And Now a Word From Our Fund-Raiser

How Kimmel Center CEO Anne Ewers separates the rich from their money

“FRED SHABEL had invited me to go to see Genesis,” Ewers says during a recent afternoon meeting with Kimmel staff, planning that week’s fund-raising salvos as methodically as one might, say, plot an IPO. There she was in the box for the rock concert with Shabel, the Comcast-Spectacor exec, and his wife Irene, says Ewers. “And the suite was full of younger couples, people we could get involved with the [Kimmel] gala.” Ewers, who is single, is still figuring out the Philly players; she takes notes every night on whom she’s met, then does research on their finances, their interests, even their musical likes and dislikes, so that she can have prospects join her in the Kimmel President’s Box.

“I think there’s major buckage there,” she speculates to Rose McManus, a Kimmel development executive, of a certain bubbly blond Rittenhouse Square socialite with whom Ewers enjoyed ’80s-tastic beats in Shabel’s box. The two agree to invite said socialite to work on next year’s Kimmel gala, and to sit in Ewers’s box for a performance of someone cool, like K.D. Lang, and to go to dinner with Ewers. …

Which is how the magic of fund-­raising works. Specifically, for Ewers, it boils down to four crucial steps:

Step one: Create a buzz. With the Kimmel, this wasn’t as hard as you might think. It seems everyone in philanthropic circles was ready for a new face, and after some newspaper stories stressing the urgency of the Kimmel’s financial plight, and a few cocktail parties with Kimmel trustees, Ewers was ready to …

Step two: Meet everyone. Everyone with money, that is. Since July, Ewers has spent her days, and nights, breaking bread with new friends such as jeweler Craig Drake and Brian Tierney, gleaning ideas for donors from the PMA’s Anne d’Harnoncourt (“Ray Perelman brought us together at lunch yesterday — I loved it,” says Ewers of meeting d’Harnoncourt), and attending parties thrown for her, like one given last fall by Ann Weaver Hart, the president of Temple. These help her to …

Step three: Arrange key meetings. Armed with research about the individuals and foundations she’s approaching, Ewers e-mails her well-connected trustees to have them set up some face time. And then …

Step four: Move in for the “Ask.”

“I’VE HAD TWO incredible meetings in the last week,” Ewers says happily in October. “The first one was strictly a get-acquainted meeting,” she explains, with the head of a foundation, “and I was not to mention money. So we did all the niceties, and then the individual said, ‘Okay, let’s get to the bottom line.’ The people who had instructed me about the meeting were in the room,” she adds, “but I thought, okay, let’s get to it.” Ewers told him exactly how much she thought his foundation should proffer, and what that money would accomplish.