A new vision for an old organization
Ritchie Geisel has always been ahead of the curve. "I was a distance runner in the sixties; I graduated from the GSB and took a job in the nonprofit sector in the early seventies; and in 1978, my wife and I built a passive-solar-powered house." Now, in encouraging Recording for the Blind (RFB) to address the needs of those with learning disabilities, he breaks new ground once again.
Geisel runs in 1972 Olympic trials.
Geisel joined RFB in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1989 as president and chief executive officer. "Recording for the Blind," he explains, "is the only national nonprofit organization that assists people who can't read standard print because of visual, physical, or perceptual disabilities. We serve them with free-on-loan recorded books on all academic levels. Our mission is to promote education and professional success by converting printed material into other forms."
The organization's services are not restricted to the blind. "Over 50 percent of the people we serve have learning disabilities such as dyslexia and are not otherwise physically challenged," he says.
Geisel has guided RFB through a period of tremendous growth -- specifically, a 51 percent increase in clientele. Demand has increased for special services for the learning-disabled population; new legislation at the federal level requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for any employees with disabilities, and at the state level requires schools to make textbooks accessible to all students; and recent advances in technology have made it possible for people to access printed material in more and more ways.
RFB served 36,000 individuals in its 1994 fiscal year. The unprecedented growth of its lending-library service continued, with more than 214,000 taped books circulated, or nearly 50 percent more than just four years ago. Also, during that time, RFB's 30 recording studios collectively increased their production by 21 percent, adding 3,000 new titles to the organization's master tape library last year alone. Finally, a joint development agreement signed a year ago with IBM has resulted in the availability of information retrieval software for use by RFB's consumers. The software makes published materials converted to an electronic format (called E-Text by RFB) available to anyone with a personal computer and the adaptive equipment of choice, whether voice synthesizer, large-print screen, or braille keyboard and printer.
Geisel admits to a lifelong interest in the nonprofit sector. Though he took a job as a school administrator following graduation, he soon turned to fund raising. He has since served as director of major gifts at Princeton University and vice president of development at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York.
Geisel applies the same philosophy at RFB that he used before with considerable success: "The key to making a nonprofit successful is to apply the same principles to running it as to running a for-profit," he says.
"At RFB we used to think of ourselves as a charity; we now think of ourselves as a nonprofit business. Formerly, we expected our clients to be grateful; now we work to achieve customer satisfaction. We used to disregard the idea of competition because no other organization does what we do on a national scale; now we recognize the need for competition -- competition for volunteers and money, for human and financial capital."
Geisel believes an important factor in the success of RFB is its corps of volunteers. "We have the most highly educated volunteer group of all the organizations I know." RFB has 4,500 volunteers, 240 paid staff members, and enough work for all to do.
The Business School's alumni network has been helpful. Charles Schwab, MBA '61, who is dyslexic and has a dyslexic child, recently gave RFB a substantial grant for promoting awareness and distributing information about learning disabilities.
Geisel took his present job simply because he considered it to be a good opportunity -- rather than because he had a personal connection with it or a special interest in it. "Basically, this was a chance to be CEO of a national organization -- something I'd always aspired to do," he says.
-- Gabrielle Berger
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