Rosenthal: Muscular Dystrophy Association moving to Chicago area

Charity, which has seen decline in fundraising, hopes to get closer to corporate donors

September 22, 2013|Phil Rosenthal

Steven Derks, president and CEO of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, says the decision to move the group to the Chicago area is based on a recognition that it needs to “develop business relationships for fundraising purposes.” (HANDOUT)

Steven Derks, the president and chief executive of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, is talking to me. Or he's trying to. Although we're both in Chicago, his call has been looped through his Arizona office. By the time what he's saying gets back into the 312 area code, some of it is hard to make out and goes unheard.

Which unintentionally illustrates one of the rationales for the MDA's just-announced decision to move its national headquarters here from Tucson, Ariz.

The MDA's top brass has come to recognize it needs to deal more directly with the would-be corporate benefactors it courts. The last few years have seen the organization that entertainer Jerry Lewis made famous shrink, its revenue and spending down. It's time to emerge from the desert and engage supporters on their own turf.

"One of the reasons I was hired to come in and work with our staff and our board was to determine our way forward," said Derks, who joined the MDA a year ago after a decade with the American Cancer Society's Illinois division, where he was CEO.

The plan is to keep most of the 110-person staff in Tucson, where the MDA moved its headquarters from New York more than 20 years ago. But the organization will sell the headquarters it built there and move its leadership to 15,000 to 20,000 square feet of leased space in Chicagoland early next year.

If a Chicago-area site has been selected, no one is saying anything beyond the fact that price will be a factor. Even the proposed staffing here of 30 to 40 workers is in flux, as it is not yet clear how many of those Chicago jobs will be new hires or relocated employees from Arizona or the MDA's existing Chicago field office. Although the official MDA announcement quoted Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the organization has not ruled out a suburban site.

The MDA reportedly received about $4 million in incentives from Arizona, county government and the Tucson business community when it moved there from New York. There has been nothing like that this time around, so far. "We have not broached that subject yet," Derks said. "It's not the same as 1990."

That move involved relocating 200 people across the country and construction of a new building. This involves cashing out a property and more effectively using the staff and other resources it has closer to where they might do good.

"This is a realization of and response to what our needs are, to be deployed and dispersed more strategically across the United States with our people in the right spots," Derks said. "We'll take advantage of the opportunity to continue on in Tucson and to have a significant workforce there, helping serve MDA. But we also need to be in areas where we can develop business relationships for fundraising purposes, where we can engage with our clinical research leadership and we can also be accessible to the rest of the United States."

Why Chicago? For one thing, Walgreen, United Airlines, McDonald's, Kraft and other corporations are based here. Harley-Davidson, a longtime MDA supporter, is just north in Milwaukee. Derks and his colleagues presumably will see their leaders more in both formal and informal settings after the move — and in sight, in mind. There's no shortage of research and outreach opportunities in the area, and then there's O'Hare. The charity also looks to beef up its presence in other cities.

What's interesting about this real estate move to get closer to donors is that the MDA long had prime real estate in America's consciousness, some of which it has ceded of late.

For decades, Lewis' Labor Day telethon showcased corporate donors, old-time variety-show entertainment and the charity's work to support research, patient care and affected families through an ad hoc TV network. A lot of the money funneled through the broadcast would have come to the organization anyway, and not all pledges are fulfilled, so it's tough to know their precise worth in terms of dollars, but the exposure Lewis' tireless efforts yielded was priceless.

A connection was forged. But media and media consumption changed. Lewis' relationship with MDA leadership frayed, and there was an unnecessarily abrupt divorce after the 2010 telethon.

While noting "MDA is forever grateful to Jerry Lewis for all that he's done in the service of this mission and reaching the American public," Derks gave no indication a thaw is likely.

The charity's fundraising TV show has grown smaller each year since Lewis' exit — this month's was a two-hour ABC special — and though the organization says it is satisfied with how its Labor Day efforts have evolved, the MDA doesn't enjoy the same presence it once did.