A New Understanding

I began my Tuesday by going to Brenda Godwin's office at around 10am, there I met her to go over pictures for the "Faces" slideshow. This is the slideshow shown during senior dinner. She wanted me to go through the pictures and make sure that there were enough pictures of everyone and to make sure some people weren't being shown over and over and some people not shown at all. After going through all the pictures and feeling like I had a good input on the slideshow I went back over to the development office. There I talked to Keith Barrett about his role in development and what he feels like he has to do to keep the show running. He talked about how 10 percent of a schools donors make up 90 percent of the donations. We talked about how people with the capacity to donate are the ones being called and the ones sent brochures and such. If someone donates once, most likely they will end up donating again, so the development office tries to keep that person on their radar, so to speak, because every donations counts. Since Proctor in a non-profit organization, there is a widely varying donor base, so what the development office does is keep people donating to the annual fund more than towards a big gift. Because normally a big gift will be one and done. Keith's role is to make sure that the donors are called and also he makes sure that no section of the development is weighed more than the others. So things like communications, annual giving, major gifts, planned giving, etc. are all equally important. Lastly Keith talked about how if the students are made happy and their dreams come true then they will most likely want to give back in the future. So the development office really wants to get all the donors it can to reach that essential budget each year.