Taking on a new role

I just found out last week that my internship may be shifting to more of a research fellow position, which I am very excited about. Everything is still in the very beginning stages so nothing is certain yet. But apparently the foundation is starting to help develop the strategy to move ASU in to the next phase of The Challenges campaign. The Challenges was a very innovative project that helped to inform the public that ASU is determined to tackle the major "challenges" of our time, which include the areas of education, technology, communities, sustainability, economic opportunity, healthy lives, human rights, and understanding the past and present for the sake of our future. The next phase is going to focus on how ASU is providing The Solutions and addressing some of these issues. Over the next couple months I will slowly transition from my current responsibilities over to a research and support role for this new project. I think it will incredibly interesting and I looking forward to working with impressive group of people that will be involved.

Stuff to do before break

I can't express how excited I am to go on a little break from work and school next week. On Wednesday evening my girlfriend and I are flying out to spend Christmas with her family in Minnesota. We also have a bunch of friends from college that live in Minneapolis so it will be fun to see all of them. Before I leave however, I have a few things to finish up with at work. There is huge invitation mailing going out for a conversation with President Crow at the Tempe Center for the Arts so I'm sure I will spend a lot of time stuffing envelopes this week. I am also working on putting together a family tree of the Fulton family - as most may know they are the family that made the Fulton Teacher's College and Fulton School of Engineering possible. One of the gift officers thought it would be helpful to have all of the information such as birthdays, ages and children's names of the Fultons so I'll have to spend a lot of time doing research. Then, I'll be working on doing the final drafts of the CASE award entries so I can get them sent in before I leave. It will be a busy week, but at least it will be a short one!

Food Drive

The office has been having a pretty heated food drive contest over the past month. The Foundation was divided into several teams and which ever team brought in the most food items won a free breakfast - a highly sought after prize. Combining a large group of already generous and charitable people with a competitive element made for an exciting contest. We had a few captains that collected money and when out shopping to find the best deals they could. Many huge boxes of Ramen noodles were purchased to say the least. It looked like we were leading the whole time  but then on the last day some of the other teams literally wheeled in their food items on large dollies. Our team ended up coming in third I think, but together be brought in over a couple thousand food items to help out those in need.

Agency Review

Last week I started to volunteer for the Tempe Community Council's (TCC) Agency Review. I heard about this opportunity almost a year ago when I was interviewing a manager at TCC for another class. I had asked about the skills necessary to be a successful non-profit manager and he said that proposal and grant writing was huge and that I should take advantage of every chance I have to get experience in that area. He told me to stay on the lookout for the next Agency Review. The Agency Review is process that allows citizens of Tempe to have a say as to which local non-profits should receive public grants. Over the course of the next couple weeks I will review between 4 to 10 proposals from various Tempe non-profit agencies. I believe 35 agencies have submitted 55 proposals so far this year asking for around $1.3 million. I get to read through the proposals, fill out an evaluation and formulate questions to ask the agencies that I'm reviewing. Then, in February I get to sit down with a panel of other volunteers who have reviewed the same agencies and we get to have representatives of the agencies answer our questions. Last year, the city council went along with every one of the recommendations from the Agency Review. It's very cool process and I am excited to be apart of it and to learn more about proposals.

CASE Awards

Recently, I have been working on putting together a couple entries for CASE awards for the foundation.  CASE stands for the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and they give out awards for best practices in various areas of university advancement such as fundraising, marketing, training, etc...In order to be considered for an award, a school must submit an entry that describes the program and why it is special or innovative. My supervisor came to me a while back and told me that she thought two of our departments, the Parents Association and the Office of Estate and Gift Planning, deserved CASE awards. She told me to take point on the project which meant doing the research for what was required, writing the entries and submitting all materials. It was interesting getting to know more about each of the departments and finding out what made each of them unique and how they demonstrated innovation. We're in the final stages of the submission process now. I've written drafts of the entries up and my supervisors are reviewing them. Everything is due by the end of next week.

Zoo Lights

We had our work holiday party at Zoo Lights last night. Unfortunately I was late because my girlfriend and I attended her work party first. It was my first time going to Zoo Lights so I didn't realize how packed it would be. After finally finding a place to park, we made our way through the zoo and checked out all the light exhibits on the way which were pretty neat. When we got to the tent where the foundation party was, everybody had already left and all the food was gone! I wish we had gotten there earlier because it was a great venue for a party. It was down this long road that was closed off to the rest of visitors and in this open area with a giant fire pit and tents set up for food, drinks and even arts and crafts for kids. We were lucky enough that they hadn't closed the bar up yet, so we grabbed a drink and sat by the fire for a little bit before going back and checking out the rest of the zoo. Fun night overall, but I wish we had made it there earlier so I could have introduced my girlfriend to all the great people I work with.

American Dream Academy

I thought I would use an entry to talk about the organization that my girlfriend works for. She is a program manager for the American Dream Academy (ADA) which is run out of ASU's Center for Community Development and Human Rights. ADA is a parent outreach program that aims to equip parents with the tools they need to get more involved in their children's education. Many parents do not have experience in a formal school environment or come from different countries so they face many barriers from becoming active participants in their children's education. ADA places special emphasis on the importance of obtaining a college degree. ADA has partnered with over 150 schools throughout metro Phoenix. Volunteer facilitators hold classes for groups of parents from each school. Upon completion of the program parents attend a graduation ceremony. Last Friday I was able to attend one of these graduations for the first time and see my girlfriend in action as well as the impact the program has for families. Thew Elementary had about 150 parents participate and graduate from the program, so it was a packed house. My girlfriend was the MC and led the entire event in both Spanish and English - pretty impressive to watch. Parents received their certificates and watched as a procession of their children marched in. Not very many dry eyes in the house. It was a proud day for all, including myself because I was able to see the amazing work that my girlfriend and ADA perform in the community every day.

Mentorship

I have been lucky in this internship to have many mentors and people at the foundation open to teaching me and providing me with opportunities to shadow and learn. Recently, the foundation brought on a new gift officer and he has been an especially great mentor. On is first day he let me know that he always enjoyed helping out interns and told me that I would never be bothering him if needed or wanted anything. He has taken time to show me how he organizes his approach to prospective donors, which includes writing hand-written letters asking for opportunities to meet with them. The letters have really paid off for him so far - everyone he has followed up with by phone has mentioned them. He has let me sit in on those follow up calls which has been great - I've gotten a better idea of how to get your foot in the door even when people are resistant at first. He explained to me that being a development officer is really all about building relationships and letting people know that you can be their connection to ASU. Asking for major gifts comes much later, after you have established that relationship and identified areas where donor interests and values align with initiatives going on at ASU.

Treehouse life

Ok, so here's another one my "random" posts about traveling: After we had finished teaching in southern Thailand, we traveled north to the amazing city of Chiang Mai where a huge new years celebration was taking place. It's pretty much a giant water fight that lasts for a week. There we heard about this thing called the Gibbon Experience in Laos where you get to live in a treehouse and zipline through the jungle for a weekend. It sounded too cool to pass up and we were heading that way anyway so we decided to give it a try. Turned out to be a great decision! When we got to the town in Laso and arrived at the headquarters we watched a five minute video that supposedly told us all we needed to know about zipline safety. Then, we drove about 3 hours into the jungle and hiked for an additional hour where we met up with our guide for the rest of the weekend. He took us a bit further in and we came upon our first "zip". He asked us if we saw the video, we said yes and then he said "ok, follow me" and zipped away! We looked at each other and laughed nervously - Only in Laos would they let you hook up to a zipline a couple hundred feet about the jungle floor with no protective gear, supervision or instruction. One by one we hesitantly hooked up and ziplined our way across the jungle to our treehouse which would be our home for the next few days. In the mornings, we listened to the calls of endangered gibbons and were lucky enough to see them a few times swinging in the trees. We were able to go out and zipline on our own and visit all of the different tree houses that they had set up (we had the best one!). It was an unforgettable experience. I've attached a video of our Gibbon Experience below.

Finding a balance

So this semester I definitely found it challenging to balance work and school...as evidenced by the massive amount of last minute blog entries I'm about to do before the deadline. Last year was my first year in the MPA program and I did not work while I was taking classes. Even though I had an abundance of time, I still found myself doing a lot of my assignments at the last minute. I suppose I have always been an expert procrastinator. Because I already struggled to get school work completed on time, it was hard for me to imagine working full time and taking a full class load. On the other hand, I thought being so busy might help to give me some structure and force me to get my work done on a timely schedule. So this first semester has been sort of experiment with mixed results. I think my internship has definitely pushed me to manage my time better, but I did not do it as well as I should have. I ended up dropping a course this semester, for a few reasons aside from my work load - but had I been better about time management I definitely could have stuck it out. I also neglected this blog much more than I should have, so instead of relaxing this weekend I'll be pounding out these entries! I'm looking forward to next semester, now that I have a better idea of what work and school balance should look like. Hopefully I'll be able to acheive it! 

Gift Proposal

I put together a major gift proposal for a long-time donor the other day. The proposal was for a naming opportunity in the new W.P. Carey building: McCord Hall. If the donor agrees to a gift of certain dollar amount he will be able to name a room in the new facility after himself, a loved one or a favorite professor. It was fun getting to see how the proposal process works at the Foundation. Because we have our own in-house marketing department, there is a slick “proposal on demand” tool I got to use. I was able to choose from various text layouts, pictures and other stylistic options to put together a professional, polished and individualized proposal. Having our own Communication and Marketing Department right down stairs is definitely a nice perk of working at a large Foundation. We’ll find out after the holidays if he decides to make the gift or not!

New Leadership

Recently the Foundation underwent a major changing of the guard. The former president, Johnnie Ray resigned for personal reasons and Rick Shangraw was appointed as the new CEO. I never got the chance to meet with Johnnie, but I know he was greatly admired and respected throughout the Foundation, and that he personally recruited many of our executive team members. For a while I thought it might be a rough transition, but it has been very smooth thus far and Dr. Shangraw seems like an approachable, kind and more than capable new CEO.  Rick was VP for the Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development at ASU prior to this position, and before that he was the Director of the Global Institute of Sustainability. He has done extremely well communicating with all of the Foundation staff throughout the transition process. We have held a couple all staff meetings to meet him and hear about his plans for the foundation. President Crow spoke at one of the meetings and talked about his long history with Dr. Shangraw. Dr. Shangraw has also sent out a few short video messages to everyone to introduce himself, talk about his excitement to be at the foundation and just to say happy holidays. I think the videos have been pretty neat – much more personable than an email blast! I look forward to getting the chance to meet with him before my internship ends. 

Mini-research projects

Whenever I’m not working on a special project, I spend a lot of time digging up relevant material for Gift Officers to give to donors. For instance, one donor wanted to know about all of the entrepreneurial programs going on at ASU. There are a bunch, and it was interesting to learn about all of them. Change Makers  and 10,000 Solutions were especially fun to research – pretty inspiring stuff going on in those projects. These little research assignments have helped me to realize the massive number of programs and events that ASU has going on at any one time. The only problem is, that sometimes it takes hours of researching to discover them. ASU can seem very compartmentalized, and if you’re not apart of a certain program or college than it’s hard to find out about a lot of cool opportunities going on within them. I encourage everyone to take some time searching through all the college websites to find things that interest them. If you’re interested in Entrepreneurship, there are opportunities to get involved in virtually every college of the university. 

Internal Introductory Meetings

My supervisor has been pushing me to meet with as many leaders within the foundation that I can. There are lots, and I am still trying to meet all of them after being with the foundation for over six months. I have really enjoyed the chats thus far.  All of the people I have met with are very impressive individuals coming from interesting backgrounds.  Everyone has been more than happy to sit down with me for a few minutes and share their knowledge and expertise. It has really helped me learn the ins and outs of the different departments, especially the ones I don’t work with on a daily basis. It has been interesting hearing about how all of them came to be at the foundation – none ever thought they would be in development, and many came from the private sector. For the most part, development was something that just sort of crossed their path and they took off with it.  Maybe I’ll have a similar story! 

Kresge Foundation Visit

Shortly after I started the position I had the opportunity to help coordinate a visit by a major donor, the Kresge Foundation. Kresge has donated over $1 million to ASU, and this visit was to give them a tour of the Phoenix and Tempe campuses as well as to present them with some other programs and initiatives that they might invest in sometime down the road. I helped by creating folders for the Kresge gift officers with program information as well as personal bios of all the people that they would meet throughout their visit. I also helped with the lunch catering order and got to have lunch with the officers and sit in on some of the presentations. The highlight was definitely the presentation that took place in ASU’s Decision Theatre, which I had never seen before. If you ever get the chance to check it out, I recommend it – very impressive, and it definitely “wowed” the Kresge Foudation. Overall, the visit was a good experience as it gave me a chance to see how me maintain and foster relationships with other foundations. 

Scuba Diving

So I thought I'd do a random post about scuba diving. While I was teaching English in Thailand, I also got my diving certification. One of the best things I've ever done! I ended up going on about 15 dives in Thailand and Malaysia. Each one was an amazing experience. I saw some beautiful reefs and a ton of sea creatures. Turned out that I actually swam with the deadliest shark in the world without knowing it! I saw a Bull Shark on my second or third dive and the the dive masters told me that they weren't aggressive - it wasn't until I tuned in to Shark Week that I found out Bull Sharks have attacked more people than any other type, and that Jaws is based on a Bull Shark story.  Pretty crazy. Anyway, I'm totally addicted and can't wait to swim with some Great Whites or whales someday. I've attacked a link to a dive video we made from out trip to Sipadan Island in Malaysian Borneo. There are a few reef sharks at the end. This was one of Jacques Cousteau's favorite dive spots.

MGMT is playing over the video because the song was crazy popular while we were over there :-)

Helping to facilitate a training

One of the things I like most about the Foundation is the people I work with and the fact that I get to collaborate with them on different projects. One major project I had been working on for the past month was to help facilitate a training for all foundation fundraisers about our Endowment spending policy.  If you don’t know, an endowment is essentially a gift that is pooled with other gifts and invested so that it continues to grow and pays out indefinitely.  Part of the reason I liked being apart of this was because I had no real idea what an endowment was beforehand and it was a great learning opportunity. The training included information on how we invest our endowments and how those investments have been performing. This is important info because pretty soon we release endowment reports to all of our donors, and the fundraisers have to be able to explain them and field any questions. This is usually something fundraisers dread because they aren’t finance experts. So myself, along with three other experienced development staff, worked together to put together an informative and fun training. I didn’t handle too much of the detailed investment information, because the other three were experts, but I did put together a pretty sweet Jeopardy review game that everyone got a kick out of! It helped to make the dry material a little more fun to go over. We’ve had a lot of good feedback from everyone who attended, including my supervisors, so that has felt pretty good! 

Football tailgate

Just had my first opportunity to work an ASU football game! One major way that we show appreciation for or try to build relationships with donors is through home football games. The Foundation has three suites in the stadium. Every home game a gift officer is designated as the host of one of the suites and he or she invites major donors from their portfolio (normally those with the capacity to give $25,000 or more). Until now, I just helped coordinate the events: I decorated the suites ahead of time, handled the catering orders and put together bio-sheets with information about each of the guests. Last week one of the gift officers had extra space in their suite, so I got to attend. It was a pretty good time. I got to go to the President’s tailgate, which had some really good food. Then in the suites I got to meet and speak with some very interesting people. A couple guests had their MPA’s from ASU so it was great to hear how they were using their degrees. Overall, it was a great networking experience and it was a fun way to watch a football game…even though it wasn’t much of a game - we destroyed Colorado!

The Development Office

Just some info about the specific area of the ASU Foundation that I work in. I'm in the Development Office of the Foundation, which essentially focuses on fundraising. We're on the top floor of the Fulton Center. The Development Office is divided into different teams: Individual Giving, Foundation Relations, Corporate Relations, Constituent Development and Estate & Gift Planning. The team names pretty much explain what they do, but briefly: Individual Giving is made up of gift officers that handle individual prospective donors; Foundation Relations deals with grants and partnerships with other foundations; Corporate Relations deals with grants and partnerships from companies and businesses; Constituent Development deals with fundraising for each of the "units" at ASU (i.e. Law, Public Programs, Engineering etc...) and Estate & Gift Planning mostly handles donors who would like to put ASU in their will or give real estate. My position is designed to support the Individual Giving team, but I've worked with pretty much all of the teams in some capacity or another, not to mention other departments such as Marketing & Communication and Research & Operations.

Why the Foundation?

I've been interested in non-profit work for a long time but never gave foundations or development too much thought. Then I conducted an interview with a non-profit manager for one of my PAF courses.  The manager really stressed the importance of money and fundraising because "if you can't keep your doors open, you can't help anybody no matter how good your intentions are". He told me to take every opportunity I could to learn about grant writing because it's an essential skill to have in the non-profit sector. I took his advice and landed a very short grant writing internship with the Gilbert Education Foundation. It turned out to be a pretty disappointing experience. They didn't give me any sort of guidance. They basically said, "Ok, we'd like you to apply for grants to fund a million dollar project to get digital projectors in every class room in Gilbert, thanks." I didn't have any information to work off of, and had very little access to members of the foundation board.  So I worked on that for a couple months but stayed on the lookout for other opportunities. It wasn't the best learning experience but it definitely made me interested in foundations - I started to think how cool  it would be to be the guy evaluating programs and dishing out money to all these great causes. So when I heard about the Foundation opportunity, I jumped at it. 

Getting the internship

I found out about the ASU Foundation internship through a friend that I met through the MPA program who worked there as a researcher. The official title of the position is the Micheal Boulden Memorial Internship. The job was created in honor of Micheal Boulden, a former Chief of Staff at the ASU Foundation who was killed in a hit and run incident in 2007.  My friend put me in touch with the current intern, and I had a couple good phone conversation with her about the job. It sounded pretty interesting and it was a paid, part-time position (between 20-30 hours a week), which were both important to me because I didn't want to take out more student loans and I wanted to be able to focus my time on school in my last year. I submitted my resume and cover letter - making sure to use as many terms to describe myself that were in the job description as possible :-). I was asked to come in for an interview and I had the first one with three young women (one who was my age and two who were younger than me) - It was an interesting situation because I had never had a panel interview before, or been interviewed by people younger than myself. I've never cared too much for interviews because I get nervous pretty easily and I don't really like to talk about myself, let alone sell myself. This interview was a even worse than normal because they asked the kind of questions I hate most - "tell me about a time when...blah blah blah". Every question was structured like that! I feel that those questions are just to see how you act under stress and don't really measure how qualified you might be for the job...but anyway, it turned out ok because I came in with a few questions of my own which changed the end of the interview period into a good long discussion between the four of us. I was asked to come in for a second interview with the VP of Development and HR manager, which was much more of a comfortable and casual conversation. It apparently went well because I was offered the position a few days later. It felt pretty good considering I had gone through so many months of constantly applying to jobs and not even getting an initial call back - it gets very frustrating after a while, and I'm not looking forward to being in that situation again come next May! But I'm trying not to think about that and just take advantage of this opportunity for the time being!

I wanted to share this story, because it was one of the better experiences I've had trying to get a job. The process helped me to realize the importance of networking and getting in touch with potential employers before submitting an application. Talking to people within the organization, whether it be in person or on the phone, really helps you get your foot in the door and gives your application a much better chance of being considered. I'd love to hear about experiences others have had getting their internships.

Some background info

Hey everybody,

I thought I'd introduce myself before getting into the details of my internship, so here it goes.
I just started my second year in the MPA program at ASU. I'm currently doing the non-profit concentration, but I'm planning on dropping it so I can have the freedom to take some other courses that I'm interested in. I've liked the program so far and I've enjoyed getting to know all of my fellow classmates - the school of public affairs is filled with a lot of really great people.

I am originally from Des Moines, Iowa and grew up there until my family moved to Tempe when I was in middle school. I decided to do my undergraduate studies back in Iowa at Cornell College, a small liberal arts school near Iowa City that we fondly refer to as "the other Cornell". I majored in Psychology and History and planned on going in to Social Work.

After I graduated, I worked as a Case Manager for at-risk youth at a small non-profit. I loved the job but it helped me realize that social work probably wasn't for me.

After about a year I moved up to Minneapolis where I found a very glamorous job (heavy sarcasm) working as a mortgage loan auditor. It was actually pretty interesting to be working in the industry in the midst of the housing crisis. But eventually the recession caught up with my company and all of the most recent hires, including my self, were laid off. I remember feeling relieved when it happened because it forced me to move on and gave me the opportunity to try something I had always wanted to do - work abroad.

I used my severance pay to get TEFL certified, sold all my belonging (which wasn't much) and flew to Thailand with my girlfriend to teach English. We lived in southern Thailand and taught at a university for six months and then traveled around southeast Asia (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Borneo) and southern India for another 6 months.  It was an amazing trip and I'm sure I'll do another post about it in the near future. But if anyone ever has questions or just wants to talk about Asia or teaching abroad, I'd be more than happy to share my experiences!

I applied to ASU's MPA program while I was in Thailand and returned to the states right before classes started last year. I didn't work my first year in the program - not entirely by my choosing. I was lucky enough to land this internship with the ASU Foundation this past May. I'm learning quite a bit and I'm looking forward to posting about it.

In the little amount of free time I have these days, I play on a couple of soccer teams, read and probably watch a few too many TV shows. I'm pretty obsessed with Breaking Bad at the moment! Sorry if I rambled on a bit here, I'll be sure to keep future posts more brief.