October 30, 1997 | Read Time: 7 minutes
If Marilyn Dunn had been told as a girl in Billings, Mont., that she would grow up to be a fund raiser, she might have pictured herself passing around a collection plate in church or going door to door to raise money for a local farmer who had hit hard times.
”Professional fund raiser’’ was not a term bandied about at the Dunn dinner table. No one in her family, which worked its own farm, had a college degree, let alone received annual appeals from an office of alumni support.
But today Ms. Dunn, 53, is the chief fund raiser at the University of Washington here, in charge of a staff that raised $154.6-million in private contributions last year.
Only one other public university on the Philanthropy 400, The Chronicle’s annual ranking of organizations that raise the most money from private sources, raised more: the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Among all of the universities on the list, just eight brought in more. And among all 400 charities, only 29 raised more.
Seated in her small office on the campus, the vice-president for development is surrounded by the fund-raising paraphernalia she has amassed in her 23-year career. Her eyes glide over hardhats from ground-breaking ceremonies to a dart board with her own photograph in the center, which she offers up to employees who feel too stressed out by their workloads.
Ms. Dunn says she always knew she wanted to leave rural life behind. ”I’d say by the age of 4, I knew I didn’t want to marry a farmer,’’ she recalls.
If she had stayed on a Montana farm, say colleagues and former university presidents, a great fund-raising talent would have been lost.
Since she joined the university’s development office in 1974, the first year there was a budget to hire a staff, the institution has evolved from being almost entirely dependent on state money to raising 12 per cent of its $1.2-billion budget from private sources. That money allows the university to pay professors bigger salaries, recruit better students, and expand projects that state money cannot cover.
Artie Buerk, the university’s first development director, recruited Ms. Dunn to work for him. He had met her when she was a secretary in the alumni office. She had no college degree or fund-raising experience, but Mr. Buerk believed she could raise money. More importantly at the time, she could type. With only three employees, everyone in the office had to do everything, from responding to mail to having lunch with donors.
Ms. Dunn quickly proved that she could do everything, and she exceeded expectations.
One of her first tasks was to increase the membership in the ”President’s Club,’’ an honorary society for donors who gave $1,000 or more. Only 14 people gave that much in 1974. By the time Mr. Buerk left three years later, membership was 14,000.
Says Mr. Buerk, now a board member of the University of Washington’s fund-raising foundation: ”Whatever it is that they learn out there in the cold winters of Montana, they understand people very well.’’
William Gerberding, president of the university from 1979 until his retirement last year, promoted Ms. Dunn to development director in 1983, following a national search. She had received her bachelor’s degree from Washington only two years earlier, after attending night classes.
”It was one of those high-risk, high-potential situations,’’ says Mr. Gerberding, noting that each of the other four finalists had more experience and more-advanced degrees than Ms. Dunn.
”In my opinion, she was clearly the best,’’ he says. ”She is extremely intelligent and insightful in a way that could only be described as uncanny.’’
In her first year in charge, the university raised $30.5-million — $5-million more than in the previous year.
Donations have climbed almost every year since. The exception was in 1993, when they dipped to $100.6-million, from $103.8-million.
Ms. Dunn blames herself. She and her staff lacked enthusiasm in the aftermath of the university’s first capital campaign, she says. Completed in 1992, the five-year campaign raised $280-million, $30-million more than its goal.
”If I could do anything over,’’ she says, ”I would carve out more time to think about post-campaign work. It was very difficult and anti-climactic.’’
But she does not have a simple solution for how she would avoid the situation next time. In fact, she worries that fund raising at the university may be approaching a peak after a steady climb.
”It’s a difficult time,’’ she says. ”I’m a bit troubled by the increasing expectations because of the past successes.’’
She says her biggest concern, though, is not beating past records, but finding the time to maintain relationships with loyal donors while seeking new ones — even with a staff that has grown to 100.
”There are more donors to keep up with now,’’ she says. ”It’s a losing proposition.’’
On top of those pressures, she says, university leaders want to erect new buildings, endow more professorships, and offer bigger scholarships. ”The desire for resources is huge,’’ she says.
The solution to meeting university needs could lie with alumni, who are not giving anywhere near their capacity.
Last year, graduates of the University of Washington donated only $17.5-million, or 11 per cent, of the money raised from private sources. By comparison, alumni of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, which has roughly the same enrollment, gave $47.6-million, or 39 per cent of the $121.6-million raised by their alma mater, helping to put the university 51st on the Philanthropy 400.
”I’m not particularly happy about it,’’ says Ms. Dunn, noting that most alumni stay in Seattle after graduation and are easy to find and solicit. ”We haven’t been as disciplined at contacting them as I’d like us to be.’’
Mr. Buerk, her former boss and a banking executive today, has another explanation. He says the university’s attempt to raise money from private sources is so new that alumni have yet to adjust to the notion that contributions from them are needed at a university supported by their taxes. Michigan, by comparison, has been seeking alumni donors since 1953.
Rather than focusing its efforts on alumni, the development staff has put an emphasis on attracting local wealth to the university.
Last year, $35.7-million was donated by people who were not alumni — about double what alumni gave. At Michigan, non-alumni gave $16.8-million, or about a third of what the alumni gave.
The University of Washington benefits from the large number of wealthy business executives in the Seattle area, including those at Microsoft Corporation. Over the past 10 years, Microsoft’s chief, Bill Gates, has made three gifts worth a total of $34-million.
Connections, luck, and the work of several fund raisers contributed to landing Mr. Gates’s donations and those of others. As a result, some have questioned whether Ms. Dunn can be singled out as the key to the university’s success. In fact, professors and deans do raise much of the second-biggest source of support for the university — corporate money — which mostly goes toward paying for research in their departments. Last year companies donated $43.1-million.
But Ms. Dunn’s supporters say any suggestion that she is a figurehead is wrong.
Steven Ast of Ast/Bryant, an executive-search firm, who has followed Ms. Dunn’s career since the University of Washington became a fund-raising heavyweight, says, ”The infrastructure and the environment which she created made that happen.’’
Ms. Dunn’s former boss, Mr. Buerk, adds that corporations give money only after establishing a good rapport with university leaders. And Ms. Dunn, he says, lays much of the groundwork for such relationships.
”One of the things she has always stressed in fund raising: getting people involved,’’ he says, whether that’s joining the board or making a donation. ”Almost everybody who is anybody in Seattle is involved in the University of Washington. She’s a great believer that money follows involvement.’’
Mr. Ast feels so strongly about Marilyn Dunn’s talent that she is on his list of the top 10 people he would like to recruit for his university clients that are seeking development directors.
Chances are slim that she will leave the University of Washington, however. ”I don’t want to go to another organization where I’m not as committed,’’ says Ms. Dunn.
As for becoming a university president — a post for which some successful fund raisers are sought out — Ms. Dunn laughs: ”I won’t. I won’t. I don’t have a Ph.D., for one. And I’m not likely at this advanced age to go back and get it.’’
But don’t count that out, say colleagues about their friend, who starts work every day at 7 a.m., after waking at 5 to exercise.
Says Mr. Buerk: ”I don’t think there’s an upper limit to Marilyn Dunn’s capabilities.’’
