How to Raise Money

Many doctors -- surgeons especially -- operate on the principle of charging the patient according to his ability to pay. Ophthalmic Surgeon Alston Callahan of Birmingham operates on his own version of the principle. A well-heeled patient gets no bill. Instead, he is asked for a donation to the center in which he has been treated.

Dr. Callahan joined the eye section of the University of Alabama Hospitals soon after World War II. He also set up private practice. One of his first patients was the teen-age granddaughter of wealthy Shipbuilder Robert I. Ingalls. Dr. Callahan straightened the girl's crossed eyes, and on a hunch sent no bill. When Ingalls insisted on a settlement, Dr. Callahan told him that he would prefer some help toward starting a nonprofit hospital for eye patients. "How much?" asked Ingalls suspiciously. "Mr. Ingalls," said the doctor with studied boldness, "you're not noted for being a generous giver."

After Ingalls stopped laughing, he picked up the phone and told his attorney to draw up incorporation papers for Eye Foundation, Inc., to which he eventually, gave $25,000. It took Dr. Callahan ten years to raise, by the same dollar-extraction technique, the rest of the $1,500,000 that he needed to get the hospital opened and operating. Along the way, he called on Lumber Millionaire Alfred S. Mitchell to ask for a donation. Mitchell was also having trouble with his eyes. An on-the-spot examination revealed cataracts, which Dr. Callahan later removed. Again, no bill. Mitchell wound up giving $25,000, and gifts from the foundation that administers the Mitchell estate have since raised the total to $45,750.

Dr. Callahan does not claim that his donation approach is new, and medical folklore is full of tales about wealthy benefactors who have been tapped this way. Most stories turn out, on investigation, to be false, though Houston's famed heart surgeon, Michael E. DeBakey gets many donations this way.

Last week, as proof of patients' gratitude, Dr. Callahan had the promise of a new Mitchell Foundation gift of $600,000. Two other foundations are meeting soon to consider additional grants. One is headed by John E. Meyer, who suffered an eye wound as a fighter pilot in World War II, and periodically goes to Dr. Callahan to have long-hidden metal fragments removed.

Eye surgeons, even more than heart surgeons, seem to have an emotional advantage in this type, of fundraising. Says Dr. Callahan: "A fellow can go to a doctor with a bellyache, get better, and say to himself, 'Hell, I might have gotten well anyway.' But with the eyes, you can't say that. If you have cataracts, you know that unless they're removed, you won't get well."

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