Inside one of the world’s greatest fundraising operations

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RICK SHADYAC: I will tell you, I sweated through the whole thing. I died, and I know my board asked me lots of questions, “Are you sure you want to do this?,” and I had asked a lot of questions about risk.

JEFF BERMAN: The risk that the mission would go wrong or the risk that you couldn’t raise the money to match it? Where was the risk for you in this?

SHADYAC: Both. All of the above. I mean, the risk was about life.

BERMAN: Rick Shadyac is no stranger to high stakes. As the head of ALSAC, the fundraising organization for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, every dollar he raised helps save patients, support families, and find cures. On this particularly sweaty day, Rick was watching a brave group, including a former St. Jude patient, get launched into space to inspire more donations. This space mission was one of the countless scroll-stopping media efforts Rick used to get more attention for St. Jude, and how he achieved the astronomical fundraising number of $2.7 billion in one year.

SHADYAC: If you look at the data, and the data is telling you a story, if you believe in that story, then you make investments that way. As data got better and better, we said, “This is not hard, guys. We have to meet people where they are. Where are they? They’re on TikTok, they’re on Instagram.”

And while people will laugh at this, people still watch CNN, especially people of my generation, okay? And they will respond to direct response television ads, so let’s think about who our target audiences are. The CNN audience is very different than the TikTok audience, obviously, but again, let’s meet people where they are.

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BERMAN: This is Masters of Scale. I’m Jeff Berman, your host. This week on the show, recently retired CEO, Rick Shadyac Jr., reveals how he transformed the ALSAC fundraising organization into a data-driven, media-savvy powerhouse. It fuels the growing global mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. This is a conversation full of inspiration and actionable insights for anyone who wants to scale their ability to both do well and do good. Rick, welcome to Masters of Scale.

SHADYAC: Thank you for having me, Jeff.

Copy LinkThe history and mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

BERMAN: I’m thrilled to have you. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. And my guess is that most of our audience is familiar with St. Jude’s, but my guess is also, a lot of them don’t really know what St. Jude’s is and does. So can you just give us an overview of what St. Jude’s is?

SHADYAC: Sure. So St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital leads the way the world understands, treats, and defeats childhood cancer. It’s that special place where doctors all across the United States, and literally the world send their toughest cases for kids with cancer and other catastrophic diseases. It’s a very unique place, Jeff, because no family will ever receive a bill from St. Jude, not for treatment, travel, housing, or food, because we want mom and dad to focus on helping their child survive cancer. 

But our name is intentional. Notice we’re not St. Jude Children’s Hospital, we’re St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, so about 50% of what we do is dedicated to finding cures for kids with cancer and other catastrophic diseases. Most people don’t know this, but the cure for leukemia, acute lymphoblastic leukemia was discovered at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the 1970, so it’s an amazing place. The other interesting part of this is I am not the CEO of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, I’m the CEO of what’s called ALSAC, which stands for American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities. And Danny Thomas, who was the founder of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, was Lebanese. And you have to go all the way back to the 1930’s, and he was down on his luck, and he made a prayer to St. Jude, who’s the patron saint of hopeless cases, and he basically said, “Should I get a real job, or should I pursue my passion, which is comedy?”

And truth be known, he got a job the very next day as a singing toothbrush on the radio. You know, folks, they didn’t have TV back in those days, okay? Got enough money to pay for his wife’s medical bill. She was pregnant with what would turn out to be Marlo Thomas, and then Danny Thomas remembered his pledge. He formed American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities for the sole purpose to build St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

And now that we’ve built it, we’ve actually grown it substantially, and we are responsible for maintaining it, meaning that for about 89% of all of the operating and capital costs of St. Jude have to be raised from the public, so ALSAC is solely responsible for raising that money. We exist for no other reason other than to raise the money to support and capitalize St. Jude.

Copy LinkBuilding a mission-driven organization from the ground up

BERMAN: Rick, it’s an incredible backstory. How did it scale? What was the founding vision, and then how did it evolve over time?

SHADYAC: Yeah, so you have to go back to 1957, which is when ALSAC was actually formed, okay? Because ALSAC needed to raise the money to build St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, they opened their doors on February 4, 1962. So it took about five years to raise the money. The interesting part is they raised enough money to build it, but they didn’t raise enough money to operate it, okay? So some of the very early founders were actually writing checks out of their own checkbook to keep the operations going at the institution.

Jeff, I’m proud to tell you, one of those persons was my father. Now, he wasn’t one of the ones writing the checks because he was a Department of Justice lawyer. They didn’t make a lot of money. They still don’t make a lot of money, but dad was one of the early founders, and then there were several CEOs. I want to give my father a lot of credit because he was a CEO there for about 13 years, and I think he really professionalized the organization.

But during the Great Recession, that was when I started, and we decided to do a few things very, very differently than we had done in the past. My background is as a lawyer, so I needed to learn how to be a CEO. So what I really wanted to do is early on, I attached myself to some of the best brains in the whole world. I then went out to Google and to Facebook, and they embraced St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and I learned from them this one piece of advice that I got from our friends at Google that said, “Rick, you guys have got to get outside your rivers of thinking. In philanthropy, everybody kind of just does the same thing. Do something different. The fact that you’re even here tells us that you’re probably going to think different.”

BERMAN: Rick, before we get to your move into the CEO seat and your journey and how you evolved the organization, just if you would take us from 1957, we’re going to do this, raise capital, open in ’62, but have no funding for operations to what you inherited in 2009.

SHADYAC: Yeah. I would go back to say, “Why was St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital put in Memphis, Tennessee?” And I think that’s part of what underlays the beauty of this mission. So, folks, for those of you that don’t remember the ’50s and the ’60s, Memphis, Tennessee and much of the South was segregated. Kids who look different than you and I, Jeff, Black children throughout the south are literally being turned away from hospitals simply because of the color of their skin, okay?

Our founder, Danny Thomas, and that first generation said, “That’s completely unacceptable.” He chose to put it in a segregated city. He chose to open the doors from day one to kids of all races, creeds, and religions, and he took the economics completely out of the equation, because everybody was going to get treated the same, whether you were the richest person from Saudi Arabia or the poorest person from the heart of the South. And that’s been our ethos. Now, he got a lot of pushback.

I mean, the early designs of St. Jude, he got in trouble for not having separate bathrooms and separate water fountains. Yeah, folks, that was the reality, unfortunately. I think we sometimes forget that wasn’t that long ago. So slowly but surely, the organization was starting to build, and then in the 1970’s, this amazing doctor, the first CEO of St. Jude, Dr. Donald Pinkel, who came from New York, okay, he found the cure for leukemia. And what did that mean?

It meant that more than 50% of the kids, who were being diagnosed, were actually surviving childhood cancer. So it was a remarkable discovery, and I think that set us on the path to just absolutely tremendous success, and then kids started coming from all across the United States because of the uniqueness of what we offered. We struggled for a long time. I mean, we had debt, and we raised barely enough money in some years, probably not enough in other years.

Copy LinkScaling the organization through marketing

BERMAN: So you came in in 2009 after a storied career as a lawyer. How did you come in and start working with the team to define where you were going to go during your tenure?

SHADYAC: Well, the first thing I had to do was to lay out kind of an operating vision. So I worked with our board on this, and I said, “Guys, what do you want here? Do you want to run this mission for the long-term, or do you want to try to extract every possible dollar out of this?”

BERMAN: What does that mean?

SHADYAC: Okay, so when people come to St. Jude’s, a typical kid that has cancer, they’re with us for two and a half to three years. And on top of that, okay, we treat these kids for life. So I said to the board, “Look, we’ve got to think about how we’re going to fund this mission, not just for one year, two years, three years, but for decades into the future. If we’re going to fund research, that you all are telling me… You’re very bright scientists; I’m just a dumb lawyer, okay? If you guys are telling me these are going to be 10 to 15, 20-year projects, okay, this is running an organization for the long-term, you need to let me invest back in this organization, okay?” And the board ultimately agreed that we’re operating for the long-term. So what that meant was that I was able to make investments. We always had a budget.

I had to meet that budget, okay? I had to keep the cost down, but if I was particularly efficient in a year, I would then go back to the board and say, “I want to make some additional investments to drive more revenue longer term.” So we went in on direct mail and also direct response television, and we just grew exponentially as a result of that, acquiring new supporters, getting our mission out. We invested in marketing. We didn’t have a chief marketing officer at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

BERMAN: Yeah, I’m guessing most people don’t think about not-for-profits as needing a marketing function, so you all didn’t actually even have a CMO at the time.

SHADYAC: We did not. And I said, “This is not going to work.” I’ve seen the power of storytelling. I said, “We have to invest in it. We’ve got amazing stories. Look at these kids. They’re young kids, and look at how courageous they are, tenacious that they are. These are amazing kids. People will relate to them and want to help them.” So I hired an amazing chief marketing officer.

BERMAN: It’s one thing to understand the power of storytelling. It’s another thing to understand what direct marketing is, how it works, what’s going to be effective for you. How’d you get smart about it?

SHADYAC: I did something that most people, when I’ve told other for-profit CEOs about it, they’re like, “You did what?,” and I was like, “Well, I made everybody in the organization not only responsible for revenue, but for our brand goals.”

BERMAN: It’s amazing to me that more organizations don’t work this way. How did you see that that was something that you needed to do?

SHADYAC: Well, I saw that we were operating in silos, and I don’t like silos, okay? So the way to get out of the silos was, “Hey, if you’re responsible for both brand and revenue, you guys have got to work together, and you’ve got to cooperate.” And we just kept building and building and building, and it worked.

BERMAN: Were there moments where you saw something click where you’re like, “That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what I want to see”?

SHADYAC: Well, yeah, especially as we marched through time, performance marketing will tell you, “How often were you getting calls? How often were people hitting the website? How effective was your email? How effective was social? Did that TikTok video actually generate any revenue, or is it just cute?”

It was measurable, right? And you would see the upticks. And there’s different reasons for doing things, right? Sometimes you are creating awareness. Sometimes all you’re trying to do is get an email address, right?

So it really depends upon what your marketing goal is, and then there are bigger campaigns that go off the charts too, which we can talk about, like when we made the really important decision, risky decision to take our mission to space.

Copy LinkThe space mission that raised $250 million for ALSAC

BERMAN: How do you take this mission to space? What does that look like?

SHADYAC: It was a crazy story. So I know somebody you know, Ross Martin. Ross Martin, just an amazing guy, the president of Known here in New York, and a marketing company.

BERMAN: Ross is a friend of both of ours. He’s a friend.

SHADYAC: Yeah, Ross is an amazing guy.

BERMAN: He is.

SHADYAC: He’s a great supporter of St. Jude. So Ross asked me if I would be interested in meeting a gentleman by the name of Jared Isaacman. Jared was a young entrepreneur, who started a company called Shift4 Payments, a digital payments company, and Jared had entered into a deal with Elon Musk and SpaceX to purchase several missions to space. And Jared wanted to approach it very, very differently. He was all about democratizing space, and he wanted it not just to be a rich person’s game, but he wanted regular people that could go up into space.

So he was looking for a charitable component behind it. We talked. I will tell you, Jeff, he reminded me of a young Danny Thomas, okay? He’s like a visionary, truly a visionary, and you could just tell how big his heart was. Okay, he cares deeply about kids, especially kids with catastrophic disease, and he was looking for a charitable partner.

He asked me lots and lots of questions about St. Jude, and I asked him lots of questions about going to space because I was concerned, and he was interested in potentially having a patient or one of our doctors or scientists go into space. This is a big idea. And then he said, it was one of the other seats, “I want to make it so that anybody can get a ticket for $2 or a dollar.”

BERMAN: More like a lottery than an auction.

SHADYAC: More like a lottery than an auction. That way, it was democratized, right? And we entered into a partnership, and he said, “Rick, I’m going to give you $125 million.” He, personally, $125 million.

BERMAN: Wow.

SHADYAC: “I want you to match it, okay?” And I said, “Jared, we’ll match it.” And truth be told, we did match it, Jeff. We raised $250 million to support the mission of St. Jude. A young former patient of St. Jude, who was a nurse practitioner by the name of Hayley Arceneaux, went up into space with Jared Isaacman and three other people, and I will tell you, I sweated through the whole thing.

I died, and my ward asked me lots of questions. “Are you sure you want to do this?,” and I had asked a lot of questions about risk and—

BERMAN: Yeah, the risk that the mission would go wrong, or the risk that you couldn’t raise the money to match it? Where was the risk for you in this?

SHADYAC: Both. All of the above. The risk was-

BERMAN: Yeah.

SHADYAC: I mean, the risk was about life.

BERMAN: Yeah.

SHADYAC: Okay? If we didn’t match it, we didn’t match it. I was going to do my darnedest to match it, and we did, thank God, and thanks to the support of the public, but I was much more concerned, much more concerned about the safety of the crew. And Hayley, who I’ve known since she was a patient when my dad was the CEO there, so I’ve known her for a really long time, but she was a total space enthusiast, so she knew the risks. And so when they splashed down, I was like, “Man.”

I was so relieved, I can’t even begin to tell you. And then, so we got a ton of publicity out of it. And the cool part too also, was that it introduced us to new audiences. Space enthusiasts are very different than some of the other people. A lot of people that participate in charity are a little bit on the older side, because they have the ability to do it.

BERMAN: True.

SHADYAC: Space enthusiasts are younger people too, and so it was a beautiful way for us to spread our mission to a much broader audience group.

BERMAN: Still ahead, Rick’s advice for how business leaders can have a bigger impact on issues they care about. 

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Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this conversation and more on our YouTube channel. 

Copy LinkInside ALSAC’s digital transformation

Across your tenure, 2009 into the 2020’s, the ability to collect data, to analyze data, to act on data changed radically, and you all saw a massive increase. You drove a massive increase in fundraising during your tenure, right? If I remember right, you were in the 600 something million range in 2009, and north of 2 billion.

SHADYAC: 2.7 billion.

BERMAN: 2.7 billion, so approaching 3 billion now. I mean, that’s a huge increase over that time period. 

SHADYAC: With the St. Jude budget, that’s over 2.2 billion. So I mean, you got to have perspective here, so yeah, yeah.

BERMAN: Yeah, and I want to get to the impact piece next.

SHADYAC: Yeah. Yeah.

BERMAN: But I’m curious, how did that ability to better collect, better analyze, and better act on data help drive from that 600 plus million up to nearly 3 billion?

SHADYAC: Look, Jeff, what I would say is a good CEO is not just strategic. A good CEO is strategic and opportunistic, okay? So if you look at the data, and the data is telling you a story, okay, if you believe in that story, then you make investments that way. We saw opportunity, whether it was with corporate partners or on the acquisition front, and at the end of the day, as data got better and better, and we were able to analyze that data, we said, “This is not hard, guys. We have to meet people where they are.”

“Where are they? They’re on Facebook, they’re on TikTok, they’re on Instagram. We need to be there, okay?” And while people will laugh at this, people still watch CNN, especially people of my generation, and they will respond to direct response television ads. So again, let’s think about who our target audiences are.

The CNN audience is very different than the TikTok audience, obviously. The Facebook audience is kind of hybrid, right? But again, let’s meet people where they are, and give them content at points. Like as we sit here today, we can serve up very personalized content because we know that you clicked on a video because you wanted to learn about brain tumors, and you were particularly impressed about this patient’s brain tumor journey. I know that because I saw you click on that.

I can serve you up content that’s about another brain tumor patient. So the content gets more personalized and I think ultimately means that it will drive you to more action. So that’s how things have gotten smarter. As I was leaving, we were building our own CDP in partnership with Salesforce, and then we also were building an enterprise content asset management system so that it allowed us to understand how you are interacting with our brand and content that might be meaningful to you. And then we embraced AI early on.

When I got there, I said, “Guys, we’re going to do a dual transformation, okay? We’re going to keep operating our core business, but we’re going to go complete digital transformation. Keep doing the core,” so we did it together, a dual transformation, and then we just kept on investing in digital. I was really proud of our board, because our board got the idea that you needed to make investments in your tech stack, in data and analytics because they saw that was where the world was going, and even as I sit here today, they saw the wisdom in that and are continuing to make those investments.

Copy LinkExpanding St. Jude’s impact

BERMAN: Let’s talk about impact. When you are able to increase your fundraising, how does that change the impact that you have? What’s different now than when you came in?

SHADYAC: Every day, I wake up knowing that cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in U.S. kids today, okay? It’s one of the leading causes of death by disease around the world, but there are other challenges around the world. So in the United States, even though we’ve made incredible progress doing part to the work at St. Jude, it’s still-

BERMAN: It’s important to note that we used to have roughly 80% child mortality for cancer, right?

SHADYAC: That’s correct.

BERMAN: And now it’s down to about 20%, in significant part due to the work that you all have done.

SHADYAC: That is correct. So 20 to 80 in 60 plus years, right? Take the acute lymphoblastic leukemia, where the cure was found at St. Jude. When St. Jude opened, it was a 4% cure rate. So think about that, 96 out of 100 kids who were diagnosed would pass away, so bad that parents were told to celebrate half birthdays because your child wasn’t going to make it to the next birthday.

Okay, it’s 94% today, and that initial cure, over 50% was found at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. So that’s some of the impact. But what I also then think about is 20% isn’t good enough, so four out of five survive, okay? But if you’re the mother or the father of the one, the one really matters, okay?

BERMAN: Yeah.

SHADYAC: So we’ve got to do better. And there are certain cancers that don’t have cure rates, right? There are certain cancers like certain brain tumors that it’s just, they’re death sentences, okay? So we have to solve those problems. But then, let’s broaden the aperture, and let’s talk about the globe.

So four and five kids around the globe in low and low middle-income countries will pass away from cancer. Four and five kids, so the survival rate is 20%. Well, St. Jude has a plan in this decade to try to raise survival rates from 20% to 60%. So there’s about 400,000 kids around the globe that will be diagnosed with cancer, and so 20% survive. St. Jude is going to be providing free, I said free cancer medications to 120,000 of the 400,000 kids around the globe over the coming five years.

This is going to be quality cancer medication on a regular schedule. Unfortunately, in some of these low and low middle-income countries, they have to buy drugs on the black market. That will not happen anymore because we’ll get quality-assured cancer medications delivered for free. So our doctors genuinely believe that this is going to exponentially raise survival rates around the globe. At the same time, we’re educating and training the clinical global workforce on the best ways to treat childhood cancer and other catastrophic diseases.

And ALSAC, the organization that I had the privilege of running for almost 16 years, we’re educating and training folks on how to raise money and how to market so that they can support the clinics in their countries. Jeff, this allows these kids to be treated in their own countries. They don’t have to come to the United States, so parents don’t have to make those difficult decisions about leaving other kids behind, or not having work and things like that. So I mean, we think that there’s a lot of benefit to providing this care within their countries. And what I’ve seen, because I’ve traveled all around the world, when we can do this, it will raise the standard of care in even the public hospitals, because they all try to emulate what we’re doing in some of these clinics.

I’m super optimistic about this. I’ve seen it work, and that’s why I’m optimistic. And I get further optimistic, Jeff, because the public embraces St. Jude, right? So when you can say you’ve got 11 million supporters, not billionaires, but regular people that give you $19 a month, that want to be your partners in hope, that believe in helping kids all around the globe, that they believe that kids ought to have a chance to grow up like you and I did, to be lawyers and things like that, now to have two lawyers talking about marketing, which is kind of ironic when you think about that, okay?

BERMAN: And curing cancer, so yeah, yeah, yeah. That too. Yeah.

SHADYAC: And curing cancer. Okay. There you go, okay? So there’s some things going on here, right?

BERMAN: Yeah.

SHADYAC: But that’s what makes me so optimistic, even in this world that we’re living in today. And then, the other thing I would just say to you is what I also thought about was the fact that we brought 11 million people and a million volunteers to support a cause. So what does that mean? That means more and more people were learning to live charitably. Notice I didn’t say give charitably.

Live charitably, to love a stranger. What is a charitable gift? It’s a demonstration of love of someone else, right? And these are people that might not otherwise think that way. If they’re giving you a dollar of their hard-earned money, that’s a demonstration of love for someone else, okay?

And you know, I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that the National High School Honor Society, those kids name St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital as the number one place to work, because they see the good that’s taking place. So what I think we’ve done is we’ve created a movement where people want to get behind this idea that every child should have the opportunity to grow up, to be healthy, to live out their hopes and dreams. So I’m hopeful that as we can bring more and more people into this idea of living charitably, people might say, “This guy’s crazy, man.” No. I think we can actually change the world, man, and we can make it be more about love and caring for others, and that brings us right back to that founding story, right?

That’s why I think it’s all so consistent. We opened our doors in a segregated city to address racial healthcare disparities, and today, now, we’re doing it on a global scale to address global healthcare inequity.

Copy LinkStepping away after 16 years as CEO

BERMAN: Rick, this sounds like a dream job. Why in the world would you leave it?

SHADYAC: Well, listen, man, 16 years at the helm was a long time. I think an important part of leadership is knowing when to step aside. I’m 68. I don’t mind saying that. I still have a lot of energy in me.

BERMAN: Clearly, yeah.

SHADYAC: Yeah, and I got a lot of passion. And now, what I want to do, man, is I want to take what I’ve learned at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and bring it to other causes, okay? Convince other businesses. Let’s think about ways that we can use corporations and business to do good, okay? And I will tell you, in the world that we’re living in today, there’s going to be increased demand for services from not-for-profits that unfortunately, they’re not going to be able to be met, okay, because there’s going to be a lot of competition for dollars. I hate to use that word, competition, but the pot isn’t growing, okay?

BERMAN: Yeah.

SHADYAC: It’s not growing, and less and less people are participating in philanthropy. I want to take what I’ve learned over this period of time, help other not-for-profits, and help businesses understand the importance of doing good.

BERMAN: Rick, this is a subject I really appreciate talking about with business leaders. The idea that businesses, corporations exist only to serve their shareholders is only about 50 years old.

SHADYAC: Yeah.

Copy LinkInspiring corporations to do good

BERMAN: The history of corporations is they do serve a public benefit and stakeholders, whether that is customers, whether that is team members, employees, whether that’s broader society, historically, have been a key part of corporate missions. As you talk to business leaders, what do you find is effective in helping them understand their broader responsibilities to stakeholders?

SHADYAC: It’s an interesting question, Jeff. A couple years ago, the Business Roundtable said that it wasn’t just about profit, okay, and returning a value to shareholders, right? And so I think people recognize that. I think there’s been some retrenchment, but when I sit down one-on-one with CEOs or CMOs, I hear them say, “I want to do good.” I hear them recognize that their customers want them to support causes that are important to them.

I hear them recognize that consumers will switch brands if a brand is supporting a cause that’s important to them. I hear them say to me, “Rick, you know, it is important. Our employees love St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. They’re passionate about asking at the register to give a donation to St. Jude. They’re proud when we present you a check for $18 million. They fight to go take that trip to Memphis, Tennessee to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.”

So I think they see the value, Jeff. So they see the value from a business perspective, and then they see the value in helping others. And then I’ll just tell you, man, I hope that you get to do this sometime. When you come to St. Jude, people always say, “It’s going to be sad.” It’s a magical place, okay?

It’s a place where, yeah, the kids are really sick, but it’s incredibly hopeful. It’s inspiring. And then, when you look around and you see how big it is now, and then you go, “Wow, this is all operated by the public,” the public has created all this good within these walls, all these opportunities for these kids within these walls, they come away changed. What I would say to my employees too is even ones that are hardcore, they’re not mission-driven, just let it into your heart a little bit. If you let St. Jude, or if you let a cause into your heart, even if all you do is wear a baseball hat that says St. Jude on it, or Habitat for Humanity, whatever your cause might be, let it into your heart.

It’s going to change you as a person, but you got to let it in. You got to let that guard down. Let it in.

BERMAN: Well, I’m going to treat that as an invitation to come to Memphis and see you.

SHADYAC: Come on, man.

Copy LinkThe political challenges for science and medicine in 2025

BERMAN: Rick, as we sit here in June of 2025, having this conversation, we are seeing, my words, not yours, an assault on science. We’re seeing people from other countries who want to study and do research in the U.S. being turned away, removal of funding from universities that do really important research, scientific leaders being purged from government roles. I’m not asking you to be certainly not partisan, not even political, but as you think about this literally life-saving work that St. Jude and other organizations do, how do you think about navigating this moment and helping make sure that we’re able to continue succeeding on this critical mission?

SHADYAC: I think we’re at a really important point in our history. I’m hoping that we’re just in a short period of time and that some of this will reverse itself. I genuinely am hoping for that, but hope’s not enough. We have to see actual action. What I think that we all need to do is stress the impact that science has had, especially lately.

And again, just take cancer. If it remains the leading cause of death by disease in U.S. kids today, pediatric cancer, that means that there’s still a lot of questions that need to be answered, and the only way we’re going to get answers to those questions is if we continue to research. So I hope that the powers that be will realize that there are some very important things that need to continue to be invested in. These are dollars that are going to renowned institutions, and there’s a return on that investment. So it’s not just a giveaway, there’s services that are being returned in exchange for the grant money that’s being received.

I think that science needs to do a better job of showing the impact of those dollars and an accounting of those dollars. So I think that if cooler heads can prevail and we can all sit in a room and have a conversation about, “$100 million is a lot of money, okay, but here’s what the $100 million is going to drive. Here are going to be the measurables or the key performance indicators that we’re willing to give to you. Here’s what the overhead dollars are going to be or the administrative costs are going to be,” I think that we can then have that conversation. Let’s prioritize if there’s going to be cuts.

It’s hard to argue about a balanced budget, right? All of us that run businesses, we have to meet our budgets, right? So there’s sympathy there, but let’s prioritize things, what’s important and what’s not. In the space that I’m so passionate about, pediatric cancer, only 4% of the federal budget goes to support pediatric cancer research.

BERMAN: Rick, just to be clear, that 4% number, that’s not of the overall federal budget. That’s 4% of which budget is that?

SHADYAC: That’s the National Cancer Institute’s budget.

BERMAN: Gotcha.

SHADYAC: But for St. Jude and other institutions that are devoting dollars to studying pediatric cancer, we wouldn’t be as far along as we are today, but St. Jude is the leading funder of pediatric cancer research. So I’m just hopeful, Jeff, that when very smart people … And there’s very smart people on both sides here, okay?

BERMAN: Sure.

SHADYAC: That the administration gets together with various institutions, including St. Jude, and say, “Okay, here are the dollars, but here’s what you’re going to get back in return with some measurables.” I hope and pray that cooler heads prevail.

BERMAN: For the CEOs who are engaged in this conversation, what’s the one piece of advice you’d give to them about how to define and approach their company’s role in public service?

SHADYAC: What are you passionate about? What do you care about? Do you care about justice? Do you care about hunger? Do you care about kids with cancer? What are you passionate about? What do you think your customers are going to be passionate about? 

But ultimately, I think for us CEOs, we have to make a decision about what we’re passionate about. I care about kids with cancer. I care about kids, period, okay?

And there’s an authenticity to that. And I think the public is really good at figuring out who’s a phony and who’s real, right? So if you’re passionate about something and people can see that you care deeply, and you’re real and authentic about it, the same thing is true with a company, okay?

BERMAN: Yup.

SHADYAC: I think they’re going to get behind it. I think your company’s going to become more successful when you do good, and there’s so much data that supports what I’m saying about how consumer behavior will be impacted by your partnerships with causes that are doing good. So I would urge you all, “What are you passionate about?” Partner with an organization that’s doing that.

BERMAN: Rick, thank you. Thank you for being on Masters of Scale.

SHADYAC: Thank you for having me, man. I’ve enjoyed it.

BERMAN: The way Rick Shadyac Jr. was able to scale the fundraising efforts for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to $2.7 billion is a remarkable example for all of us. When you have an ambition worth fighting for, the ceiling on what is possible may be much, much higher than you’d imagined. I hope you are feeling as inspired as I am, and we can put that feeling to work. In a time when so much feels uncertain and unstable, it’s an unbelievably valuable reminder that what we do control is our attitude and our effort. I’m Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening.