CMN Cofounder Joe Lake Visits Madison

As I talked with the many Madison folks and area media and politicans who stopped by the Madison Dairy Queen to pitch in for Children's Miracle Network, Joe Lake reminded me, quite correctly, that the most important people here are the kids we're able to help on Miracle Treat Day.

Nonetheless, Joe Lake himself was a fairly important guest at Madison Dairy Queen on Miracle Treat Day 2008. After all, if it weren't for him, Miracle Treat Day and Children's Miracle Network might well not exist. Lake is one of the cofounders of Children's Miracle Network.

In Salt Lake City back in 1982, he started working with his business partner Mick Shannon, actor/singer John Schneider, and the Osmond family to create a new telethon to help kids. Shannon and Lake both had experience in putting on fundraising shows: Shannon had worked for the March of Dimes, and Lake had produced concerts and TV programs and recruited celebrities for the local March of Dimes telethon. But they were entering a tight market: there were already 19 fundraising telethons in the U.S. and only three television networks where such programming could find a home. How could they compete?

Cofounder Joe Lake talks about building Children's Miracle Network to help kids everywhere.

A big part of finding a place for CMN in the pantheon of telethons was plain hard work. Shannon and Lake both invested a great deal of their personal resources to put together the first telethon. Headquarters started out in Lake's Salt Lake City basement. There was lots of travel to line up sponsors, performers, and affiliates.

Also key in finding a niche for CMN was a formula that differentiated the new organization from the established fundraisers. Lake saw the potential in pairing national celebrities with local charity. CMN started with a focus on plowing money right back into the towns where it was raised. CMN also forged contracts with beneficiary children's hospitals requiring that those facilities operate on a non-profit basis and guarantee they would never turn away children or families for financial reasons. And CMN sought the broadest fundraising appeal by directing its money not just for research on or treatment of a specific disease but to children's hospitals in general for any needs their patients had.

Over time, that formula brought success. 22 hospitals and 30 stations participated in the first CMN telethon in 1983 to raise $4.7 million. In five years, the telethon reached truly national scope and broke into Canada as well. 25 years after that first telethon, CMN has raised $4 billion for 172 current member hospitals in North America and 5 international hospitals in the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand.

Lake says CMN didn't start with numbers like those as its benchmarks for success. His goals for the organization from the start were to follow certain principles:

Help kids, never exploit them: Lake wanted to focus on "success stories." He didn't want CMN to parade sick kids in front of the camera and say, "Send your money or these kids won't make it." CMN always helps kids first, then tells their stories to show the happy results of their work.

Keep it local: CMN has many corporate sponsors. Marriott was the first to sign on, underwriting meals and providing lodging for CMN. Dairy Queen was the second corporation to join CMN. Wal-Mart is now the biggest corporate sponsor, raising $47 million for CMN last year. But none of these corporations simply write a big check to CMN headquarters and call it good. Fundraising happens at the local-store level, and the money raised at your local DQ or Wal-mart goes right back to the children's hospital that serves the kids in your community. This means folks on the ground, not just the CEOs, buy into corporate support for CMN. Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton once told Lake that even if Walton had wanted to cut his company's association with CMN, it would have taken years to unravel the relationship due to the strong employee commitment to the cause.

Joe Lake (right) helps Madison DQ owner DeLon Mork (center) deliver Blizzards to Gehl Mfg. in Madison on Miracle Treat Day 2008.

That focus on local commitment takes advantage of the desire of neighbors to help their neighbors. When folks see their money going toward helping folks who live right down their block in very concrete ways, they pour that much more support into the cause. For all the excitement celebrities can generate, Lake and his CMN partners knew they had to harness that local energy as well. That's a big part of the success of Madison Dairy Queen's fundraising efforts on Miracle Treat Day. Madison DQ owner DeLon Mork can rattle off the names of local "Miracle Kids" who've been helped by CMN. So can the folks who pour in every August to buy Blizzards to support CMN.

Do it cheaper: Putting together a national telethon and fundraising projects isn't cheap. You have to pay people, travel to make deals, buy airtime and insurance and office supplies... there's always overhead. But Lake and his partners made keeping that overhead low a top priority. He appears to have succeeded: when Lake retired from CMN a couple years ago, the organization operated with 68 employees on a budget of $8 million. That year they raised $250 million. 3.2% overhead -- not bad.

Joe Lake is now a popular non-profit consultant with numerous irons in the fire. But he's still proud to lend a hand for Children's Miracle Network and to see all the help it gives to kids across the continent and beyond.