The real-estate developer, activist, and civic builder talks to Michael E. Hartmann about the idea of time limits on foundations, as well as his and his wife’s own donor intent—and the worth of the hard work in determining and articulating it.
“I’ve got to be my own boss,” Steven M. Schuck told me during a conversation we had six years ago. As his own boss, Schuck is a successful real-estate developer based in Colorado Springs, Colo., an activist on behalf of projects and sometimes policies to encourage dignity and independence, and a civic builder. He is chairman of The Schuck Initiatives.
Schuck’s lifetime’s worth of active civic involvement has included service on the board of The Daniels Fund in Denver. He was part of the strenuous effort to preserve the donor intent of his friend Bill Daniels—about which The Giving Review co-editor William A. Schambra has recently written here.
Naturally enough, people like Schuck who are their “own bosses” are also people who care about protecting and effectuating the intent of donors after their deaths. He is a passionate believer in—and something of an evangelist, equally passionate, for—the cause of donor intent.
Schuck was kind enough to join me for another conversation last week. During the first part of our discussion, which is here, he talks about the principle of donor intent and the practical importance of articulating it with some specificity.
The edited, just more than nine-minute video below is the second part, in which we talk about the idea of time limits on foundations, as well as his and his wife’s own donor intent—and the worth of the hard work in determining and articulating it.
On those who propose time limits on foundations, “They all say ‘We’re going to spend it down because I don’t trust my successors,’” Schuck tells me. “To me, that’s sort of quitting. That’s sort of throwing in the towel. …
“What I’m talking about doing is hard work,” he continues.
It is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I made money, lost money—two or three times lost it all, made it back. That was a cakewalk … compared to figuring out and defining how to give it away effectively. So it’s hard work, so most of our guys don’t want to do that, go to that kind of effort. And if they don’t, then you and I have seen the movie, and it’s going to end up like Ford or Rockefeller or MacArthur or Pew …. I think I have a responsibility to be to go to the effort and do the work necessary.
He asks rhetorically, “Is my approach perfect? Hell no, not a chance,” he good-naturedly answers himself, “but it’s moving, hopefully, moving the needle in the right direction.” In his videos, “I don’t talk about the methodology or the means. We don’t talk about that. We talk about values, objectives.
“The primary objective of The Schuck Initiatives,” according to Schuck,
is to move people from dependency to independence. It could be dependence on substance, or dependency on the government. I want people to become independent. That’s applicable in education, for school choice. It’s applicable in substance abuse. It’s the values that drive our goals for the future, not organizations or methodology or any of that kind of stuff. I’m a long way from being smart enough to be able to anticipate everything, but stating values and objectives is, again, we think survivable. It will survive most attacks.
For those who may be uncertain or skittish about meeting the donor-intent challenges Schuck lays out, “We will do the hard work, we’ll ask the tough questions for you and distill it all down to use a usable format, etc., etc.,” he says, “but don’t just give up. You sort of have a responsibility. … I mean, there are all kinds of people who are available if somebody cares enough and if they don’t want to do the work.
But “don’t do nothing. Don’t leave it up to chance,” he concludingly urges. “I’ve seen that movie, and that’s why the left is so powerful today … because we have left the field open. We’ve created this vacuum. Just our passivity has created the vacuum that they fill. And shame on us. We have nobody to blame but ourselves.”
