RAISE Podcast

Juan is the Assistant Vice President for Advancement Strategy and Campaign Director for The University of Texas at Austin. His experience includes previous campaign and advancement leadership positions with Texas Athletics, Wake Forest University, and Arizona State University Foundation. His experience includes campaign planning and goal setting, case statement development, analytics modeling. business intelligence, and process optimization.

Prior to joining the development community, Juan spent eleven years as a management consultant with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Arthur Andersen and BearingPoint. His client experience focused on strategy formulation, merger integration, revenue growth enhancement, and operational improvement projects.

His education includes a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University and an MBA from The University of Texas at Austin.

Dori Sonntag is the Associate Vice President for Organizational Effectiveness at Gonzaga University, overseeing strategic planning, system enhancement, and talent management for University Advancement. She has been with Gonzaga for 23 years, serving in a variety of roles within advancement. Dori has a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and Master of Arts in counseling psychology, both from Gonzaga University and is also a certified leadership coach.

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.

Todd is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Alumni Relations and the Executive Director of the Mizzou Alumni Association. As the chief alumni relations officer, Todd leads the alumni relations, annual giving, donor relations and advancement marketing and communication teams. Todd joined the Mizzou Alumni Association staff in 1995 and recently celebrated 25 years at Mizzou. During his tenure, he has served on two advancement leadership teams who completed successful $1 billion campaigns.

Since 1999, the Mizzou Alumni Association has won 24 national programming awards from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). Todd has served in numerous district and national roles for the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) including the Commission on Alumni Relations. He is a longtime member and former board member for the Council of Alumni Association Executives.

A native of Harrisburg, Todd earned a Master’s in Education degree from Mizzou, a Bachelor’s degree in Communications from Truman State University and an Associate’s degree from Moberly Area Community College.

On this episode of the RAISE podcast, Brent chats with Tim McMahon, Vice President for University Advancement at Marquette University. Tim and his stellar team decided they weren’t willing to wait to see how the pandemic played out to launch their capital campaign. So, they decided that the Time to Rise is now. So far, they’ve had 50,000 donors to the campaign already; there was a 62% increase in giving in FY21 vs FY20; over 500 donors have given to the campaign at the $100k+ level; and 42% of donors to the campaign are first-time donors. And, it’s all been done completely virtual. Brent invited Tim onto the podcast to talk about the future of work and advancement’s risk of missing a huge opportunity to retain (and attract) talented employees, but they ended up covering lots of other subjects along the way. Brent and Tim talk about the perks and challenges of getting a part-time MBA, how a career in fundraising allows former athletes to live out their dreams and have a balanced life, and how leadership is action, not position. Now’s your time, Tim - go, Golden Eagles!

On this episode of the RAISE podcast, we have the privilege of learning from Peter Hayashida, Vice Chancellor of Advancement at the University of California Riverside and President of the UC Riverside Foundation. Peter grew up in a military family that moved from base to base, so he learned early on how to be adaptable, resilient, and to accept change as a natural part of life. But, as a result of all that bouncing around, he has invested in setting down his own deep roots. Peter has served long tenures at both UCLA and UC Riverside, and he has lots to say about the value of sticking it out, cultivating happiness right where you are, and becoming a deeply ingrained member of a university community. On this episode, Peter talks about how universities’ value propositions need to adapt in response to social changes; how the first time alums hear from the school after graduation it should be a message of “How are you feeling about UCR?” or “How can we help you?”; and how our alums expect to have a donor experience that’s much closer to Amazon’s intimate, personalized customer experience (and we’ve got a long way to go to catch up to Amazon). Peter points out that we are really good at starting up new things in the advancement world, but we are really bad at letting things go. Thank you, Peter, for sharing some of the amazing new things your team is doing (virtual reality goggles to give campus tours at remote alumni events!), as well as some of the things you’re letting go (mass email appeals).

About Amy

Amy Noah has been appointed Vice President and Chief Advancement Officer for the University of Oklahoma Foundation, effective April 1, 2021. Prior to this assignment, Noah was the Vice President for Development at the Purdue Research Foundation serving as the Chief Fundraising Officer for Purdue University from 2013 to 2020.

As Vice President of Development, Noah led a staff of over 245 employees focused on annual, major gift and planned giving programs and alumni, corporate and foundation relations. Under Noah’s leadership, the University successfully raised over $2.5B as part of the seven-year Ever True campaign, including a record-breaking $517M in fiscal year 2019.

Noah launched Purdue Day of Giving in 2014, which accounted for $147M over six years. In 2019, Purdue Day of Giving was celebrated as the largest single-day fundraising campaign in higher education for raising a total of $41.6M. Noah began her Development career at Purdue University in 2001 after graduating with a BS from Purdue in 1994 and earning her MBA from Indiana Wesleyan University in 2000.

Noah is a member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. She previously served on the Board of Directors for the Lafayette Symphony Foundation, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and the Engineering Development Forum. She has provided fundraising counsel for Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana, the Salvation Army Lafayette, University of Michigan-Flint, Ivy Tech Community College, the West Lafayette School Corporation, and the Lafayette School Corporation.