Getting Personal Pays Off

Vermont school raises big money without losing its low-key style

A dozen autumns ago, Thomas C. Oxholm, a fund raiser at the Vermont Academy, a private school here, received an unusual request: An alumnus in San Francisco wanted a box of fallen leaves from campus trees to remind him of his school days.

Mr. Oxholm immediately bundled together some leaves from the Vermont maple trees that dot the campus and mailed them to Linwood Meacham, class of 1944. Mr. Meacham was so delighted with the package that he decided to send a maple leaf to each of his classmates as a reminder of the academy — a gesture that resulted in a record percentage of his classmates supporting the annual fund that year.

Such personal touches have become a hallmark of Vermont Academy’s fund raising. Alumni receive postcards on their birthdays with personal notes from former teachers and other school employees. Potential donors receive jugs of the school’s maple syrup during fund-raising visits.

The challenge for Mr. Oxholm and his colleagues has been figuring out how to maintain the school’s low-key persona while stepping up solicitation efforts in recent years to meet an $18-million goal for a capital campaign to raise money to finance a new dorm and theater, as well as other campus needs, and help expand the endowment.

So far, fund raisers appear to be striking the right balance. Alumni support has grown from $331,000 in 1998 to $2.1-million last year, an accomplishment that helped the school win one of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s 2001 awards for fund-raising improvement. The school has also successfully raised about two-thirds of the amount it seeks in the capital drive, four years before the campaign is scheduled to conclude.

“It’s a very labor-intensive school committed to the individuality of kids,” says Stanley A. Colla Jr., a board member and former teacher at the academy who is now vice president for alumni affairs at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H. By reminding alumni and other donors of that commitment, Vermont Academy “has really done a good job of attracting people back to the school who can now be significant donors.”

Shunning Formality

The red brick buildings of Vermont Academy, which celebrates its 125th anniversary this year, sit on 500 acres just beyond the main street of this rural town in southern Vermont. The 250 students come mainly from New England to attend small classes, and many end up developing tight relationships with faculty and staff members, who tend to play multiple roles at the school. Last year tuition cost $27,800 for boarding students and $16,900 for day students, but about 43 percent of students received financial aid.

Many former students recall the academy’s decidedly unstuffy nature. Robert Pew, who was touring the school recently with his son Cary, attended from 1965 to 1967 before an injury prompted him to transfer to another private school. “The other school I went to was very formal, very elitist,” he says. “The thing I liked about Vermont Academy was that it was not that way.”

At the heart of the school’s fund-raising success lies a team of three: Mr. Oxholm, the development director; Robert A. Barr, the campaign director; and James C. Mooney, the academy’s headmaster for the past eight years.

“Tom is the soul of the school, Jim is the vision, and I’m the coach,” says Mr. Barr, who previously worked as a fund raiser for Dartmouth and Bowdoin colleges before joining Vermont Academy three years ago.

All three men are closely involved in the school’s daily life, which they say gives them increased credibility when discussing the school’s needs with donors. Mr. Oxholm, who graduated from the academy in 1982, used to spend his days raising money and many afternoons helping to coach the football team until the birth of his daughter, Hannah, three years ago. Mr. Barr currently coaches the girls’ junior varsity ice hockey team. And Mr. Mooney teaches an art-history class and makes the basement of his family’s on-campus home available as a senior lounge with a pool table and television.

The academy’s fund raisers say they keep the school’s values in mind in all that they do. “We arrive in a Ford Taurus, not a fancy car” for donor visits, says Mr. Oxholm. “We don’t screen our calls and only talk to the big fish.” A visit to the cramped development offices confirms that money is not wasted on decorating or plush furniture.

A Role for Faculty Members

Vermont Academy makes a big effort to get faculty members involved in efforts to connect with alumni, since it is the teaching staff that had the most influence on many students. Mr. Oxholm rounds up faculty members to sign the postcards for alumni they remember. “Sometimes they write so much we have to put the card in an envelope,” he says. Mr. Oxholm writes many notes as well.

“If our computers went down we’d be fine because he knows everybody,” says Mr. Barr.

In addition to communicating through cards, Vermont Academy has increased the number of alumni events it holds on and off campus in the past few years. Often those gatherings are tied to a school event, such as the retirement or 80th birthday of a faculty member. The school usually does not charge money for the events. “We are trying to get people involved and not scare them away with an expensive tab,” says Mr. Oxholm.

To get alumni and supporters thinking about the school as often as possible, Vermont Academy two years ago upgraded the graphics and photographs of its magazine, Vermont Academy Life. The magazine now publishes regularly three times a year, instead of sporadically as in the past, and it features stories of current students to help connect alumni to the school’s present.

Vermont Academy also recently retooled its Web site, adding school news and campus photographs. In addition to including background information on faculty and the headmaster, the Web site features short biographies of the development team that contain details designed to personalize the signature found at the bottom of a letter or the voice on the phone.

Mr. Oxholm’s entry, for example, reads: “When he isn’t busy raising money for the school, you might find him coaching football or wrestling, or playing golf with friends.” It concludes: “You don’t have to make a gift to the school to get to talk to Tom. Give him a call any time to reminisce about V.A. or find out how a classmate or former teacher is doing.”

Appealing to Parents

In addition to concentrating on alumni, the school three years ago decided to work more closely with parents in the hope of converting them into donors. The school now distributes a comprehensive annual parent handbook, with rules, information, and photos of current students. Parents, rather than school employees, now also manage the annual fund-raising auction. The change helped turn the event from a quiet brunch into a festive evening party that raised $78,000 this year, up more than $30,000 from three years ago.

The school used the initial phase of the campaign three years ago as an opportunity to solicit parents for major gifts for the first time ever. Seven parents of current or recent students donated more than $100,000 each in response to the appeals, numbers that far exceed any past gifts from parents, says Mr. Barr.

Vermont Academy fund raisers also focus on future generations of alumni by inviting seniors to a dinner 100 days before graduation. The event is held in the Warren Chivers Ski and Outdoor Center — an airy building that resembles a ski lodge and is named for a favorite teacher and coach — where the seniors are waited on by the handful of Vermont Academy alumni who currently work at the school and who use the event to talk about the school’s history and the importance of financial support.

This year, the school recruited seven students to each ask 10 classmates to pledge money for a senior class gift, a minimum of a dollar for each year at the school. Those who fulfilled the first pledge installment before graduation received a special T-shirt. “We try to make them aware that there’s an expectation of being involved when they leave,” says Mr. Oxholm, who adds that, for the first time in a decade, every member of the graduating class made a pledge.

Mr. Oxholm and the other fund raisers make a point of being well-known on campus. While he no longer coaches football, Mr. Oxholm still does “dorm duty” — which includes monitoring study hall and making sure lights are out by 10:30 each night — and he often eats lunch with students in the dining hall. One of the ice hockey players Mr. Barr coaches, a student who will one day inherit a significant sum, has told him the school is already in her will.

“We’ll have an easier time down the road because we know the kids as well as we do,” says Mr. Oxholm.

Making a Difference

Mr. Oxholm and the other fund raisers use the school’s small size as a strong selling point in their appeals. What would be considered “pocket change” to a large college with a multimillion-dollar endowment “would make a huge difference to us,” says Mr. Mooney.

Many donors are moved by that point. “It’s small and obviously needs the help much more so than my college does,” said one of the school’s six-figure donors, who requested anonymity. “I haven’t given much to my college, but prefer to give it to the school that seems to need it and appreciate it more.”

But while the school plays up its small-town roots, it also relies on outside expertise for fund-raising advice.

Mr. Mooney recruited his uncle, who as a volunteer ran successful campaigns for an elite boarding school and college, to speak to the board’s executive committee about the need for them to set an example by giving themselves. “‘This campaign isn’t going anywhere unless you play,’” Mr. Mooney says his uncle told the board. The presentation helped invigorate the board and spurred five members to contribute gifts of more than $500,000 each. Mr. Mooney’s uncle also helped the school by donating money to pay for research to show how much donors could be expected to contribute to the capital campaign.

For additional advice, Mr. Mooney turned to his alma maters. He tapped Terry Holcombe, the retired vice president for development and alumni affairs at Yale University, to speak to the development staff and a few trustees about the capital campaign. And he brought Mr. Oxholm to his high school, the Taft School, in Watertown, Conn., to talk to the director of development, Jerry Romano.

“Perhaps what’s made us successful is including a lot of people in the conversation,” says Mr. Mooney.

He says he realizes that the school will need to expand its fund raising to reach out to a growing number of potential supporters if it hopes to keep giving strong. “When it gets to be routine maybe people will be less excited,” Mr. Mooney says. “But it’s not routine yet.”