The Fund Raiser

Strategic Panning

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By Mark J. Drozdowski

Turning into the parking lot of the ski resort, I feel a familiar lump in my throat. Here I am, back at the scene of my near-fatal skiing expedition with an overzealous donor. This time, thankfully, it's summer, so I'm not here to ski. Instead, I'm about to participate in a daylong retreat focused on something equally nauseating: strategic planning.

Look, I appreciate the importance of strategic planning and recognize its necessity. We all need road maps. But the process can be deadly dull, especially in heavy doses. Ski lodges have bars, I remind myself as I pass the pond with the sporadic geyser and the fake swans and head to the Spruce Room.

Waiting inside are the early arrivals from our alumni association's Board of Directors -- the group requiring the road map. This bunch, numbering 22, represents the extreme fringe of our graduates, eager folks with fuzzy notions of how alumni should play an active role in the life of the college. I think they should, too, but most alums don't harbor the same fervor as the members of this group. So we thought it was time to harness all that positive energy and focus the board on a few "strategic" initiatives that might, in fact, engage more alumni in some fashion. I had my own agenda for the day, which I'll get to in a minute.

First, we opt to break the ice with a brain teaser; I win and earn a box of chocolates. Drinking may be out, at least until noon, I think, but at least I can enjoy a sugar high.

On to business. What is the board's mission? What can it hope to accomplish? Over the years, the answer to the latter has been "everything," which, loosely translated, means "nothing." The board has tried too hard to please everyone and account for all tastes, organizing subcommittees for every conceivable activity and spending the better part of board meetings discussing in great detail how each group accomplished essentially zero beyond setting the next meeting date.

Instead, we decide we will concentrate on three activities. We aren't sure what they will be, but we all agree we like the number three. It has a certain biblical gravitas to it.

People around the room toss ideas at our facilitator, a board member with some history of leading strategic planners. He scribbles notes on newsprint, tears off pages and sticks them up around the room. Much of the newsprint winds up affixed to the windows, blocking my view of the fake swans and otherwise drowning out the light. So much for daydreaming. Back to munching chocolates.

Ideas fall into two main categories: what we can do for current students, especially seniors (such as fun events, career counseling, and mentoring), and what we can do for alumni (different fun events, career counseling, and mentoring). Come my turn to pipe up, I offer the following suggestion: fund raising.

Deafening silence.

No scribbling, no tearing newsprint, no sticking. Just staring. At me. In disbelief.

"What do you mean, 'fund raising'?" asks one board member, finally speaking for the group. "Isn't that your job?"

"Before we get to that, let's break for lunch," our facilitator interrupts, hoping to buy time and restore sanity.

Over lunch, no one broaches the subject I had introduced. We talk about the previous day's golf tournament, hosted by the college (it rained); the Red Sox's 10-game lead over the Yankees; and the postlunch planned outing, of which I'm unaware. Evidently the resort has offered to run the ski lift and take us up the mountain. The lump returns.

I'm not much for heights, mind you, so the thought of joining the board members on a creaky contraption suspending us over the tops of pine trees doesn't sit well. Only a thin bar to prevent me from pulling a Rambo-like plummet into the branches? A howling wind to buffet the swing and coax up my lunch? My manhood is at stake, however, so I go along.

Returning to the lodge a half-hour later, a bit shaken yet somewhat impressed -- we could see Boston's skyline, a good 50 miles away -- I hope to revisit my chocolates and my point about fund raising.

First, though, another brainteaser. This one is designed to get us thinking "outside the box." Here's how it goes: Antony and Cleopatra are lying dead on the floor in an Egyptian villa. Nearby is a broken bowl. There are no marks on the bodies, and they were not poisoned. No person was in the villa when they died. How did they die?

I'll reveal the answer in a bit.

Back to the fund-raising discussion. I explain that, given our small staff, we must rely heavily on an army of volunteers for support. What if this group committed to recruiting new donors to the annual fund? The board members could write letters, man phones, and host special events to encourage giving. Our alumni giving rate hovers just below 10 percent, so we certainly need help. What if we set a target of doubling that percentage in five years? What if every board member agrees to recruit 25 new donors each year? We would have measurable goals, a beneficial outcome to our work, and an accomplishment to trumpet to the administration. Finally, we could embrace a common focus, self-serving as it may seem.

Board members start to come around. They recognize the value in such work, especially if some money can be earmarked for scholarships. They begin to rally behind the goals, keeping in mind our looming capital campaign and the need to continue annual giving in that climate. They each want to handpick a list of 100 prospects, choosing classmates, friends from the hockey team or the radio station, or fellow Greeks. I sense growing excitement.

Still, I have to remind them of a central tenet of fund raising: It begins at the top. You have to give in order to get. You have to become a donor before you ask others. Let's add to our list of strategic goals 100 percent participation among board members. That's the easy part.

"Don't we all already give?" asks one member.

"No," I reply. "Look to your left and to your right. One of your neighbors isn't a donor."

Believe it or not, checkbooks instantly appear. The board members buy into the idea, quite literally. So much enthusiasm abounds, in fact, that they lose sight of establishing two other goals. They settle on one -- more alumni-fun activities, which will bolster our primary goal.

Mission accomplished, I suppose. We have a strategic direction, a narrowly focused road map to govern activities over the next couple of years, along with concrete tactics we all endorse. I'm not sure all of that qualifies as "out of the box" thinking, though it does represent a radical departure from business as usual.

Speaking of which, let's get back to our teaser. Figure it out? No, Antony and Cleopatra didn't choke and weren't struck by lightning. Turns out they weren't humans; the riddle never says they were. The broken bowl clue you in?

They were fish.