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Buff found that she averaged five visits to each major donor ($25,000 or more). She is especially sensitive to the easy disparagement that with her husband's name and the Times on her side, it is simple to get people to knuckle under. She admits that in many instances the Chandler name has been a help. But she insists that often her connection with the Times has had just the opposite effect. "Out of an hour's appointment with a man," she says, "I may spend 45 or 50 minutes answering questions about things in the Times that he challenges or dislikes. And if I'm not careful in those 50 minutes that he's talking, then I lose my sale in the ten minutes I have left."
All the Way. The spectacular success of the Music Center has spread Buff Chandler's fame as a fund raiser across the land. Recently she was asked for her formula by three representatives of the seven-building, $45.5 million John F. Kennedy Civic, Educational and Cultural Center for Nassau County, L.I., also designed by Welton Becket, which will begin to rise late next year.
"The most important thing," she told them, "is not a formula but a person who will be a catalyst for the project—someone so dedicated to the purpose that he will stay with it until the job is completed. This is something that no committee or group can do; it must begin and end with one person who will stay with it all the way." Like Buff.