Ferrari Mailing List: (OT) WSJ: "A Police Charity Moves To Exit The Fast Lane"

[Dennis Liu (BigHeadDennis]

Today's Wall St. Journal has an interesting article of particular import to
California residents....

Vty,

--Dennis


A Police Charity Moves To Exit The Fast Lane
By GEORGE ANDERS
December 28, 2006; Page B1

When corporate executives join civic boards, they usually are brought in to
raise money, map out a growth strategy or provide cost-cutting discipline.

If only Robert Teal had it so easy.

The 63-year-old Mr. Teal, a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur, recently
became chairman of the CHP 11-99 Foundation. It is one of the nation's
leading police charities, operating independently of the California Highway
Patrol but providing officers or their families with everything from college
scholarships to funeral expenses. When Mr. Teal looked at the charity's main
way of bringing in cash, he saw a problem lurking.

 
For years, the foundation had been selling "Life Memberships" to motorists
for $1,800 apiece. Lots of people with Ferraris, BMWs and other fast cars
snapped them up, mounting the foundation's hard-to-miss license-plate
holders on their vehicles' rear bumpers. (The holders read: "MEMBER CHP
11-99 FOUNDATION.") Buying a membership was seen by many as protection
against speeding tickets, though statistical evidence one way or another
doesn't exist.

Foundation officials insisted they weren't trying to arrange highway
leniency for anyone. The CHP has been even testier, declaring: "Everyone on
the highway gets treated the same." But some motorists were clearly looking
for special favors. As many as eight to 10 times a year, the foundation was
forced to expel life members who treated patrol officers insolently after
being pulled over for speeding.

So Mr. Teal led a push to revamp the way the 8,000-member foundation raises
money. "Selling more memberships wasn't the answer to our funding needs,"
Mr. Teal says. "It had to come to an end." The biggest worry: If the
foundation opened its doors too wide, it might end up with erratic drivers
-- and high-profile accidents -- that ruined the group's reputation.

Mr. Teal's campaign shows how a take-charge leader must maneuver when
redirecting a foundation or other nonprofit. It also speaks to foundations'
challenges in seeking donations without creating awkward or unrealistic
expectations from people giving money.

The CHP 11-99 Foundation was created in 1981 by Bob Weinberg, a Southern
California cattle-feed merchant. He enjoyed chatting with patrol officers
over coffee and would hand out $100 bills to help with college or medical
expenses.

"We joked back then that the foundation was run out of Bob Weinberg's back
pocket," says Dave Helsel, a retired CHP officer. The foundation's full name
reflected Mr. Weinberg's belief that patrol officers performed dangerous,
necessary work and didn't get much recognition for it. On California police
radios, "11-99" is the code for an officer in distress.

Before his death in 1991, Mr. Weinberg broadened the foundation by hosting
golfing fund-raisers and charging membership dues. Directors issued
license-plate frames as conversation-starters, hoping that passersby in
parking lots would ask about the foundation and eventually donate, as well.

In the early 1990s, foundation officials say fewer than 20% of CHP officers
knew of the charity. There wasn't much reason to think that fast drivers
belonging to the foundation would win sympathetic treatment when pulled
over. Jack Campbell, the foundation's president in the mid-1990s, recalls
getting three speeding tickets from CHP officers who didn't know -- or care
-- what organization he ran.

Starting in the late 1990s, things changed. Foundation officials hit the
road, briefing more than 100 CHP field offices about the opportunities for
patrol officers' children to win college scholarships. The foundation became
much better known among patrol officers; this year, it has provided $1.7
million in scholarships to 809 students. Today, 80% to 85% of CHP officers
know about the charity, according to foundation officials.

Growing awareness of the charity on the part of officers has had no impact
on the way the CHP does its work, according to CHP officials. "There's no
favoritism on the highway just because someone is a member of 11-99," says
Fran Clader, a CHP spokeswoman. "We're an equal-opportunity ticketer." But
she acknowledges that patrol officers enjoy discretion in deciding whether
to ticket a speeder or merely issue a warning. The CHP doesn't monitor
treatment of subgroups of drivers, such as 11-99 members.

On Internet chat sites, car enthusiasts have claimed awesome benefits from
belonging to the 11-99 Foundation. A poster on a Mercedes-Benz site,
benzworld.org, referred to the foundation's license-plate frames as "the
ultimate speeding ticket solution"; a car enthusiast on Acura-Legend.com
called them a way for drivers to be "almost guaranteed of getting out of a
ticket."

Other members are more demure. "I joined because I believed in their cause,
and I thought it might help with tickets," says Bill Watkins, the chief
executive officer of Seagate Technology Inc. He drives an Aston-Martin and
can't always resist the temptation to let it roar. He says that while he was
let off with a warning once or twice since joining, in another instance,
"the officer wrote me up for everything."

By 2003, the foundation was spending more than $100,000 a year doing
background checks on applicants' driving records -- and expelling a few
members a year because they were abusive to CHP officers. Some directors
felt those were bearable costs. Others thought it was time to change.

 
Mr. Teal emerged as the boardroom radical. He had joined the foundation
board a decade earlier, having established himself as a major donor who had
a high regard for the CHP. Affable and sensitive to other people's concerns,
he was in line to take command of the board when his predecessor's
three-year term expired. He made clear that overhauling the life-member
program would be a top priority.

"The only asset we've really got is our image in the eyes of the CHP," he
says he told colleagues. "If we lose that, we're dead."

Mr. Teal argued for jacking up membership fees to a new range of $5,000 to
$25,000, far exceeding what fast-driving applicants might hope to save on
speeding tickets. "You can kill any product if you price it high enough," he
says. "I felt that's what we should do." Fast-driving tycoons could still
afford that amount, he conceded. But it was a halfway step toward a
different business model -- and it amounted to as much change as he thought
the board could stomach.

Mr. Teal also believed the foundation could tap into big new sources of
money. He urged colleagues to approach some of California's leading
corporations and wealthiest people, asking them to donate $100,000 or more
to create endowed scholarships in their name, which could run in perpetuity.

Some longtime directors balked at first. Such high dues would make it hard
for many ordinary people to join the foundation, said director Frank Clark,
a contractor who had been a friend of the late founder, Mr. Weinberg.

Mr. Teal pressed on, anyway. From his Silicon Valley days, helping start
companies such as disk-drive maker Maxtor Corp., he says he found that "you
can't really control the culture of an organization after it gets past 300
people. Before that, you know everyone. After that, you're dealing with
third-hand referrals, and you just don't know who's coming in."

Another relatively new director, former hedge-fund manager Larry Bowman,
rallied to Mr. Teal's position. "The more selective you are about your
members, the easier it is to make sure they uphold your values," he
maintained.

The giant dues increase passed in late 2005 and became official early this
year. New-member applications are down sharply, says Edward Trickey, CEO of
the foundation. But revenue growth hasn't suffered. That's partly because
wealthy donors are giving more and also because a retooled foundation Web
site makes it easy for small donors to pitch in $50 or $100. They don't get
license-plate holders, but they get to support an admired cause.

Foundation donors also are being told that they shouldn't expect any roadway
favors if they join. The foundation's new application form states that
membership doesn't entitle anyone to "leniency or preferential treatment in
any contact involving a law enforcement authority." Abusing membership
privileges or property "shall result in immediate termination."

Going forward, Mr. Teal says it might make sense to get rid of the 11-99
Foundation's license-plate holders altogether. That would end even the
appearance that foundation backers amount to a privileged class of drivers
on the highways.

The foundation board hasn't yet decided whether to jettison that perk of
membership. But Mr. Teal says he already unbolted the 11-99 Foundation
holder from his BMW and mailed it back to foundation headquarters. "I told
people to put it in a museum," he quips.