According to those who study the ins and outs of fundraising, small donors can eventually become large donors, but a recent $20 million naming gift from the Hecktman Family Foundation to JCC Chicago shows that the seeds for large donations can be planted years before a cent is given.

“Fundraising is really ‘friendraising,’” Addie Goodman, president and CEO of JCC Chicago, the largest Jewish Community Center in North America, told eJewishPhilanthropy. “All fundraising is based on relationships. Every fundraiser probably has their own style. For me, I believe in relationship-based everything, and that every donor has their own agency. You can’t convince the person to give to something they don’t want to give to, and the Hecktmans had no connection to JCC.”

That was until a chance meeting in 2019 at Morton’s The Steakhouse, the Chicago born-chain, where Goodman and a JCC lay leader were having drinks before bumping into Jeffrey Hecktman, the founder, chairman and CEO of Hilco Global, a financial services company headquartered in the Chicago suburbs.

“By the way, this is my friend, Jeff,” Goodman recalled the lay leader saying, gesturing towards Hecktman. “Jeff, this is Addie.”

After briefly chatting, Goodman and Hecktman realized they had a shared interest: the Standard Club, a historic, private Jewish social and business club in Chicago that was teetering on the edge of closure. After the conversation, the two began working together, advocating to keep the club alive, but to no avail; the club shut down in 2020. 

Yet a seed had been planted for a long friendship, one that would include many more meetings at Chicago eateries, including in February 2022, when Goodman invited Hecktman to breakfast and his daughter, Hillary, tagged along. “As any good nonprofit leader and fundraiser does, I had in my pocket a couple of ideas,” Goodman said.

“We’re doing this big thing with teens,” Goodman said at the breakfast to the father-daughter duo. The Hecktmans both replied, “That’s nice.”

“We’re doing this huge Violins of Hope initiative,” Goodman said, telling them about an exhibit at the JCC that showcased 70 string instruments owned by Jewish musicians before and during the Holocaust. “That’s nice,” they replied.

Then she told them about an initiative that changed everything. She was working to launch a Sunrise Day Camp in Chicago — a free summer camp for kids battling cancer modeled after similar programs throughout the United States.

“That I’m interested in,” the younger Hecktman said immediately, beaming with excitement.

At the time, Hillary was a JCC young family member who sent her son to day camp at Apache Village in Northbrook, Ill. Her father had been easing her into becoming a leader at the family foundation, but had just tapped her as executive director. His first piece of advice to her was to find a mentor: Goodman came to mind.

“Addie is an outstanding CEO and president,” he said at the breakfast. “She has a lot of accolades in the community, and Addie, I’d love for you to mentor Hillary a bit and spend some time with her as a female, Jewish leader in Chicago.”

Within two months, the Hecktmans gave their first gift to JCC Chicago, a $1 million, three-year commitment to help establish Sunrise Day Camp, with a $500,000 3-to-1 matching grant to help with fundraising.

According to the November Slingshot study, “Portrait of Next-Gen Jewish Giving Today,” the next generation of Jewish donors are passionate about their causes and want a more hands-on approach to philanthropy than past generations. Hillary epitomized this in the years that followed.

Her interest in Sunrise Day Camp was integral to her identity because, prior to taking on the role of executive director, she had worked as a pediatric oncology nurse in numerous local hospitals. The camp “felt like a great marriage between my medical passion and stepping up and being a leader in the family foundation,” she told eJP.

Hillary didn’t simply offer funding, she worked as an oncology nurse at the camp, helping develop the capital projects on the ground and coming up with programming. She joined the JCC board, watching firsthand how Goodman ran the organization. “I just gained more and more confidence in the JCC as an entire agency over the years,” she said.

The JCC Chicago serves a community that has either the third or fourth largest Jewish populations in the United States, depending on the study, and is different from many JCCs across the country because it isn’t structured around memberships, except for its fitness program, which makes up only a tiny fraction of its $50 million budget, Goodman said. 

Instead, the JCC’s presence is spread throughout the city, with six early childhood centers, eight day camps, an overnight camp and the Sunrise camp. The institution runs the JCC Jewish Chicago Film Festival, Jewish high school clubs in 25 secular schools, Shabbat programs and assorted Jewish learning and senior programming. “I’m a very ‘go big or go home’ person, and JCC Chicago is big like that,” Goodman said. Everything is free to low cost and philanthropically funded, “and we can only do as much as the dollars we have to spend in that space.”

Hillary’s family used the JCC system, and she realized the wealth of resources the organization offered. She pushed the JCC to bring Chicago theater and sports programs, which ran at different facilities, under JCC’s roof, offering a centralized location for Jewish youth to gather.

In January, at a routine budget meeting where the Hecktmans and Goodman gathered to discuss the year ahead, the Sunrise camp’s fourth season which is expected to be attended by over 130 children with cancer and their siblings, Goodman pitched an idea: naming the JCC after Jeffrey and his wife, Penny.

For years, Goodman had wanted to name the JCC after a prominent donor. “I feel like it’s one of the most important Jewish naming opportunities in the country,” she said.

After she told the Hecktmans her pitch, there was silence. “My dad is a very intentional listener, and initially, it was way outside of our projected budget,” Hillary said of their reaction. She had thought to herself, not yet.

“A lot of people are going to come to you,’ Goodman said to Jeffrey at the meeting. “Your business success is no secret, and there will be a long line of folks interested in your philanthropy. And I hope that if you think about all of those things, that Jewish is at the very top of your list.” Instantly, a switch flipped within him.

“I think it is important for a Jewish name to be boldly philanthropic,” she remembers the elder Hecktman saying. The gift is the largest grant the Hecktman Family Foundation has ever given.

“I felt so proud when my dad looked at Addie and said, ‘Yes,’” Hillary said. “It is all about enriching the lives of Jewish people, Jewish adults, Jewish children, all throughout Chicago. And to invest in people and invest in our community seems like a slam dunk for the family, and to put our money into where we live, which is Chicago, where our roots are seeded, and to watch over time how that blossoms, just was a no-brainer for us.”

Over the next five months, JCC Chicago’s online presence will have the new branding. This summer, camp T-shirts will feature the new logo, and soon, staff will be wearing new badges.

Around the JCC, people’s first inclination was to spend the money, but Goodman realized the institution needed to put it into an endowment fund to invest far down the line. “We are a 123-year-old organization,” Goodman said. “We are unnamed. We will be named one time. So this $20 million investment is really fuel for the future.” 

The money will allow the organization to “quadruple down on Jewish engagement,” Goodman said. “It will grow and grow every year in perpetuity, so that we can do more and more and more to invite people into Jewish life.”

The funding will support the entire Chicago community, with the JCC partnering with other organizations throughout, Lonnie Nasatir, president Jewish United Fund and Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, told eJP.

“It gives the JCC more resources to think creatively on how to engage different parts of our community and with a real emphasis, especially, on the younger generation, which we all know is super important,” he said. “It gives [JCC Chicago] a newfound ability to engage and engage differently. That’s what the JCC is looking forward to, how can we meet people where they’re at? Every generation wants to engage differently, and this ability for them to try new things with these resources increases the likelihood that we’ll get more and more people to be very committed to living Jewish lives in Chicago.”

Over the years, Goodman and Hillary “became pretty close,” the younger Hecktman said. “It was really fun and easy to partner with Addie, because she was enjoying the idea of how to build and optimize this agency locally.”

The partnership between the Hecktman family and the Chicago JCC “is a long-term partnership for the family,” Hillary said. “We hope this will be a long-term partnership for the city of Chicago that the city can count on the family to invest in Jewish people.”

Goodman and Hillary also hope their partnership inspires other Jewish philanthropists to give largely to other Jewish organizations.

The Hecktmans are “really doing it at a time when we need Jewish people to give Jewishly,” Goodman said. “We need Jewish philanthropists and people with resources in our Jewish world to make Jewish choices and to put their dollars into Jewish community.”