>> My name is Rob Max and I'm the Executive
Director at Sweet Relief Musician's Fund
and the Cancer Fund at Sweet Relief.
A typical day for me is fundraising, working
with artists and events, benefit shows, donors,
our board, and our different partners,
and that involves bringing money
contributions into the charity.
Another portion of the day is dealt with
speaking with many of our applicants.
Musicians, people in the music industry
who are battling illness
disability or elder age problems.
Another part of the day is dealing with
staff projects and then it just breaks
down into another dozen things which could
be online, social, technical, copywriting,
working on film, TV, so it's a
pretty diverse position that I have.
The atmosphere at our company is very positive.
We're a real team-oriented kind of entity,
so although there certainly is a hierarchal
structure, whether I'm working with interns,
whether I'm working with staff or I'm working
with a president or a board of directors, it's,
it's all about the mission in front
of us and people use their skills
and their abilities and work well in tandem.
[ Silence ]
What I love about my job is that first off I'm
the boss, so I don't have to report to anybody
and if I can ever tell you the greatest thing
in life is, is not having to ask other people
for permission to do simple things, whether
it's take off and go see my son's ballgame.
And then the second piece is I'm in the world of
music and I've been a music fan and a musician
and a singer my whole life within different
careers and around different careers.
I have a passion for music.
And then also I've been involved in, in Goodwill
and non-profits and charities since I was kid,
whether it was volunteering at
hospitals, counseling teens,
and the fact that my business is helping
people who are less fortunate and are suffering
from some kind of illness or disability, you
know, we get to really fix some problems.
And that's just a great feeling
to be able to do that for work.
Some of the challenges that
we face as an organization.
First and foremost is fundraising.
We're a niche charity, so where some charities
have a more general appeal to, to all people,
we typically interact more with
people that are maybe music fans.
So trying to raise the dollars and trying to
help as many people that reach out, you know,
we just, there's a big gap
between that, you know?
Fortunately, there's other
charities that do what we do.
A large part of our role is to find other
solutions and other resources for people
that reach out to us, because, you know, we
have dozens a week that are looking for help
and when it comes to financial grants,
we can only help a few each
week, but we try to do something.
Sometimes it's locating help at
a local, state, or federal level.
Sometimes it's interacting
with the medical community.
Sometimes it's just negotiating
bills for somebody,
we may not actually be sending them any money.
So, making that happen and help
as many people that need it is,
is probably our greatest challenge.
I love my work.
My work's all the time.
You know? I get e-mails Sundays, I get e-mails
on Saturdays, part of what we do is events, so,
this weekend I was up with my kids and we
went to a film premier up in Beverly Hills
and there were a lot of great folks up there.
I'll be flying to San Francisco for
a concert, then I'm down in Texas,
and then we're at Coachella
and Stagecoach for three weeks.
So, when you do what I do, it's,
it's, there's really no timeframe.
I certainly have a maybe a 7 a.m. to
5 p.m. on the computer in, you know,
telephone and interactive mode,
but otherwise it's all the time.
So. If there's anything I wish I could change
about my job it would just have
a greater level of resources.
It's a dream job, for sure.
[ Silence ]
You know, I think any major these days is
really sufficient to get into what I do,
which is really a combination of a nonprofit,
Goodwill, and a welfare charity, and also it's,
I'm in the entertainment business,
as well, working with a lot
of different people in the music world.
I think very few people come out of school
saying I'm going to work at a nonprofit.
And, the opportunities are great and,
there's less barriers to advancement.
[Pause] And there's less competition, I think.
So if you're a sharp person, you can do well
and, quite frankly, the dollars are there.
I mean if you're a fundraiser, which is probably
the most desired skill set in our industry,
those people can make a half-million,
a million dollars a year
if they're talented at what they do.
[ Silence ]
We got started in this, I'll
be entering my fifth year.
And I actually spent a decade, I worked
on Wall Street, I was in risk management
and [pause] international insurance markets.
And the opportunity came up through, through
our president, Bill, who had been working in
and out of the music industry
for years, that a charity,
Sweet Relief Musician's Fund was struggling
and they had lost their board members
and their revenue had dropped
down significantly.
We're in our 20, entering
our 20th year this year.
And, they were looking for someone to, to
kind of proper it up, and I had the background
in a number of avenues, and Bill had a
background, we were kind of a good partnership.
We each have specialities and
expertise that really fit well.
And even against the, the best advice from
our families, we took over a nonprofit charity
that was dying in the middle of a
financial disaster in this country.
And, we were able to turn it around and make
it a very significant charity once again.
So that's how I got into that.
I attended the University
of Maryland at College Park.
And my major was marketing with a history minor.
And then I had switched from finance,
because it was just too much, too much work.
I always was creative and I thought that
advertising, coming up with, with copy and ideas
and images would be something fun to do.
What I discovered is, coming out
of school with a marketing degree,
I'm not sure at a top tier university,
was challenging to get a really,
to get a good opportunity and I lived up by
New York, so getting on the Madison Avenue
and those opportunities just
weren't, weren't easily available.
So, you know, I ended up running
into a few different careers
until I got to where I am today.
After college, I was in [pause] commercial
real estate outside of New York City.
And we were a company that
specialized in environmental problems.
This was in 1986.
And they had passed a, a decree in
New Jersey, it was the ECRA Decree
and it was Environmental
Clean-up Responsibility Act.
And that meant that anyone
selling a property was responsible
for its environmental impact before
that sale could be completed.
And I worked with an organization that focused
on those kind of properties that got involved
in the cleanup and got involved
in the transactional process.
[ Silence ]
You know, the advice I would give to someone
that's interested in a career path of what I do,
nonprofit world or any career path,
everything is about relationships.
You need to be able to communicate,
you have to have the willingness
to communicate, build your networks.
You know, if you're coming out of school,
you should be reaching out to your parents,
your parent's friends, your neighbors,
and let people know what you like,
what you think you can do, and, and
just make sure that you're out there.