Mike took his first job in development to subsidize a running habit (he was an avid cross country runner in college and later ran for the Nike Farm Team at Stanford). But thanks to some amazing mentors at Stanford, Mike came to love the work and built himself a pretty awesome advancement career. He worked his way up from an Administrative Assistant on the Reunion Campaigns team at Stanford, eventually managed the team, and then made the tough decision to leave one of the highest performing fundraising shops in the country to build out a development shop at Santa Clara University.

Brent and Mike talk about what drove that decision, the structures and programs Mike has borrowed from Stanford and adopted at Santa Clara, and the challenges and beauty of building a small but high-performing advancement team. They exchange ideas for educating current students about philanthropy; for personalizing alumni communications; and for discovering donors’ true passions (like the ones they demonstrate on social media platforms). They also talk candidly about about the implications of being down 25% of staff during the past year’s hiring freeze.