Culture Counts: Building a Mindset for Fundraising Success at Your Community College-Recording

Video Transcription

Video Summary

This webinar, hosted by Meg Natter from CASE, focuses on building a culture of philanthropy to support fundraising success at community colleges. The discussion features Lindsay Bogner from Barton Community College and Gretchen Wood from Monroe Community College, who share practical insights and experiences.<br /><br />Meg introduces the concept of a culture of philanthropy as a shared responsibility across campus, emphasizing education, communication, and collaboration among advancement staff, faculty, leadership, and students. Community colleges often face challenges such as siloed departments and unclear expectations around advancement roles.<br /><br />Lindsay shares her experience taking over a struggling foundation at Barton, where they faced low awareness, limited engagement, and mismanaged expectations during a capital campaign. By increasing visibility, storytelling, professional development, realistic goal-setting, and fostering collaboration, they started building a philanthropic culture, although full success takes time.<br /><br />Gretchen discusses Monroe’s mature program, highlighting strong board engagement, aligning foundation and college strategic plans, regular communication of financial and program data, and involving faculty and students in fundraising. They maintain enthusiasm with scholarship recipient stories, volunteer recognition, and interactive practices like committees evaluating grant proposals.<br /><br />Both emphasize the importance of faculty as content experts in donor conversations and of engaging volunteers and students. Tools like professional development sessions, social media, newsletters, and special events help expand involvement. They acknowledge the necessity of patience, persistence, and transparency in overcoming challenges.<br /><br />The presenters encourage community college fundraisers to foster partnership, communicate impact clearly, share failures and successes openly, and keep mission-driven focus to build a robust culture of philanthropy on campus.

Keywords

culture of philanthropy

community colleges

fundraising success

advancement staff

faculty engagement

foundation management

capital campaign

board engagement

donor communication

volunteer involvement