Last Day

Today was the final day of my senior project, I went into work today at around 10am and came Chuck immediately wanted me to make some modifications to the slide show I had made, but after seeing that it was pretty much all set he was satisfied. I worked on that for about an hour, and after that I went and talked to Valerie about the slideshow because she thought it could be better, but I reassured her. Then I gave Chuck the sponsor evaluation sheet that he needed to fill out, and he promptly completed that and returned it to me, and he explained why he gave me what he did, nothing bad. Lastly, I went around and said bye to people and thanked them for a great senior project. It was a lot of work, but I would do it all again!

2nd to Last Day

I didn't have the most exciting of days today, since I am winding down on my senior project I didn't go into the office for that long today. I went in after my Spanish exam at around 10am, and walked in to find that they were just about to start a weekly meeting, which was perfect. They were basically getting all the preparations for the senior dinner and graduation finalized, along with the upcoming cruise. On Friday and Saturday, when the graduation and senior dinner happen, the development office will be scrambling to make sure all the events are taken care of. Each of the people has a different job in each of the ceremonies. I just listened to this meeting, where they only talked about what the plans were, but then after I began to make the slideshow for the day of senior dinner. I only got the raw pictures before and now it was time to make it into a slideshow. I exported the pictures to iphoto and then into a movie format so that it will be easily played on Keith's computer. That was all I did today, tomorrow is my last day, so I have to complete my self-evaluation and have Chuck write a Sponsor evaluation.

Second Weekly Reflection

I feel like this week was full of information, I learned so much that I don’t think I could write it all on this weekly reflection. I really enjoyed what I was doing because I was really getting into the business side of the development office. I especially enjoyed interviewing Steve Theroux because he is the Finance manager for the Board of Trustees, so his information on the business of Proctor was lengthy, which is exactly what I was looking for. I learned a lot of information from him, but I also learned a lot from the people around the office. Like when I talked with Bonny and Keith I learned what the facts and figures were of the office and how they need to raise a certain amount of money each year to get the school by. I learned from Greg how to actually communicate with the donors, and how to ask them for money without actually asking. Also, I learned from Kim what it takes to communicate to the donors and potential donors through things like emails and weekly newsletters. There were no specific activities that I was asked to do that I didn’t know why. All the things I was doing seemed to have purpose. Everything happened as I expected this week. The only things thing could have happened that didn't was my interview with Mark Loehr, but I am not too disappointed by that because I got to talk with Steve Theroux, but possibly I will be able to talk with Mark this upcoming week. I got to interview almost everyone in the office and I know almost completely the process of how they go about business. I will benefit from this weeks activity by understanding now how a non-profit organization works, and since it’s the school I am attending I can see that process of business being applied. To this point almost all of my goals have been met, the only thing that hasn't happened is my meeting with Mark Loehr. The only other thing I would like to add is I enjoyed talking to Greg Samaha about communications and understanding how they go about calling donors, that was one thing I was puzzled about before. That’s about it for this week, I am excited for what is to come of this upcoming week, I hope that I will be able to get an interview in with Mark Loehr.

Friday

I went into work today at around 9am to go and sit down and write down a few more emails for the development office of students' emails, so that the development office can stay in touch with them. After that, Brenda Godwin asked if I could go to assembly and give Ed the yearbook and also help give out yearbooks to seniors after assembly. I got all of that done and went back to the office where I went and had a talk with Kim Hurlbutt who is the director of communications at the development office. We talked about how any pages that are sent out to parents and prospective donors come from the development office. She went over how 94% of the revenue comes from leadership donors, or people who donate a thousand dollars or more to school. What's pretty cool is that Kim can track who is reading the emails that the office sends them and see if they are even opening the emails, it really gives her a sense of how to send out the message of donating the best. Kim tries to see how to retain donors, while also getting new ones so that the business can grow. Her job takes lots of research on people, because she makes personal pages for the leadership donors and to do that she must find out a lot about the person. Kim talked about one person she made a page for where the person happened to really love football, so she found a picture of the person back when he was a student at Proctor and put his picture on a personal page. She also put a picture of Chris Ruez on the page posing on the same rock that the person in the other photo had. She said that also all the time she will get an email back from the recipient saying how delighted they were to be given a page that was so perfect for them. Customization is a key to her work. That was pretty much all we talked about for today, and at that point I was done for the day, but overall I had a very successful Friday.

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.

Communications

When I left to go to work at around 9am I went to Dougo Houston's office to go and talk to him about my past weeks because he is my mentor and that is his duty. So we talked for about 30 or 40 minutes just to catch up on my recent activities. After I left I went over to the development office, and the first thing I did was I wrote down emails of current seniors so that the development office can stay in touch with them after graduation. Then I proceeded to go and speak with Greg Samaha about the communications side of the development office. We basically go right into it by me sitting in on a few of his conversations with either parents of alumni or alumni or some other donor. I didn't get to make any calls myself, but I got a good handle on what he was doing and maybe later this week I will be able to speak with someone about giving. Greg gave me the basic script for the phone calls, but over the years it seems as though he has put his heart into it, which is what he said it was all about. Also he talked about smiling on the phone because if you are smiling the other person will be able to hear it. While I was listening he got a few answering machines, but he also made some success as well by getting a donation of a thousand dollars right there. He also talked to some parents that weren't sure, so I really got to see every type of situation that can happen. Greg told me that you never want to ask someone for their money, but rather invite them to donate, because it is less pressuring and a more courteous way of asking. We ended by having a mock conversation where I was the donor and Greg was Greg, and I got to see what strategies he employs. I am hoping that tomorrow I can maybe try calling someone and invite them to donate.

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.