Talk with Steve Theroux

Today wasn't exactly the busiest of days compared to others, though I did think that it was going to be a long stressful day. Anyways I went into the office at 9am as usual and met Steve Theroux who is the treasurer of the board of trustees. He was at Proctor so that I could interview him and that is exactly what I did. Steve is currently the president of Lake Sunapee Bank, but he has been involved with Proctor for some time now. He was the business manager of Proctor for a few years in and after 1980 and then he turned to be a trustee in 2005. Three of his sons came here which is why is stayed connected with the school. Our conversation was mostly about finance and how the school needs to operate. I heard a lot of the same stuff I have been hearing all week, like how the development office needs to raise 1 million dollars a year, but I also learned some new things like how their job is to make sure everything is balanced. The board of trustees mainly wants to oversee the school and keep the mission on track. Each year there is a specific budget that needs to be divided accordingly so the Board of trustees elects a school leader, Mike Henriques, to oversee that budget. So they are almost like the boss of Mike. Steve did say that he really enjoyed how Mike has been performing as a headmaster. Mike has been making sure there is a good flow of the budget each year. Proctor, like most other schools, follows main business concepts like technology, budget, payroll, etc., and this is how the money that comes from tuition is used. About 80% of the schools revenue is from tuition, so that is definitely the biggest part, but that other 20% needs to be filled in. That is where the Board of Trustees and the Development Office come in. They keep a sufficient model each year and if there are any new dorms or renovations that must be made, they will do a big fundraiser for the school. It surprised me to find out that the tuition isn't enough to get a new building, let alone completely support what the school needs to thrive. Steve also talked about an endowment, which I won't g into, but he basically said it was a big savings account. That was all for my talk with Steve, I was going to talk with Mark Loehr, but he had to reschedule, which is a relief to me seeing as this blog would be twice as long. To finish the day I rehearsed calling people for annual giving with Greg Samaha, which is much harder than you would think.