Capital Campaign donors share their motivations
Going through life, said Stephen Marcus, chairman and CEO of the Marcus Corporation, “you can’t just be a taker. Those who are able [should] give back.”
Though Marcus said his grandparents were very modest people who came to this county with nothing but “the clothes on their backs,” he said, “when they were able to they always wanted to share.”
And at the same time that his father, Ben Marcus, first went in business 70 years ago, with the opening of a single movie theater in Ripon, he also formed the Variety Club Children’s Charities of Wisconsin, which raised a great deal of money for children’s causes and is still in existence today, Marcus said.
“[There was] always something philanthropic going on,” Marcus said of the culture of generosity that still runs through his family.
The Stephen Marcus family is one of eight local families, trusts and foundations, which have each made a gift of more than $1 million to the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Community Capital Campaign (there are also currently seven $1 million donors). As of press time, the total amount raised is $36,826,000, with a goal of $40 million.
In addition to the Marcus family, gifts of more than $1 million have been made by the Marianne and Sheldon Lubar family, the Mimi and Robert Habush family, the Harris Turer family, Sen. Herb Kohl, the Debra Altshul-Stark and Brian Stark family, the Daniel M. Soref Charitable Trust and the Helen Bader Foundation.
What inspires someone to give so generously to their community and to a project that is, according to federation president David J. Lubar, “the Milwaukee Jewish community’s largest undertaking ever?”
According to Harris Turer, who said that his family has always “believed strongly in giving back to the community,” it is because “we are a very fortunate family,” he said. “It is important to reinvest in the Milwaukee Jewish [community] and the community in general.
“The community supported our family,” he added, and therefore, “we feel it is important to give back and say thank you.”
Others feel they are sending a message to future generations.
“Our family’s leadership role and financial commitment is a statement to our children and the entire community of the importance of this campaign in ensuring that we have a modern, vibrant Jewish community for the future,” said Lubar.
“We were the beneficiaries [of the current facilities],” Marcus said, and “we need to provide them for the next generation.”
“The prior generation of founders have given us a wonderful asset,” Robert L. Habush agreed, and “it is unthinkable that we would allow it to deteriorate. The torch was passed to subsequent generations — it would be a breach of faith to not to” carry it on.
Filling a need
The Capital Campaign project construction, which broke ground on June 22 at the Karl Jewish Community Campus, includes new facilities and renovations that will take place at both the north and south buildings there, as well as other properties, including the Hillel Foundation near the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus, and the Helfaer Community Services building on Prospect Avenue.
“The entire project is extremely important to the Jewish community and to Whitefish Bay,” where Turer lives with his family, he said.
The Karl Campus will be “a first class facility; we wanted to be a part of that,” he added.
Habush agreed. “That campus is the central address for the Jewish community,” he said. “And in order to continue to be that we have to make the improvements to do it.”
“At the time the original campus was created in Whitefish Bay, it was the first time that many of the Jewish agencies were brought together in the same place,” said Marcus.
“Every agency operating on that campus has done well,” he added. “So well that we have used up” the space.
As a result, “we have an obligation to renew the facilities so they are available for generations that follow.”
Daniel Bader, president of the Helen Bader Foundation, felt the same way about the foundation’s gift.
“We realized the importance of this campaign to the Jewish community. The facilities that the agencies and families used were antiquated and need to be updated,” he said.
Such renovations are “very important for long term growth of the community.”
Though the capital project has so far been made possible by some very generous gifts, you don’t necessarily have to be “a “huge giver,” said Marcus, in order to have a positive effect on your community.
“A huge giver is in the context of what your own capacity is,” he said. “It is important for people to step up and search their own conscience and souls, and think about what it means to be philanthropic — and to help take care of people and build a stronger community.”
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