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The Unplanned Career in Planned Giving w/ Joe Bull: A Practical Look at How Fundraisers Build Skills, Confidence, and Calling.
71 Plays4 months ago
Joe Bull never set out to become one of the most respected voices in planned giving. Trained in law and athletic administration, he thought he’d spend his career on the sidelines of college sports—not in development offices. One unplanned job at Duke University changed everything, launching a forty-year journey through higher ed, national nonprofits, and the evolution of modern fundraising.
In this episode, Joe talks with host Tom Dauber about:
- How an accidental entry into Duke’s planned giving office became the start of a lifelong vocation
- Lessons from early mentors and the value of being “in the right place at the right time”
- The growing professionalism of planned giving—from two-person shops to major enterprise teams
- Transitioning from Duke to NC State to Ohio State and leading his first campaign
- Moving from higher education to The Nature Conservancy just before the 2008 financial crash
- Why networking and timing shape more careers than strategy ever will
- The origin of “fractional planned giving” work and why many nonprofits need it today
This conversation offers a rare look at how one unplanned turn can define a lifetime of impact.
Website: philanthropyadvisorycouncil.com • Email: joebull@philanthropyadvisorycouncil.com
Looking for fundraising coaching and free fundraising resources? Check out www.abundantvision.net
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Transcript
Introduction and Theme
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to the Abundant Vision Fundraising Podcast. Whether you are a seasoned professional or a first-time fundraiser, we have the advice you need to take your next step toward major gift mastery. I'm your host, Tom Dauber, President of Abundant Vision Philanthropic Consulting.
00:00:26
Speaker
I'm very excited.
Guest Introduction: Joe Bull
00:00:27
Speaker
We've got a fellow joining us that, thinking back to my earliest days as a major gift officer, was just somebody everybody revered and looked up to. I'm pleased to have Joe Bull with me on the show today.
00:00:40
Speaker
Joe is, if you want to know about planned giving, this is the guy that knows the answers. ah So respected in that field. And we're so glad to have you on the do show today, Joe. Welcome.
00:00:54
Speaker
Thank you, Tom. It's pleasure to do it. well Well,
Joe Bull's Personal Interests
00:00:57
Speaker
goodness, Joe, tell us tell us about yourself. you know We're going to get to your fundraising career. want to hear all about it. but But before we get to that, you know how do you like to spend your time when you're not raising money?
00:01:09
Speaker
You know, it's funny. I think those of us that have done fundraising for a long time, you end up like you have a hard time. ah This work-life balance becomes like welike work-life melding kind of thing. And so it it seems like I'm always raising money. But seriously i spend as much time on the golf course as i can that doesn't mean i'm any good but at least i'd like to try it and um uh spend time with my two daughters who are now emancipated and uh adult adults and lovely people but i do have a four-year-old granddaughter and that it's a lovely way to spend some time and uh read um you know just uh uh cook on the barbecue
00:01:56
Speaker
you know i don't I'm not a woodworker. you know My father was quite the handyman, and that gene skipped a generation. And so i i I need to make enough money to have other people do those kind of things because I can't do them. But ah in any event, just kind of normal stuff.
00:02:17
Speaker
That's awesome.
How Did Joe Start in Fundraising?
00:02:18
Speaker
Well, so you've had a long career in fundraising. could you walk us through how you became a fundraiser initially and the path that your career took?
00:02:28
Speaker
ah Sure. I, you know, I, and I know there are people that now are like, Oh, I want to do that. That's what I want to do. But, but, you know, I, I've, so I'm, I'm going to belittle my age a little bit here. I've been doing this for 38 year 39 years now.
00:02:47
Speaker
and When I started, nobody went in through the front door and I certainly didn't go in through the front door. I thought I was going to be an athletic director when I grew up and I did a master's degree in sport management and a law degree at the same time at Ohio State with the idea that I was going to get into intercollegiate athletics administration. I didn't want to be Jerry Maguire. I didn't want to do the the agent thing, but I really wanted to get into athletic administration.
00:03:19
Speaker
And as I started looking for work, that was a fairly tough fraternity to break into because I and wasn't an intercollegiate athlete and I didn't have many ties.
00:03:30
Speaker
um But I did start seeing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, i started seeing ah some fundraising jobs and I thought, well, I could do that because my dad owned a life insurance agency in our hometown for 50 years. And I spent several summers but doing that. And my dad, to his everlasting credit said, uh, I, I want you to understand what you're getting yourself into here. Cause there was some thought about, I might go back and take over the family business and that kind of thing. And I mean, it was just a thought.
00:04:03
Speaker
And he said, this is a eat what kill kind of business. And so he gave me a stack of, uh, a folder of, of orphan clients and a phone book and a telephone and said, get on the phone and get out the door and start selling. And, uh,
00:04:17
Speaker
I learned two things. I learned one, I liked really dealing with people and and even dealing with people in in their homes and in strains, you know, and just kind of new, not even knowing people. But I also realized I didn't want to sell life insurance for life.
00:04:29
Speaker
and But it was a great experience. And I started seeing these fundraising jobs and like, well, I could do that. and um And I thought, well, you know, if I get in the door, it might be easier to move over to athletics from being inside institution than being on the outside. Totally.
00:04:47
Speaker
So I still don't know how this happened and I will probably go to my grave not knowing how this happened.
Evolution of Planned Giving
00:04:56
Speaker
But right out of law school, like my first job right out of law school, I was the assistant director of plan giving at Duke University.
00:05:05
Speaker
And yeah yeah, seriously, right? And Now, that was 1985. And you fast forward 39 years, there's no way that I could get that same job today. If I if i was 25 years old and getting out of law school, there's no way today I could get that job.
00:05:22
Speaker
In similar circumstances, that's just how much our profession has grown and matured and and and everything. I mean, when I was at Duke, there was the director, the assistant director, and we each had a secretary. so there were four of us in the office.
00:05:35
Speaker
Duke has a planning office now of about 15 people. And so, you know, i mean, it's just changed. You know, the the the field has changed in my, and I've seen it change.
00:05:47
Speaker
So I am eternally grateful ah for finding that just kind of through the back door because I've done it for 39 years.
00:06:01
Speaker
But I also realized that I had some great fortune to be in the right place at the right time. So you started there at Duke. Where did you go from there?
Career Moves: Duke to Ohio State
00:06:11
Speaker
So this is I met my wife and who was finishing up a master's degree at another institution in college student personnel.
00:06:22
Speaker
And those people, almost everybody that has that degree ends up running a residence hall as their first job. And so we got married and we started looking for jobs together. And she ended up running a residence hall at NC State.
00:06:34
Speaker
And then I went from Duke to NC State and we stayed in ah the research triangle for six years. Loved it there. Oh yeah. ah You know, and my wife's from Northwest Ohio. I'm from central Ohio and
00:06:51
Speaker
she started an alumni club for Bowling Green in Raleigh. And I started an alumni club for Ohio State in Raleigh. And through that, I got to know the ah longtime alumni director at Ohio State, a fellow by the name of Dan Heinlein, who He was kind of a legend in the alumni field.
00:07:07
Speaker
Yeah, is. I think Dan was the alumni director of Ohio State for like 40 years or something like that. And I got to know Dan through CASE. you know, I saw him at CASE conferences, you know, that kind of stuff.
00:07:19
Speaker
And he called me one day out the clear blue. I'm just sitting at my desk, minding my own business. And he said, hey, we're looking for somebody to run a campaign. We're going to build a new alumni. We're going to put an addition onto the alumni program.
00:07:34
Speaker
building at Ohio State. We need somebody to run that campaign. And your name just keeps coming up. Would you want to talk to us about that? And I said, sure, i think. You know, it's funny. It's your alma mater and you think, oh my gosh, it'd be great to go back. But we were so ensconced NC State, both of us were. And we just loved the triangle and Raleigh.
00:07:56
Speaker
we decided, you know, at that point we're getting ready to maybe, yeah, this might be time for us to have kids. And it's like, wouldn't be great to be closer to home for grandparents and all that kind of stuff. And so like, well, let's look at it. And, you know, one thing led to another and I got that job. So I moved to Ohio state out of playing giving and into the notion of, you know, running a small campaign to, we were going to put for those people that are familiar with Ohio state, there's a building called the faucet center and the alumni building used to be a wing,
00:08:24
Speaker
on that facility. And we were going to put 10,000 square foot on the end feet on the end of that, a 10,000 square foot addition on the end of that building. And not to air too much internal dirty laundry, but the yeah presidents changed at the institution and it went from adding 10,000 square feet onto the end of an existing building to a freestanding facility, which is there today.
00:08:50
Speaker
Longaberger alumni have anyhow. So I, I did that, I think, for three years, maybe. um think that's right. Yeah, three years.
00:09:03
Speaker
And the playing giving director's job came open at Ohio State, which and I thought, man, I'd really like to get that's a job I could hold on to for an awfully long time and really want to do. And I was fortunate enough to get that.
00:09:17
Speaker
And so then I moved over to be the playing giving director ah at Ohio State. And I was at Ohio State for 16 years. And a long time. When did you, what year did you become the planned giving director there?
00:09:33
Speaker
um So we started in 91 and I think, I think, I think 94, four i think Okay. That's my recollection.
00:09:43
Speaker
Actually, I know that's my, and I know that's it because, our daughter was born in 94 and she was born and I changed jobs just about the same time. So, okay. That makes sense. And how long did you serve as, as the play giving? 13 years, 13 years, lucky 13. Yeah. You're not kidding.
00:10:01
Speaker
um Now, where did you go from Ohio state?
Challenges at the Nature Conservancy
00:10:06
Speaker
So in, in 2007, it, you know, I think anybody that works in a big organization for a long period of time,
00:10:16
Speaker
particularly if you're in a leadership position, sometimes there comes a point in time when it's just time to move on. o And it was for me, even though it was my alma mater, there'd been a significant number of changes above me and it was just time for me to move on.
00:10:33
Speaker
I took a, I took this really interesting job. It was, this is another one of those ones where a long time coach, colleague of mine. I think one of the things I might want to say as we go through this is the power of networking kind of thing.
00:10:48
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And um so I, you know through my service on the national, what is now the National Association of Charitable Gift Planners, the Planned Giving Professional Group, I did a fair amount of ah work and service on them. And I got to know people in a lot of different places.
00:11:06
Speaker
And one of my dear friends from there called me and said, hey, I've just left the University of Washington and I'm the associate VP at the nature conservancy. And my job is to put together a principal gift program. And I've got an opening in the Midwest and you'd be perfect for it.
00:11:20
Speaker
And I said, wow, that's your timing is impeccable because I think it's about time for me to leave Ohio state. And so ah we talked and I went to DC and interviewed and, um, and,
00:11:33
Speaker
So that was August of 2007. Now, if you do the math on that, so this job never existed. And so, you know, you get things rolling, you get to learn kind of what's going on and you're trying to pull together, you know, there's not a prospect list. I mean, it's it starting from nothing, you know? And so we get, this is in September, I believe I started.
00:11:59
Speaker
And so getting ready to kind of get really things cooking in November, knowing that it's not the best time to get things started because you're getting into the holidays and stuff, but it's time to get started.
00:12:11
Speaker
And, you know, people like, oh, we can talk later or whatever. and I'm thinking, okay, it's the holidays. So then you get into the January of 2008 and nobody's taking, nobody wants to meet with me.
00:12:23
Speaker
And I'm, and I'm trying to think what in the world is going on? Well, You know, of course, we all know in retrospect what was going on. People were seeing what was about what was about to happen. You know, the Great Recession and the too big to fail and Lehman Brothers going bust and all these other things were happening in the first quarter of 2008. So it really wasn't the best time in the world to actually start a new job trying to trying to create a principal gift program.
00:12:49
Speaker
ah Pretty bad timing, actually. Pretty horrific timing, actually. ah and And the Nature Conservancy, as you know, is an amazing organization. I mean, it's a fabulous organization. And they have a spectacular fundraising program.
00:13:06
Speaker
And it's just, you know, it's just hard. And so my boss that had hired me, ah the University of Washington made her an offer that she couldn't refuse to come back.
00:13:20
Speaker
She was actually Bill Gates Sr.'s prospect manager when she was at UW. and And then she left and went to the Nature Conservancy and they let her be gone by for about 14 months. And they said, you got to get back here. And so they made her an offer. She couldn't refuse to go back to UW.
00:13:37
Speaker
and And so I got promoted into her job at the Nature Conservancy. And one of the first things I had to do was start laying people off because we were going through this. You know, it it's the spring of 2008.
00:13:50
Speaker
Yeah, I remember. And, in you know, we are people are hemorrhaging. Everybody was hemorrhaging and we were cutting budgets and i was not the it was not a good time.
00:14:06
Speaker
And
00:14:09
Speaker
so then this leads to the next step is I'm looking at everything. And at this point, I'm just merely administrative overhead at this point. I haven't raised the dollar.
00:14:20
Speaker
I mean, I, a little, but not but enough to justify my existence. And, but I was doing all this administrative, you know, management kind of work. And I thought to myself, my gosh, if we have another big round of budget cuts, I might not make the next set. Cause I looked at the budget and I looked at the, I looked at the org chart and I'm, I was in a pretty, pretty precarious position. If we, if there was another round of chop cuts about that time,
00:14:49
Speaker
Right about that time, mutual friends introduced me to the brand new chief executive officer of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.
Community Engagement at Columbus Zoo
00:14:58
Speaker
And he ah really wanted to change the way that the zoo looked at fundraising.
00:15:04
Speaker
And he came to it from a really interesting perspective. if He had been the person ah that Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, tapped to be the first employee to build the Georgia Aquarium.
00:15:17
Speaker
which if you've ever go to Atlanta and if you're in, if you're into zoos and aquariums and stuff and you ever go to Atlanta, you have to go there. The place is spectacular. Yeah. And Jeff, Jeff was the first employee and built the thing from the ground up.
00:15:32
Speaker
And he came back to Columbus. He'd started his career at Columbus and he came back to Columbus as the CEO. And he had a significant fundraising background because he worked to, they had to raise the money to build the Georgia aquarium.
00:15:45
Speaker
And he really wanted to change things around. And he and i just clicked. and um And so i left the Nature Conservancy. And I was then the VP of, you know it was essentially for in higher ed world, or in the hospital world, it was advancement. But, you know, we decided we wanted to, you know, advancement is such a nebulous term. We wanted something that seemed to be a little more like, okay, what do you really do kind of thing?
00:16:11
Speaker
And we came up with community engagement. And so we called ourselves community engagement. the idea was our job is to engage the zoo in the life of the community, engage the community in the life of the zoo.
00:16:23
Speaker
That's, that was our back of the business card kind of why we existed. And it was, it was essentially like what you would expect from a college advancement program with the exception of we didn't have alumni, but we had members and, that kind of thing.
00:16:39
Speaker
And so, um, um, did that for four years and don't know how to say this so that it doesn't sound i'm just going to say it it was again jeff swanigan the fellow that hired me very very tragically ah took a nap on his couch one sunday afternoon never woke up and he was ah three months shy of 54 at that point in time. So it was incredibly tragic. And he was just one of those leaders that was kind of a Pied Piper. I mean, people, you just want to follow this guy.
00:17:20
Speaker
and And that was only six months after I started at the zoo. And then we we had a second executive or CEO that left.
00:17:31
Speaker
And then the third guy came in. And again, this is another one the situations where He and I were kind of like plus and minus poles of a magnet.
00:17:42
Speaker
And, you know, we we we kind of repelled each other to a certain extent. And and, you know, it's one of those things that I think if you ever take a job, if you ever rise to the point where you get to be a VP, I think that's one of the things you have to recognize is that you're only you're only as good as whoever your CEO is. And if you don't see the world the way the CEO sees the world,
00:18:03
Speaker
you have two choices. Either you learn to see the world the same way the CEO does, or you will even find another job because, you know, and those are your only two choices. And it was obvious that it was B for me.
00:18:16
Speaker
and i And I don't say there was with any
Transition to Consulting
00:18:20
Speaker
glee, but anybody that's, that's in and around Columbus that have watched the news and stuff, there has just been some criminal convictions and,
00:18:28
Speaker
some people going to prison for some stuff. And the guy that I was leaving the zoo because I didn't get along with is going to end up in prison. And I don't say that with any glee, but I just say it's it was, it was pretty odd. We just did not have any, we were no way on the same way.
00:18:45
Speaker
um At that point, it was, I kind of wanted to, but I'd done the leadership thing and I just, I've left Planned Givin twice and I've gone back to Planned Givin every time I leave it So it's, so I ended up going to, I ended up becoming the play giving director at Carnegie Mellon, ah which is, as you know, um it's one of those absolutely spectacular institutions that not that many people know about because A, it's not in the Ivy league and B, they don't play big time sports. Right. And so it's like, oh yeah, I think I kind of know Carnegie Mellon. And and but you don't know that artificial intelligence was literally developed at Carnegie Mellon. Literally. I mean, they have good claim to be in what may be
00:19:24
Speaker
the place or maybe one of the two places where it was actually done. It's, it's just an, and it's an incredible institute. Uh, and, uh, so I went back as the, you know, as the, ADP for, for gift planning and, uh, got, you know, to revitalize and reinvigorate that plan giving their plan getting program.
00:19:45
Speaker
And, uh, was there seven years and then COVID came along and, uh, I was one of the first people that I ever knew that had kind of like a kind of a virtual ah work environment. They, our daughter, our younger daughter was in high school when I yeah took the job at Carnegie Mellon and we really didn't want to jerk her out of high school. And so I was commuting back and forth to Pittsburgh.
00:20:09
Speaker
mean, not every day, i mean, because three hour drive one way, but yeah, um um but they allowed me to, to be in Pittsburgh Monday through Thursday and do my work from Columbus on Friday. So I could be home for a longer weekend with my daughter who was in high school, which was fabulous.
00:20:29
Speaker
And not that many people were doing that in 2013. two thousand and thirteen And so I was, I was really fortunate to be kind of on the front end of that. And so anyhow, so then COVID hit and,
00:20:45
Speaker
it, um I decided, you know, it was probably, i just needed to be at home. And so I thought it was time to hang my shingle out and which is something I'd always thought about doing. And so I did.
00:20:59
Speaker
and And there you go. Yeah. and And that's where you today, correct? Correct. Correct. And the other thing I noticed is given the fact that I had spent most of my career in playing giving,
00:21:12
Speaker
One of the things that because of the, you know, it started with the tech bubble popping in the early 2000s and then it exacerbated with that great recession in 2008, 2009 that we were just talking about.
00:21:26
Speaker
And then it got even exacerbated a little bit more by COVID. You know a lot of organizations just can't justify paying a full-time plan giving officer But yet they have they have the need for plan giving expertise, but they just don't have the budget or this capacity um to hire somebody full time.
00:21:52
Speaker
and And so i thought that was an opportunity. And and so it's you know there's there's this whole notion of fractional in them in our in our in our gig economy, you know like fractional HR or fractional CFO or you know whatever it is.
00:22:09
Speaker
I'm fractional gift planning or fractional plan giving, you know, and it seems to have hit a really pretty solid space because, you know, even medium sized organizations and even some larger organizations, they just don't, you know, they they need the assistance. They just don't have the ability to hire somebody. And so, again, right place, right time kind of thing for me is knock on wood. It's going great.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:22:40
Speaker
That's all the time we have today, but be sure to tune in next week to hear the next part of this exciting conversation. Now, if you've enjoyed this podcast, please be sure to subscribe and give us a five-star rating on your podcast provider.
00:22:54
Speaker
I'm your host, Tom Dauber. Thank you for joining me as we journey together towards major gift mastery on the Abundant Vision Fundraising Podcast.