St. Petersburg philanthropist Beth Morean, an ardent supporter of arts and medical causes, believes many nonprofits will fold if they don't change the way they operate. Sustainable revenue streams, she says, are essential because previously reliable sources of philanthropic dollars dried up after the 2008 global financial crisis, and wealthy baby boomers like her are getting to the age where they'd rather spend their money on "fun things" instead of charitable causes.
"I'm a businessperson. I don't believe the nonprofit model works, and it hasn't worked in a long time," Morean says. "A nonprofit operates by sticking its hand out and hoping somebody fills it with money. Those days are long gone."
Morean made her fortune in real estate and was instrumental in establishing St. Petersburg's Morean Arts Center, Morean Glass Studio, Morean Center for Clay and the city's stunning collection of Dale Chihuly's glass art. She also donates to the Tampa Bay Research Institute, founded in 1981 to study viruses, cancer and the immune system. She established the Chihuly Collection, a permanent display of the renowned Seattle artist's work, to fund her other arts endeavors. And she insisted on buying the artwork, as opposed to having it loaned, so it will stay in the city in perpetuity.
Conventional nonprofit models, she argues, are unsustainable. "I've never operated anything that I've been involved with as a nonprofit," Morean says. "It just doesn't work. You're constantly begging, begging, begging all the time. And it depends on what you're doing: If you have a nonprofit that's curing cancer and you have a nonprofit that's giving art classes, whose palm do you think is going to get filled?"
The Tampa Bay Research Institute isn't self-sustaining in the same way as Morean's arts facilities, but she supports its work because of the high stakes — "viruses are going to be the thing in the future that will kill us all," she says — and because its funding requests are tied to specific projects, and she can see progress and results at her meetings with its leadership.
"Medicine is pretty cut and dried," she says, "but my thing is, don't ask me for some open-ended amount. I want a very specific, detailed plan, and I want to know how much (you want). You come to me, we put a plan together, I give you the money, but don't come back to me six months later saying the program is failing because we need another $100,000. Well, you know what? Too bad. I'm not going to do that. It's just throwing good money after bad."