Florida's Best, Worst Charities

Barbara Miracle | 8/1/2008

Philharmonic Center for the Arts — Naples

Revenue	$29,355,117
Expenses	$26,285,439
Program expenses	$24,030,358	91.4%
Administrative expenses	$1,516,442	5.8%
Fund-raising expenses	$738,639	2.8%
Fund-raising efficiency: 8 cents is spent in fund raising for every $1 raised.

Myra Janco Daniels takes a personal approach to fund raising. [Photo: éBella Magazine]

“I don’t ask people for money. I paint a picture of what they will receive,” says Myra Janco Daniels, founder, chairwoman and CEO of the Philharmonic Center for the Arts in Naples. Daniels, a former advertising executive, may not ask for money, but she’s perfected the art of appealing to southwest Florida’s wealthy residents, capitalizing on their particular interests in the arts. She set up an Opera Guild, Dancemakers and Orchestra League, groups that give those donors the opportunity to meet the artists at informal dinners before and after events. But Daniels’ personal touch is perhaps the most important fund-raising tool. She attends events at the Phil, as it is known, just about every evening she’s in town, taking the opportunity to chat informally with event goers. When she sent update letters to 500 donors, she says, “There wasn’t a letter that I didn’t put a personal note on.”

As for administrative costs, Daniels says the center has an advantage because there is one umbrella organization. It oversees the orchestra, Philharmonic Center, Naples Museum of Art and a school of the arts.

Daniels’ mission to build a chamber orchestra — which became the Naples Philharmonic Orchestra — began in the early 1980s. A chance call to the late Frances “Frannie” Pew Hayes at the start of her fund raising led to a $25,000 donation and an invitation to a Pew Foundation meeting where she asked for $2 million to build the arts center. She got it and then persuaded Byron Koste, then-president of Westinghouse Communities — now WCI — to donate 8½ acres of prime property at Pelican Bay.

Today, Daniels says, “It is not easy. Costs are going up.” The struggling real estate market is impacting donations by middle-income residents. Long term, she says, “You have the problem of teaching the Baby Boomers how to give.”

Still, Daniels knows that the affluent Naples market gives her an advantage: “Most of our big donors are captains of industry.”