Office of the President

The Role of Vice President for Institutional Advancement

The vice president will join a leadership team committed to evolving and strengthening every

part of the Ithaca College experience. As a strategic partner committed to the college’s success, the vice president must be a results-oriented, high-performing leader who thrives in a dynamic, collaborative and resourceful environment. The vice president will be a driven, innovative and skilled leader and manager who values high engagement with faculty, staff, students, alumni and community stakeholders and is committed to working in a culture that fully embraces the role of shared governance. The vice president must be exceptionally adroit in employing contemporary advancement strategies and seek to maximize efficiency and effectiveness in service of transformational results.

Opportunities and Expectations for Leadership

Major priorities, opportunities and challenges for the vice president in advancing the college's agenda include:

The Promise of an Ambitious Strategic and Successful Campaign

The vice president will formulate and launch an inspired and compelling comprehensive campaign. With a new, refreshed vision for the institution guided by an ambitious and thoughtful strategic plan, IC stands poised to energize its philanthropic base and attract new advocates and donors. The vice president will craft fundraising priorities and a framework that is mindful of the size, scope and mission of Ithaca College and reflects a knowledge of and appreciation for the challenges and opportunities of enrollment-dependent institutions.

Reflective of its collaborative spirit, the entire institution has been invited to take part in developing a new strategic plan, Imagining Ithaca, which is grounded in a transformative and inclusive assessment of what IC can do and where it wants to go, given its resources, innovative history and mission. The plan is to be approved by the board of trustees in June 2019 with a formal launch in the fall.

The vice president will arrive at the perfect time to kick off a robust campaign readiness assessment and planning process to compliment and celebrate this significant and transformative milestone in IC's history. The vice president will lead the charge collaboratively with the president, academic and administrative leadership and trustees. The vice president will set the stage, model best practices and inspire a culture of philanthropic giving unlike ever before.

Building a Strong Culture of Philanthropy

Ithaca College has long been a prominent cultural institution for the surrounding community and engenders a sense of "home" for its students, staff, faculty, alumni and donors. As the institution grows, there is an opportunity to further expand its network of friends and intentionally build a pathway of potential philanthropic support across all Ithaca College stakeholders and sectors. The new vice president will inherit a solid and successful fundraising platform from which to grow its outreach into new markets including entrepreneurial and philanthropic partnerships. IC is especially poised at this moment in its history to significantly invigorate its alumni engagement and strategy across all philanthropic area (i.e., foundations, friends of the college, parents, local/federal government, etc.).

It is imperative that the vice president, president and senior leadership continue to highlight the importance of an engaged and active constituency and the impact of philanthropic support at IC. Ambitious fundraising priorities will accompany the Imagining Ithaca strategic plan, so it will be of critical importance that the vice president work collaboratively with the president, senior leadership, deans, faculty and board members to identify and cultivate relationships with potential donors, while inspiring principal and legacy giving in all forms. The vice president will be a critical partner in matching strategic priorities to fundraising opportunities. The vice president is expected to utilize IC's senior leadership team's passion and commitment to philanthropic activity and donor cultivation at its fullest potential. A particularly important collaboration in this next era of philanthropic strategy will be the vice president and provost & senior vice president for academic affairs, Dr. La Jerne Terry Cornish. Dr. Cornish is also the co- chair of the strategic plan. In concert with the president, the vice president and Dr. Cornish will work with the deans and other senior leaders to align the division's fundraising and engagement goals with the academic vision to support ongoing philanthropic engagement, solicitation and stewardship.

Likewise, the vice president will motivate and inspire Ithaca College's board members in their personal philanthropic commitments – both in assuming leadership responsibility and making transformative financial impact. The 25-member board of trustees has experienced its own resurgence in recent years. The president and board have recently attracted outstanding new trustees from wide range of industries, geography, expertise and walks of life. The board has also affirmed its commitment to inclusive excellence and to better representing the lived experiences of the students IC serves. Members of the board are called upon to utilize their experience and intellect to move the institution forward and as a result, the board has recruited a number of new members. The Institutional Advancement and Campaign Committee is charged with reviewing all advancement and external relations programs and ensuring the achievement of engagement and philanthropic goals. It is expected that the trustees will both give at a level of personal significance and raise philanthropic contributions as part of their service to the board.

Representing Ithaca College's 70,000 alumni is the 24-member Alumni Association Board of Directors which demonstrates its support through event participation, volunteerism and philanthropy and collaboration with the board of trustees. Appointments are made through an annual nomination process and members serve two consecutive, three-year terms. The board of trustees also includes at least one alumni trustee. The vice president will continue to take an entrepreneurial approach to expanding IC's governance structures in ways that will serve the institution well into its future.

Assessment

The IC institutional advancement program has grown fundraising and engagement results during each of the last five fiscal years, with successive annual commitments moving from $8.5 million in FY2014 to $12.3 million in FY2018 (cash). In the absence of a campaign, the fundraising team has been most focused on annual targets, with a particular emphasis on financial aid and scholarship, to attract students of the highest academic achievement and globally minded citizens.

As the new vice president prepares for this next comprehensive campaign, an assessment of the advancement infrastructure and resources will commence. The vice president must utilize the strength of content expertise in prospect research and data analytics with the Ellucian CFM Advance donor management software. The College utilizes FUNDRIVER, a Blackboard produce, as the endowment accounting software and familiarity with this software and willingness to collaborate with the college’s accounting team will be critical. Additionally, the college is rolling out a new CRM platform that will provide an opportunity for further data integration with enrollment management, student affairs and athletics, ultimately leading to more robust prospect records.

President Collado has made a clear and definitive commitment to providing the strategic resources necessary to shape a successful advancement program, and the vice president will play an important role in the evaluation of present state and forecasting for the needs of a resourceful, innovative, best practices operation. The division will require a skilled leader to determine optimal staffing, resource allocation and a pre-campaign strategy that builds on the work already started towards deepening engagement and inspiring transformational gifts.

At present, the IC advancement team employs a centralized model focused on giving level – annual, leadership and principal gifts, as well as constituent engagement – alumni, volunteer and board relations with liaison relationships to each of the academic and administrative divisions. The new vice president must assess this model based on the needs of each academic and administrative department across the college to ensure that philanthropic activity is at its highest potential internal and external to the division. The vice president will direct, design and implement strategies that maximize personal engagement and produce increasing levels of support for IC, including an operating plan with targeted priorities, annual goals, objectives and strategies that align with individual academic and administrative department needs.

Constituent Engagement

Developing a strong culture of philanthropy starts with deep, early engagement with events and volunteer opportunities and then progresses to a role of transformational leadership and philanthropic impact to the institution. More focus has been placed on starting these relationships as students progress through their undergraduate years. For example, IC has recently hired dedicated cross-divisional staff to focus on alumni volunteers and programming.

Ithaca College is deeply committed to a culture that advances diversity, equity and inclusion in all its forms and the vice president's vision for constituent engagement, fundraising priorities and staffing must reflect that broad vision and values. Therefore, the identification of new affinity groups, prospect cultivation, leadership appointments and more, must be assembled with the broadest constituencies in mind.

The academic, student affairs, and enrollment management divisions are particularly important partners in tracking alumni involved in institutional programming and volunteerism. Faculty and administrators have the capacity to identify affinity and inclination for a deeper philanthropic relationship. The new vice president will continue to collaborate with partners across the campus to strengthen constituent and volunteer engagement with an entrepreneurial and philanthropic lens.

The president, senior leadership team, deans, faculty and staff leaders have demonstrated an excitement and eagerness to partner with the advancement staff to deepen a philanthropic culture and sense of belonging for all its constituency. This commitment will be an important asset to a future campaign. It is the president's expectation that all academic and administrative leadership be involved in philanthropic activity. The vice president and the advancement staff will leverage the relationships that the academic and administrative leaders and faculty members have with alumni and friends to strengthen and refresh the college's donor pipeline and increase rates of event engagement, philanthropic resources and volunteerism.

Personal Qualifications and Personal Qualities

Accomplishing these tasks requires an advancement leader of considerable experience and accomplishment. Demonstrating a successful track record as a major and/or principal gift fundraiser and progressively responsible advancement leadership experience, is required. Superior strategic skills are of the utmost importance, as are excellent relationship-building skills and significant financial acumen, including the ability to work in an efficient and fiscally conscious institution. A bachelor's degree is required; an advanced degree is preferred.

The ideal candidate will possess some or all of the following professional qualifications and personal characteristics:

Leadership and Vision

• Capacity to develop a clear vision and strategy consistent with the college’s mission and best practices, and the leadership and talent to advance the division and make it a national model for development, alumni relations and philanthropic culture;
• Ability to align one's leadership and goals with an ambitious and inclusive strategic plan;
• Executive skills capable of leading change management and developing a high-performing team that delivers results and demonstrates integrity, collaboration and a customer-centric approach;
• Collaborative leadership style with a deep appreciation for the value of shared governance;
• A problem solver and risk taker who can work seamlessly across the institution, connecting with all key stakeholders;
• Strategic thinking with the ability to collaboratively contribute to the senior leadership team in areas directly related to the internal and external factors that constitute strong, innovative institutions of higher education;
• Secure and self-directed leadership with an ability to work effectively in a consensus-driven environment, where direct feedback and constructive criticism is expected and admired; and
• Unquestionable integrity and moral character; an individual whom the institution and community can trust completely and without reservation.

Advancement Expertise

• Comprehensive knowledge of development, alumni engagement and constituent relations' role and function in higher education;
• A broad comprehension of the trends, challenges and opportunities facing higher education with particular expertise related to contemporary advancement programming;
• Personal success in identifying, cultivating, soliciting, securing and stewarding donors at the principal gift levels;
• Leadership experience in a comprehensive or capital campaign of considerable scope and complexity, including planning and execution; and
• Sophisticated utilization of institutional leadership and volunteers to grow a pipeline of philanthropic support.

Management and Innovation

• Experience in building, managing and supporting a strong and innovative staff that is dedicated to the goals of the division and institution and encouraged to pursue personal and professional development opportunities to advance their career;
• Proven track record of attracting and retaining advancement professionals and creating a culture of assessment and accountability;
• Ability to engage in constant strategic analysis of opportunities and challenges and to produce forward-looking, transparent strategic plans and budgets that link expenditures to outcomes;
• Demonstrated record in managing change for a diverse and complex organization;
• Exceptional skill as a leader and manager with the ability to inspire and support professional development;
• Able to make a broad assessment of current state and critical decisions and provide a roadmap for the needs and vision of a comprehensive, contemporary advancement operation;
• Genuine enjoyment in leading, managing and implementing large-scale innovation; and
• Record of success with innovative strategies at the division and institution-wide level, along with a willingness to take creative risks.

Record of Advancing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

• Demonstrated commitment to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion and full participation so as to align with the college's values and president’s vision for Ithaca College;
• Ability to centrally place the values of diversity, equity and inclusion into the central operations and goals of institutional advancement; and
• A proven history of identifying, recruiting and retaining employees from diverse backgrounds and increasing cultural, socioeconomic, racial, sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.