. So we went from 30 million to 230 million overnight. So I didn't hit. I raised $30 million in three years, but in four years, I raised $230 million. And. And at that same time, I ran into a company, a startup technology company called Giving Capital, who had this idea to private label donor advice funds for large financial firms. And this they at their theory was, you know, now Fidelity, Vanguard, and Schwab had started their own charities. Wouldn't it be cool if there was central charity that could service a lot of firms, rather than having all these big financial companies, companies start their own charities to offer deaths? And that was their model. That wasn't my idea. That was their idea. So they were just about to file to start their own charity. And during those. That year, that year three, that I was worried. And before this $200 million gift hit, I thought, you know what? I really have to reinvent our distribution model. Because it can't just be me running around the country following my plan, my expanded plan that I had taken from my plan at the Philadelphia Foundation. So I made a national plan, but it was exhaust. Ended up in the hospital, exhausted from running around the country. I was a single mother by then, and my kids. And I. And I.
- [54:41]
Unknown
You had two kids by that point, is that right?
- [54:43]
Eileen Heisman
I had two kids by that point, and my son had a lot of behavioral problems in school. So he couldn't go to regular schools. And so my mother was still alive also. And I, and I ended up. So between going into the hospital and being exhausted and running around and so I gave myself about 18 months. I said, you have a great idea. NPT is a great idea, but you have a bad distribution model. You have to figure out a better distribution model. So I started knocking on doors of financial firms. Like, I remember I talked to. Do you know Eileen Wilhelm? She used to run philanthropy at Wachovia. And I talked to SEI and I went and I just talked to people and I about, you know, know, donor advised fund that I, you know, and nobody still, nobody knew donor advised fund. So. And then somebody said, you should talk to this company giving Capital. They, you know, they think they like, they're sort of, they are a distribution model, but they don't have a charity yet. So when I met them, they were just starting to file their 501C3. You know, that was it, the 1024. What is the application for the charitable tax status? And, and I said to them, so we had 230 million. So kind of, you know, I was feeling my oats a little bit. And I said, and I said, you know what? Don't, don't start your own charity. Use us. I said, I know donor advice funds. I understand the operational needs of them. I said, you can, you pick my brain. You can, you know, And I said, I said, and then we already have assets under management, so we can go into the marketplace, you know, with, with a charity that has experience and aum and knowledge and staffs and you can build the back office staff thing and we can. So we started. So they said, fine. So we signed this like, this hugely, like complicated, you know, 35 page contract. And by that time I also told Pitcairn that I felt that it was important that we separated from them because a charity, Fidelity Charitable, had gotten in a little bit of challenge around that same time about being too close to the for profit. So they had created a different kind of service model agreement. And I didn't know that much about it, but it was in Wall Street Journal. And I went to Pickard and I said, you know, Fidelity just run into this problem. I don't really want us to run into it, so why don't we find a way to separate so it can be more independent? And they said, well, we invested a lot of money in npt. And I said, well, I'll pay you back with interest. I don't know, whatever got me Thinking about that. But so we did, we created a deck debt that I was going to owe back and we created a service agreement. And then it's around the same time we created an agreement with Giving Capital to be their provider for the donor advised funds and we started embarking. This was getting thrown to the walls for me, but I sort of loved it. We started cold calling firms on Wall street that we had this donor advice fund idea that they wouldn't have to start their own charity, they could use our charity. We would do all the compliance, all the back office processing. We would legally own the money and Giving Capital would help with distribution. Npt, we were very small at the time and we had that contract with Giving Capital for a number of years and then it was a startup. And they ended up burning through some of their startup capital, a lot of it. And they ended up getting bought by a company that sort of, they didn't go out of business, but they ended up getting bought. And by that time the relationship had gotten strained a little bit because they, you know, because of the nature of the partnership. And somebody told me later that it's very hard to for profit and non profit and a very close relationship kind of competing for fees together. And I look back and that was a really, I mean that was, that was largely accurate, but this idea was really to me still appealing. So even though they went out of business, I thought, you know what, we could probably find other technology. And I remember we only about seven people at the time in NPT. I went around the room, seven people.
- [58:46]
Unknown
And you were already well over probably 300 million at that point.
- [58:50]
Eileen Heisman
So we were probably in the high twos maybe. And I, I remember getting everybody in this conference room and saying, I think we can do this without Giving capital, but I need every one of you to be solidly in there with me because I can't do this alone. And I made everybody around, I went around the room and I said, I need you to tell me verbally that you're in with me. And they all, I said, and I just pointed to everybody, you in, you in, you in, you and you in. And they all said they were in. And you know, we had technology before we knew giving capital. So we actually, you know, we had technology. And, and so we. It was a complicated operational time because I was not an operational expert. I knew was charitable giving expert. Around the same time my board says to me, you're really smart about charitable giving, but you don't know that much about business. How can we get you to Learn more about business. So I ended up becoming a Wharton fellow, and they had the scholarship, and they usually divided it between two people. But I guess I presented in such a compelling way that I got the entire scholarship. I said, if you give me half a scholarship, I can't go. I said, because we don't have any money yet. Wharton gave me the entire scholarship, and I ended up up doing a real immersion year of learning.
- [60:10]
Unknown
I'm trying to. I'm trying to understand something, though, because.
- [60:13]
Eileen Heisman
Am I a lunatic?
- [60:15]
Unknown
Well, no. I mean, you just talked about how, I guess you. You visited the hospital at some point, you now have two kids and you're a single mother. You went through this process of trying to figure out how to make this work. Well, no, now we're all committed. We're going to make it grow. And then you decide to embark on this, this. This program at Wharton. How are you doing all that?
- [60:34]
Eileen Heisman
It was part time. It was like. It was. It was evenings, weekends, like an occasional. Like, like, it would go Friday, Saturday. It was like a year. So it was exact ed. It was an exec ed program, you know, And I just. I. My mother was still alive. When my mother was alive, she was sort of my backup parent. And so. And I had joint custody, my kids. So there were times during the week where they weren't there. Right. But I still. The school still called me when something like the school wasn't. It's not your day, right? It was like, you're. So. I still was on the hook. And my son had incredible behavioral problems. So raising him through those years was really hard. Well, the whole life was really hard. But I. I look back now, you know, and I. I retire. Right? I stepped away. I may not really retire. I'm doing a lot of stuff, but I look back and I go, oh, my gosh. You did that. I think about that every day almost. You did that. You made that happen. And I. I was voraciously curious, but I was. I always called myself, like, a practical dreamer. Like, I would have these visions of things, like the inventions. I'd have these visions of things. And. But then I also had this. Well, how could I make that work? Like, how could that work? Or who do I need to get to help me? Like, I, you know, and so, you know, I had an amazing technology partner at NPT. And, you know, CFOs who were really like, I, you know, I didn't do spreadsheets. Like, I needed somebody to watch the money, and I watched it. We paid the loan back four years early, you know, with interest. And I refinanced it a couple times when interest rates went down, you know, I refinanced it with a nonprofit finance fund. And because I knew debt, I understood. I, you know, I, I had a high degree of common sense. I was really motivated. I love the challenge. Go figure. You know what? I look back and I am sometimes stopped in my own shoes and it happened and that it worked.
- [62:47]
Unknown
When you finally departed npt, what was the corpus then at that point? How much was it?
- [62:57]
Eileen Heisman
We had about 42 billion and we had raised the 63 billion. I was CEO for 26 years, but I was there for 28 years. So I was there in two years, years. And I, they asked me when they kind of, you know, I wasn't really clear exactly how it happened, but they offered me the job of running it. And, and I, I was very flattered and kind of knew that it was going to give me a different breath of influence in the organization by being a CEO and never been a CEO before. So. And I, and what I didn't tell this part of it is when I got sort of going back a little bit, when I did get the job, I thought the community foundation world that I had been really ensconced in and met many friends in, I thought they were going to be really happy and welcome me back, but they didn't. I was like a competitor. They shunned. People who had been really good friends would not talk to me for a while. I eventually got people to talk to me after maybe 12 or 13 years. I tried for about six years to join the Council on Foundation Foundations and they wouldn't let us be a member because we were started by a for profit entity. And I kept working at it. And finally there was a person there who understood why I wanted to join. And that fact that we weren't part of Pitcairn at all, you know, and eventually we did get to be a member. And I think now I think NPT is the only national charity that's a member of the Council on Foundations. And I'm not, you know, and, and so I had all these people that had been my colleagues and I presented at community foundation conferences and I was, I helped to create the national group of advancement professionals inside the community foundation world. I was one of the founders of this group, that group, and all of a sudden I was like shunned, you know, I was shunned.
- [64:54]
Unknown
Was it just the for profit versus non profit kind of?
- [64:57]
Eileen Heisman
It was a competition, I think. And then there Was one of my mentors who was run the California Community Foundation. When he heard that, you know, I was working there, he came to Philadelphia. For some reason, he's still alive. As a former journalist, really a cool guy. I always really liked him. He really helped me. When I was younger, he came to Philadelphia and told me that NPT was never going to grow, it was never going to work and I should merge with the Community Foundations of America, which eventually those guys went out of business. And he said, apologized to me a couple times, more than a couple times. But I just, I just decided after I got shunned that I just had to take the high road. Like I had to do my best job ever, that I wanted to, that I could do. And then I had to service the donors and be a good citizen of the sector and be compliant by the law and do the best I could and hire smart people to kind of have that shared vision with them, them. And that even if this other community of donor advice fund providers didn't want to talk to us or deal with us, that I just needed to keep doing because it was good work that I was doing and I wasn't breaking the law and I wasn't doing anything unethical. And the pie of griving we would participate that our payout was always decent. But the first year we raised 3 million. I mean first year raised a million and 3 million 11 million. Mean it was really small increments that big $200 million gift. Then we had a bad year after that it flattened out. And then we started, you know, this idea of private labeling for large financial firms, or white labeling people call different things was sort of like instead of me running around the country knocking on doors, deploying my, you know, community foundation plan on steroids, I was morphing into training financial advisors and bankers about how to talk about charity to their clients.
- [66:55]
Unknown
And I do what I did and there's a lot to dig into there. We could talk about that for hours.
- [67:00]
Eileen Heisman
I found that riveting actually. And it was like, okay, now I'm in another. Now I'm in another zone here. Still on the same topic, but just like looking at it from a different angle. Think about this five year old little girl whose father is telling her about inventions and how cool they are and what they do and how they make things simpler. Like to me it was like, we have this good idea, but you know, the distribution is not good. So if we can find a better way to distribute it, this gadget's gonna, you know, be used by more people. Right. And I kind of was like. And as soon as Giving Capital told me that, the minute they told me where it connected, I'm like, that's brilliant.
- [67:41]
Unknown
Eileen, how much you talked about how much money is in there today, how much was raised? You didn't talk about how much was then gifted.
- [67:49]
Eileen Heisman
How much was about 30 billion by the, when I was leaving, I was like 28 and a half or 28.8 or something within the end of the month after I left, I think it was closer to 30, but it was about close to 30 billion given away all over the country in the world. And we went global about 10 years before I left, which would be 15 years. I mean, I'm sorry, you know, so NPT has two charities, affiliate charities in the UK. One NPT UK, which is a global donor advice fund provider, and the other one is NPT Transatlantic, which is for dual taxpayers. So by that time we'd actually gone global and none of the other national dafts had gone global. So that was kind of. And we had a lot of global interest early on. And in fact we went to the IRS and in 2001 and asked permission to amend our 1023 to ask that we could give to non 501s, which meant that global we could use expenditure responsibility or equivalency determination to make global grants. And so that was in response to donors asking us when we decided to go global, instead of being just responsive, we were kind of leaning in and saying, okay, this is a product that more than just the US citizens can use. And, you know, I wasn't sure where we were going to go global. So somebody said to me, a really smart person said to me, anybody who was ever part of the British, any country that was ever part of the British Empire will have compatible laws that will be friendlier to donor advised funds. So I started inventorying, you know, you know that old saying, the sun never sets on the British Empire. So I started inventorying countries that, that were fairly sophisticated, who were under the guise of British Empire and had laws they could fit into that category. And I ended up narrowing it down to Hong Kong, UK and India. And I just said India was too big, complicated, culturally different. I did visit Hong Kong and the uk. Hong Kong was several years away from being taken over by China. Remember when? Yeah. And so I just thought there's no way I was going to start raising capital in a country that was necessarily going to be taken over by the Chinese government. Like what would happen to the capital? Right. You know, the money. And so. And then London, you know, from Philadelphia you can get to London in like five hours. The banking systems were kind of similar. Little did I know. And this was sort of one of my big funny aha moments to myself. I thought I could read British. I'm really good. My EQ is probably on my more sophisticated parts of my brain that I thought my EQ would be equivalently good in London as it would be in the States. And I completely misread everybody probably for the first two years. I just didn't get the Brits approach to how they do business together. And we had two different CEOs. And I spent a lot of time after I realized that I was misreading people so dramatically, including in my investigation stage, I was misreading people. It was really scary. I would then say, did this meeting go well? We would come out of a new business meeting. I'd say, did it go well? Because I would realize that I didn't know and understand the British business practices and how they communicated what they liked and didn't like and the language they would use. They're much more polite than we are. Americans will say, no, I don't like that, or we're not ready for that, or it's a nice, good idea, but it's not for us. But the Brits don't say that. They're much more polite.
- [71:28]
Unknown
Plus, you must have been dealing with two concepts which have a different way of thinking and feeling about them and different language for those things. One is about business and money, their relationship to money, and the other is about giving the money away. And they also had a very different decision system of philanthropy.
- [71:43]
Eileen Heisman
So all these things they can imagine. I was like, and so the UK success has been, has been successful. And they're still in their early years, in my opinion. It took NPT about 12 years to kind of get its sea legs. And so they're just around that point now. But my misreading of those things culturally, you know, was risk. It was a risk. And talking about risk, I mean, you know, risk management about, you know, maybe about 2006 or 7, I realized that risk management was a, was a structured body of knowledge. And so I. The first risk management program NPT created, I created my own, my common sense. And then it turns out we eventually called a consulting firm like an accounting firm. And now they have a big enterprise risk management program. But one of my board members, member said, who did this risk management program? I said, I did. I said I did it based on kind of What? You know, risk management, or things you don't want to happen have happened, or things that have happened that you never want to have happen again. Right?
- [72:54]
Unknown
Yeah. But you don't necessarily know all the things that might happen. I mean, you do your best, but.
- [72:59]
Eileen Heisman
You have to spin your imagination. Right. So you have to look at the things that have happened that you wish never to happen again. And then you have to. To. You have to catastrophize professionally. Right?
- [73:09]
Jay Frost
Right.
- [73:10]
Eileen Heisman
Yeah. And so. So my brother's a chess master, so I never played chess, but one of the things that he can do that I realized that I had a talent for, but not till I was like 55, like, pretty old, that I could spin what if scenarios in my head really fast. I can still do it. I mean, I can. And so when you're depressed and in a bad mood, it's really scary. It's terrifying. But if you're pretty excited and happy, you can really spin, like, if this happens and that happens. Right. So in NPTs, like opportune moments, that my ability to do that was a gift. And NPT scary moments, it was a, you know, like, it gets you up at 2 in the morning. I got up at 2 in the morning a lot for 28 years.
- [73:50]
Unknown
So how is it on the home front? Because if you're going spinning those scenarios at work, at least it's when with money that you hope to grow in order to do great social impact, but the money's in already or you're raising more of it. So the scenario is about how to protect the assets, I guess, and how to do good work. But at home, it's a totally different thing. I mean, any decision that might be wrong has these terrible potential impacts.
- [74:17]
Eileen Heisman
Yeah. I mean, you know, so that's an inner. So that that gift and or curse that I have is also interfaced with my being a general optimist. Right. So I don't really believe the only times I've been parrot and paranoid in my life, somebody really was out to get me. Like, it wasn't like, you know, like, you know, I get paranoid and then. And I often would get that affirmed somewhere. I'm like that person. I would define somebody who would like, tell me, I said, that person doesn't like that person has. And I. And they're like, yeah, you're right. They didn't like you. They were out to get you. I'm like, okay, good, my antennas are working. But I. So I had an optimism. But when I at home, especially with my son who Had a lot of mental health issues. I remember reading books and telling. I got remarried and telling my husband, you know, this is really. Some of this behavior patterns are really scary to me. And he would say, I want you to throw the book away, because the book would feed my fear of what was going to happen to him in his life. And so. And you know this from. But he died by suicide when he was 30, and he had a lot of problems and he was incarcerated. And so some of those books that he made me throw away were kind of forecasting, you know, what happens to kids who had behavior issues similar to his. And so, you know, it's like having an. It's like having an institutionalized risk management structure in your head, right? Like, you know, and I wasn't so funny. I never could balance my checkbook, but I understood the principle of spending more than you have. So. And I was like. And so I would, you know, so debt, you know, and what meant to have debt. Like, I. I understood the basics of finance. And so even though I was better balancing my checkbook, you know, and I had to learn how to do budgets on all those things. And we had debt to Pitcairn and all this stuff, it was all like common sense principles about money and how it works. And so that stuff didn't scare me. But, you know, having a child that has a lot of problems was terrifying.
- [76:30]
Unknown
Because where did you find the. The optimism in dealing with that? Because that's, that's harder. I mean, in a way, I was.
- [76:40]
Eileen Heisman
Not always optimistic because there was enough. I had this. In prospect research. One of the things you learn as a fundraiser is past behavior is the best indication of future behavior. If somebody's given to the environment and you're running an arts organization, there's not a very good chance that that donor is going to give to you. But my son had serially behavior issues from a very, very, very young age. And as he grew and they got more complicated, it was hard to be optimistic. Because when you think of past behavior being indication of future, the best indication of future behavior, then you're dealing with somebody that's serially behaved in erratic and unpredictable ways. And the chances of them changing in my head were like, I just knew. So I just kept thinking, maybe this school, maybe this next medication, and maybe a change in the environment, maybe, you know, at some point I suggested that he live with his dad because I thought maybe I was having a bad influence over him. And so I just kept trying things, thinking that there's maybe the next I sent him to a residential treatment center in Texas that did diagnostics like neurodiagnostics for kids that I thought maybe had a brain dysfunction. I had him evaluated for fetal alcohol syndrome syndrome. I just kept thinking that if we just figured out what the source of the problem is, maybe we could be better at fixing it. And so I never gave up on that. But, but we never figured it out. It never was figured it out. And I believe that's a physiological part of his brain that just either didn't develop properly or, you know, the neurons didn't fire in a timely way or, I mean, I think they're fine. Finding physiological sources for a lot of mental health issues. I mean, antidepressants, you know, and there's things that, that we do know about the brain. So I think, you know, that he was born at a time that, you know, and we're still in the early stages of understanding the brain. So that was really humbling. That was really humbling. And, you know, I would have these amazing victories at work, like victories that I never could have expected. The $200 million gift or, you know, signing on some of the most high profile banks in the country, in the world, to be partners and in our model. And, you know, often that day or the next day, I'd come home and that was his name, would have had a bad day at school or at camp or, you know, I would be called by a teacher or the principal would come pick him up. You have to pick them up. And, and so I just, I, I didn't know what to do. I, I, I used to read, you know, the story of Job. I had. I, I used to talk about Job because I sort of knew the story kind of more anecdotally. But then I thought, you know, if I talk about this, I should really know about it. So I put a book about the story of Job, the biblical story. And I'm not a terribly religious person and, but I read the book and I left it on my front desk that I walk, when we walk into the front of our house, there's a desk there, that's my desk. And I leave my purse there and you know, so I left the book there. It was there for like 10 years, that book. It was, I looked at it all the time and, you know, Job was testing God, was testing Job to make sure that he still loved him, right? That was. So he took his wife away, burn his house down, took his livelihood away, did all that stuff. And I thought, why, why do I have this child like, what. What is it that I'm supposed to be learning? Like, what. What is it that. Why did I get this responsibility? And. And I felt like I was being tested a lot. And. And as much as I didn't help him, as much as I would love to have helped at work, my ability to rationally make decisions and move in ways that were rational, like cause and effect work, right. I knew, like, if I did these five things, there's a likelihood that I'd have some degree of success with my son. I would do these five things and I would not have success. So it was humbling often so. But I felt work made me feel like I was making sense of the world, and being a parent to him didn't bring that satisfaction. And it was frustrating and sad. I cried about it a lot. And so on one hand, I was like, on top of the world of having this thing grow. And, you know, and then about 06, I cold called a dean at Penn and said I wanted to teach a course on philanthropy and fundraising. I mean, talk about not having time, but I just decided I want to pay it forward. And I wanted to. To have this experience with these students. And I've been teaching for almost 20 years, and I wanted to be that person also. And I tried really, really, really hard, but it didn't turn out the way I had hoped. And it was always humbling. Like, literally, I'd say every single piece of unbelievably good news was contrasted usually within a day or two of something shatteringly sad that had happened with him that I had to deal with as his mom. And I just did it. I just did it. And it wasn't fun. It wasn't fun. Work made me feel successful. Home made me feel sometimes powerless. And so I just. But I didn't want to be defined by that. I didn't want to. To be defined by. By him, his problems. And there's a saying about, oh, you're only good is your worst kid or something. There's a. You know, you're only, like, buoyed as, you know. And I was like, no, that's not true. But I was. When I saw people, like, it's like my mother and the girl with a cleft lip, it was like, people have problems and people are dealing with home issues that are really complicated and marriages fall apart and kids don't. Aren't the perfect kids. And, you know, and. And there's stuff that happens in our lives that are so testing and painful and a lot most people don't talk about them. But I'm actually writing a book a lot about what I'm talking about now, which is not in the duality of being, you know, this lean in person that wanted to raise all this charitable capital, make the world a better place. And then a mother of a. Of somebody who was suffering a great deal and tried to help, but. And you know, that the duality was a part of my life and a lot. And I hardly ever talked about it. Almost nobody knew about it. Nobody. So as Bowling alone, being a CEO, you bowl alone a lot. But being a mother of a child with those kinds of challenges, you also bowl alone.
- [83:38]
Unknown
You had. You had refuge at work. It sounds like I did, and a lot of success. Can you take us to how you decided to transition out of that role? Because I know you've lost your son, your daughter, I guess, has done well and you're teaching today and you're doing lots of things, you're writing a book. But deciding to leave NPT after all, that's success. Must have been then just opening yourself up to this world that offers less control than you could exert at work.
- [84:15]
Eileen Heisman
Yeah, I gave my board two and a half years notice, actually really long time because I knew they needed to do a search and I knew part of it was for myself to get myself used to it, to get the staff kind of used to it. I told them probably a year later, so know, there was a year where the board knew and I knew, but I don't think anybody else knew. And I. It was just time, you know, I'd done all, you know, you can't be a CEO forever. I didn't want to be a CEO forever. It was a lot of responsibility. The world, technology and AI. A bunch of things were happening that I loved and would, you know, if I had been 35 and leaning in, I probably would have eaten it up. I mean, I wasn't. I think I became CEO and I was like 40, 46 or something. But I just. It was just time. I feel like I made my contribution. All the other national dafts had turned over their presidencies, CEOs a couple times, and like, there I was. And that wasn't the motivation. It was my age, where I was, my achievements, just time to do it. My husband sold his business to a private equity firm, so he was winding down from that part of his life and. And I was still healthy. I really loved to travel and I worked a lot. I worked all the time. When Liza was in high school, I hired somebody to help Be like college counselor. We ought to go around the room and do an ice breaking exercise about what you liked about whatever your family, I don't know. And when Liza, when she got to meet and we're very close, she said, this is liza at age 14 or 15. My mom works all the time. That was her comment. And I was like, I, I look back, I was, I just, I just didn't want that to be the. My entire, you know, I wanted time to breathe, like I wanted time. And I've been enjoying. I, like, I wake up at 7:00, which is like noon for me. Like when I, you know, so I, So, you know, I sleep in a little bit. I'm teaching at Penn still. I'm gonna probably teach the second course, writing a book. I'm thinking about hanging my hat with a consulting firm, though I'm not quite ready to do it yet. I'm. I have a. I have one consulting contract and I have other things that have been dangled in front of me but haven't come to fruition. And so I'm just trying to figure out what I want, like, to do. Like, I haven't been the master of my own universe and how I could spend time. So I just. This is really interesting. Part of me doesn't even know what I really like to do in spare time because I never had it. I worked on weekends, I worked on evenings. I. The board would call. I had 14, 15 board members. I never didn't take the calls, you know, and I mean, I, you know, I had a call. I had one of my board members called me every Memorial Day, which was often my birthday, and had something he wanted to talk to me about. And I thought, wow, you really love calling. I mean. And I would. The evenings. And then I had a board chair who's really, you know, had a really, really consuming job. And she said, you know, I can talk to you on Saturday mornings between like 8 and 10. I'm like, okay. You know. And so I, I just didn't. There was no such thing. There was no 9 to 5, ever, ever. And so I'm now. So I never, you know, I go to the theater. Like, I'm a huge theater fan. I go to the theater. I live about an hour. You know, Philadelphia's close to New York, so I know that, I know that. I like that. But there's other things I'm just still trying to figure out, like what do I want to do? I do a lot. A fair amount of Pilates. I was doing a Lot of yoga for a while. And I so. And I'm with a book is kind of taking a lot of my time at this very moment, but I'm trying to figure it out. And so I'm thinking of a corporate board. I'd love to be in a corporate board, but a lot of times they think, oh, you ran a chair, you know, what do you know? But I, I know that it's not true. Like, I know that I have an enormous amount giving, given what NPT did in the Pro, you know, interfacing with large financial firms and building all this interfacing technology and doing all this management and dealing with the liquid assets and insurance and governance issues. I mean, you know, all those things are like floating inside my head all the time. And I.
- [88:27]
Unknown
Inside your head. I mean, you're constantly again looking for, for the change, for the new thing, for the better way. So when you now taking it aside from how you want to spend your own time, when you're looking at the whole landscape of everything, which is a lot, but I have a feeling you're looking at all of it, from politics to charity and everything in between. What do you think remains undone, whether or not you are the chief engineer behind it?
- [88:54]
Eileen Heisman
In my life.
- [88:54]
Unknown
You mean just out there in the sector?
- [88:57]
Eileen Heisman
In the sector. I don't think we've figured out access to capital. Like if I just say one, you know, of course fundraising is capital, but, you know, everybody wants charities to fix problems in smart, efficient ways. But there's no R and D, right? There's no. Like when you look at a company and they are looking at their next product or service, you know, they have this big R&D department. They test ideas, they do things, focus groups, whatever it is, they, they have model widgets that they'll figure out. But charities are supposed to do everything in a shoestring. And this whole demonization of overhead, which charity navigator. And I know they don't embrace it anymore, but I had donors talking about that as I was leaving npt. People still hanging on. Overhead is bad. Something just happened politically that you can't put overhead reducing overhead greatly in grants. And it's like you're supposed to be these creative, thoughtful, sensitive, brilliant people solving social problems with no R and D access to capital. And capital meaning money. And, and it is such an intractable problem. And R and D is overhead. You know, having good telephone phones and equipment and computers that are contemporary are all part of overhead. Having training for your staff is all overhead. And this demonization of overhead and the lack of access to capital to do things like R and D is like, means that the same people that are delivering the service are trying to think of a way to make it better. And the CEOs raising money and doing organizational design and doing a staff retreat and doing all this stuff. I mean, paying a person to help you do a staff retreats, overhead, right? And so all the things that the for profit sector takes for granted as part of how they do their work, especially the bigger entities with the charitable sector does, that were somehow the bad guys.
- [90:50]
Unknown
So Eileen, if, and I just find that reprehensible, if the, if the nonprofit sector had access to capital, if they weren't obsessed with overhead, what do you imagine the sector could do?
- [91:04]
Eileen Heisman
I think they could be a lot smarter about finding solutions to some of these social problems that we, that, that they were supposed to. And somebody, one of my early, early, early mentors said to me that in the capitalist world that if somebody can figure out a way to make money on a product or service, capitalism will take care of that. Anything else is left in the nonprofit sector. All the things that are difficult, expensive, don't have a return in that way. And that's the problems that we're 10% of the workforce, we're 2% of the gross domestic product. And, and so we're left with the most complicated things without the tools to do them. And I think, you know, trial and error, like people want to go, oh, go with the tried and true charity. But what if it's time to change an approach? What if it's time to use technology differently? What if it's time, but we don't have the capital to even experiment with it. And you know, maybe it takes three or four tries to get something right. Right. I mean, I remember when Coca Cola wanted to change its amount of sugar it had in it or whatever, the amount of vanilla, right? It's like they try these things, right? And, and you know, in the hardware stores and going back to my father, you know, things that are invented, you know, like we need to invent new and different approaches to address social problems, but it takes inventiveness and resources to kind of let that incubate and happen. And some are going to work and some aren't going to work. And there's nothing wrong with an idea not working. It's the, like, you learn more. You've definitely asked anybody who's a relatively mature person, you could say, when do you learn the most in your life? The painful things you learn more, right? So when you, you know, so if you did, you know, and so this, if we treated some disorder some way 15 years ago and there's new ways to treat it, we have to, like, change with the times and adapt to the times. And I think that lack of capital keeps us, keeps us in. That's the way we always did it. When that's not, that's not the way, you know, that's not the way the evolution of change and progress gets made. And it's heartbreaking to me. It's heartbreaking. And when I've been in the private sector and they tell me about the R and D, I remember saying, you have money to do that? When I was at Wharton, I was the only nonprofit person in the class. And I was like. And they would tell me, and like, I was like, like I said, wow, that's so amazing.
- [93:27]
Jay Frost
Well, that's it for this episode of the PM Podcast. You can learn more about national philanthropic trust@nptrust.org Our thanks to our sponsor, Donor Search, the world leader in AI and donor research for nonprofit fundraising. Our producer is Jack Frost, and our theme music is Moving Out, Moving in by Jay Taylor and is provided courtesy of Epidemic Sound. If you like what you heard, make sure sure to subscribe wherever you like to listen. Check out our sister shows, Front Lines of Social Good and How to Raise. And come back next weekend for another conversation with a leader in the world of social good. Until then, this is Jay Frost. Thanks for joining me.