“You want to be like Silky Sullivan” he told me. I had no idea who or what Silky Sullivan was. He went on to explain that Silky Sullivan was a race horse in the late 1950s known for coming from behind to win. It took Silky a little while to get warmed up but he could charge ahead of the competition when it mattered most, at the end of the race. Silky Sullivan was a metaphor for my first quarter as a development leader. If you missed the story on how I landed in my first director role you can catch up here. I found myself starting in the role, unofficially, May 1, 2013. My new contract would formally begin with the start of the new fiscal year in July but the change had been made. Now I had two months to prove myself and a lot of catching up to do.
Bill was a consultant who had been working with my predecessor. They had been working on building a major gifts program in preparation for a capital campaign. Bill hauled around huge manila files and had paper copies of every document he ever reviewed. When I sat down with Bill for the first time as the director, I felt a little bit like I was talking to a history professor a few years out from retirement. His tweed jacket was quintessential New England. He sat down at the conference table in my office, his manila files spilling off the small round surface onto the extra chairs and into piles on the floor. We reviewed where he was in his work with my predecessor and launched immediately into a project they were working on with the CFO to articulate endowment projections. It was fascinating, but I couldn’t focus.
My career in development began with the annual fund. I had started out managing class agents, coordinating reunions, and sending appeals. I knew how important the annual fund was to the overall budget of the school. I also knew that we were less than two months from the close of the fiscal year and we were 25% behind. By mid-day in my onboarding session with Bill I couldn’t contain my sense of urgency. Campaign planning was important but it wasn’t urgent. The annual fund, at that point, was both. I took advantage of some open dialogue time to discuss the deficit. I had seen enough fiscal year cycles to know when we were deviating too far from the trend line. Bill was shocked. He had no idea that we were that far off course. We both agreed for the next six weeks, the annual fund needed to be the priority.
Bill helped me triage that first fiscal year close. He gave me some veteran pointers and a lot of encouragement. I rallied my team and we aggressively engaged the help of alumni and parent volunteers.We focused on LYBUNTS by target level and then moved to SYBUNTS. I recruited student callers to expand our outreach efforts. We sent new e-appeals, added an additional mailing to the cycle, and spent day and night on the phone. On June 29, we were $5,000 from our goal. I watched every dollar that came in, monitored our online gifts, and waited for the mail. We made it across the finish line that year. I realized that as a newly minted director, my most important role was that of coach. I rallied my team and we just won a championship game. No one person was the MVP, we did it together.
Later that summer, Bill and I sat down again. This time, there was no undertone of urgency in our meeting. While we talked through the numbers and discussed the strategy for next year, Bill pulled out “the annual fund diamond”. His simple diamond shaped diagram mapped out an annual fund strategy that had an early focus on leadership-level prospects, then a widening of the outreach to appeal more broadly to other constituents. The final quarter was the bottom of the diamond, which narrowed once again to focus back on remaining high value prospects. It made a lot of sense. I had never heard the annual fund explained using a diamond shape but it seemed a whole lot better than the chaotic year we just wrapped up. I’ve been using Bill’s model for the past 11 years. I’ve shared it with countless annual fund directors, and never missed a goal. Sure, there is more that goes into planning an annual fund year than a photocopied diamond diagram, but that model represents intentionality, strategy, and focus. It is a best practice that, in my experience, truly is best.
As I was preparing for my first presentation to the full faculty later that fall, I was tasked with sharing a look at how the prior fiscal year wrapped up. Bill and I talked about what information was most important for the faculty and we decided to open with a short black and white video clip, the 1958 Santa Anita Derby. Silky Sullivan came from behind and won against the odds.
