Another session, featuring presidents John Ewing of Mount Union College (OH), Billy Hawkins of Texas College, and Luther Luedtke of California Lutheran University, focused on how to prepare the board of trustees for a fundraising campaign.
     Ewing and Hawkins talked about the lessons they had learned in gearing up for fundraising efforts with their trustees. Ewing noted the importance of trustees feeling ownership of the campaign in attaining any goals. He had three chairs of his board in six years at his previous institution, but it wasn’t until he and his third chair together attended a conference on fundraising, that the board chair became energized and personally invested in the campaign.
     Hawkins said that trustees can perform several important fundraising services for the college: give money, raise money, lend money, or provide entrée to corporations or foundations. Trustees opened the way for Hawkins to add to the Texas College board of trustees the wife of baseball legend Henry Aaron and radio fundraiser Tom Joyner. And Ewing noted that six weeks after arriving at Mount Union, a trustee volunteered to pay for a new science facility, a gift that eventually totaled $15 million.
     Luedtke provided the perspective of a president who had enjoyed a successful tenure at his present institution, having raised over $75 million so far in an $80 million campaign. He said he has learned five important lessons:

     Session participants also provided some valuable cautions to CEOs who are trying to understand and lead the board into a fundraising campaign. During Q&A, a participant told the story of a trustee who was dropped from the board after some internal disagreement on college procedures. The college dropped the trustee because it had to, but it kept the communications channels open and eventually earned a gift of $3 million. “The moral is to not give up on a relationship that has potential because of a sensitive separation.”