MajorGiftsMT

I TEAR UP EVERY TIME I hear Michael J. Fox talk on the radio. Maybe owing to people close to me who suffered the same or similar condition as Michael’s. Maybe because those people demonstrated that same kind of courage and self effacement as this still relatively young man.

Michael J. Fox has a new book (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future) which is partially why he popped out of my radio this  morning on Weekend Edition Saturday with Scott Simon. I say, partially, because he has been on that program before. It is always evident that Scott Simon is moved, no, awed, by the man. It is not the disability that impresses Simon, I think, but what the actor has learned from the disability and which he willingly shares with all of us.

WE MAY DENY our own mortality.  But there’s no escaping the knowledge of it. Some day we all become ill. Our bodies deteriorate. Michael Fox teaches us that our spirit need not deteriorate as well. He gives testimony to this every time he steps up to the podium; every time he walks into the broadcast studio; every time he talks to anyone he meets. His body fails him but he is not defeated. He has much to do.

Michael Fox has his own foundation that supports Parkinson’s Disease research. He said today he is obtaining help from the same financial titan types who thought him a role model back in the Family Ties sitcom days. He told Simon:

It’s ironic that now as I’m a fund raiser for a foundation, some of our biggest supporters are people on Wall Street and in the financial industry — hedge fund managers and stuff — that grew up idolizing Alex Keaton. So it’s come around in this weird karmic way that these people who I was satirizing ended up being my biggest benefactors.

I don’t doubt he’s very good at asking for money.

WHAT MAKES HIM GOOD? Is it his courage, his cheerful disposition? Those things do help I expect. I think what also is important — that he is willing to surrender himself to the cause. His failings become his strengths. He is not afraid to ask because he has taught himself to not be afraid of being in the public eye. Which is more difficult? I think you know the answer.

The effective fund raiser is not in the least daunted by failure. She learns from it and for that opportunity maybe, briefly, embraces failure. The urgent philanthropic need lives on and we must apply ourselves again the next day and the day after that. Some will not comprehend the opportunity we represent. There are many more not yet found who will. Especially if we keep learning from our failures.

There is no perfect fund raising case and no perfect fund raiser. We can strive for perfection if we so choose by stumbling and learning; stumbling and learning. Michael J. Fox shows us how.