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David Chambliss Part 1: From Senior Class Gift to Associate Dean
83 Plays5 months ago
In this episode David shares about his professional journey from college to a position of leadership in fundraising at a Tier 1 research institution.
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Transcript
Introduction and Audio Issues
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. Hi, everyone. As you know, fundraising is something I know a bit about. Admittedly, I know a little less about podcast production and sound engineering.
00:00:35
Speaker
After a recent interview, I discovered that something was wrong with my microphone. I've had some experts work on it to make it better, but it's still not great. As a result, the audio you're about to hear is not what I'd want it to be. That being said, this interview series with David Chambliss is just too good to not share it with you.
Meet David Chambliss
00:00:55
Speaker
So please forgive the fuzzy audio quality on this one, but I still hope you'll enjoy this show.
00:01:02
Speaker
This is Tom Dauber with the Abundant Vision fundraising podcast. I am so excited today.
Life in Nashville
00:01:07
Speaker
I have an old colleague of mine from my Ohio State days. David Chambliss is with us today. David, welcome to the show. Hey, Tom. Thanks for having me.
00:01:18
Speaker
Well, hey, you know, David, this is a fundraising podcast. I love hearing from experienced major gift officers and leaders like yourself. But before we get into all that, tell us a little bit about where you're living. How do you spend your time when you're not busy fundraising? Yeah, thanks for asking. So I'm at Vanderbilt University, so I'm down in Music City, Nashville, Tennessee.
00:01:39
Speaker
It's a great town and I was living in Columbus, Ohio for over a decade before that. So when I took a new job, I was looking for another city that would be similar to somewhere like Columbus with a lot of things going on.
00:01:52
Speaker
And so I'm down here in Nashville. I'm kind of on a high this week because college football started. So I've been watching a lot of those games and tomorrow Virginia Tech is coming into town to play Vanderbilt. So I'm really excited about that. I'll be hosting some folks at that game and I'm a huge college football fan. So obviously it's started now and I'm excited about that.
00:02:14
Speaker
Obviously moving to Nashville has been amazing, but like everyone else, I dealt with the COVID pandemic that sort of held us in our places for 18 months to two and a half years. And
David's Role at Vanderbilt
00:02:25
Speaker
so I still feel kind of new to Nashville in a way. I still am exploring a lot of the restaurants and a lot of the music venues. There's a lot of different pro sports like hockey and football.
00:02:38
Speaker
And then, of course, just being down in this part of the country, there's so many beautiful parks. When people ask me if I'm a golfer, I let them know I do have golf clubs. I don't know how try to play. But if you're looking for a good golfer, I'm not your guy. If you're looking for a fun golfer, I guess I could be him. But yeah, Nashville is great. It just it really does remind me a lot of Columbus in a lot of ways. And so I've really tried to lean into that. And yeah, and I'm And I live just a couple blocks from campus. So a lot of days I just walk to the office if if need to. Oh, that's wonderful. i When my wife and I think about places we might end up someday, states we might want to live in, Tennessee keeps coming up in those conversations. I'm not to leave Columbus just yet, but I actually like that town, man. Nashville is cool. It's a great town. And hey, Tennessee doesn't have any state income tax, so.
00:03:28
Speaker
I guess your paycheck's a little bigger on the front end, but trust me, you end up spending it. There's too much fun stuff to do in this town to not. It's a really great city. There's always something going on. jokingly say, you have to be okay with not doing something every night because I get these emails like all the things happening and there's always a bunch a a festival, a speaker series, like there's 35 things happening every night. I want to do this. I want to do that. And so it's definitely a place where if you want to find stuff to do, there is stuff.
00:03:58
Speaker
going on, but yeah, come on down. All right. Now I do have reason to get down there. I'll be sure to hook you up when I do. So now today, you're the Associate Dean for Development and the Executive Director for Strategic Initiatives. Did I get that right? You got that correct, yeah.
00:04:15
Speaker
Tell me about your vote. What are you doing for Vanderbilt? Yeah, so that's one of those big, long, fancy higher ed titles that takes too long to really say or put on a business card. But first one is the Associate Dean for Development. That's my main role. I am essentially the chief development officer. I oversee a team. My team is for people. And I specifically oversee fundraising for the Peabody College of Education and Human Development.
00:04:41
Speaker
So my team works with alumni and parents and friends of Peabody College on the strategic priorities of the college here. We are in a campaign. Vanderbilt is in the dare to grow campaign. That's our motto. And we are in the final phases of it, actually. So we're in the public stage and we hope to complete it in summer of twenty six very successfully. So we're in that campaign. And I work with my team on Just engaging our alumni, we're really blessed to have some really, really engaged alumni, but also current parents. get a lot of parents who want to be part of the Vanderbilt family when their kids come here. And so we work with them. And then, of course, just friends and people who have an interest in what Vanderbilt is doing in Peabody. So most of my time is taken up by that, working with my team, traveling with the dean, traveling and meeting with
00:05:34
Speaker
prospects and alumni and doing your typical bread and butter major gift work and which i love the other piece the executive director for strategic initiatives and i suspect we might be able to talk a little bit about this later on in our conversation is a role that i picked up in the last year to really help look at a few areas that our development and alumni relations, we call ourselves DAR here, the DAR team, how we can improve and be more efficient and effective. And one of those ways that we're really excited about is we're growing. And when I say growing, I mean we're hiring almost 100 people over the next three years.
00:06:13
Speaker
Oh, wow. We were given the opportunity through our chancellor and our leadership and the deans approved this for us to add a bunch of new frontline fundraisers as well as support staff.
00:06:27
Speaker
a lot of great new folks in the stewardship, alumni relations and events team, a lot of people in the gift processing and all the areas that make advancement run. And we looked at other schools. We looked at the Ivy's, the Chicago's, the Stansberg's, the Duke's of the world and said, how many people work in their development and alumni shops? How much money are they raising per year?
00:06:48
Speaker
you know, what are they doing? And we kind of compared our numbers to their numbers and said, based on how much we're raising and how many alumni and parents we have out there and prospects and how many people we have, we think we could actually handle, you know, 35 new frontline fundraisers and 70 new support staff. And our chancellors are very like visionary, let's go get it done type of guy, like he's ready to,
00:07:14
Speaker
do what it takes to you keep Vanderbilt at the level and then continue to move it up. And so he said, let's do it. And we were kind of like, okay, we think we can hire 100 people in five years. And they were like, how about three years? So for that's where the executive director of strategic initiatives.
00:07:29
Speaker
You know, if you notice that I post a lot on LinkedIn about the work here, we're really trying to get the name out. We just started a D.A.R. website and we're working on the foundation of this so that as we talk to people about what a great place it is and to come join the Vanderbilt team, know, we're really trying to build that foundation of branching out. And I'm sort of helping. I'm just a part of the talent management group that's how can we reach out to talented folks and say, have you thought about coming to Vanderbilt?
David's Fundraising Journey
00:07:59
Speaker
So that's kind of a nutshell, the executive director piece. ah That's great. So tell me about your career journey. You didn't start at Vanderbilt. I did not start at Vanderbilt. How did you go from being a college student to being who you are today? Yeah, love thinking about this question because
00:08:18
Speaker
I'm kind of an anomaly where I didn't fall into fundraising later on in my career. I learned about it in college. So I grew up in the Dayton area a suburb called Fairbourn, Ohio, and I went to Bowling Green State University. Go Falcons! A school that you might have heard of, Tom. Go Falcons!
00:08:37
Speaker
I did watch their game yesterday on TV. They had a hundred yard run back, so it was awesome to watch BG. Tom Dauber here for Abundant Vision Philanthropic Consulting. Fundraising can be hard work and it can be hard to mentally get into the place you need to be in order to see new opportunities. Everyone struggles with it. We are like the fish in the fishbowl who just can't see the water they're swimming in. That's when having outside expertise comes in handy.
00:09:07
Speaker
For 25 years, I've been helping nonprofits analyze the challenges, discover new ways forward, and develop clear plans that lead to greater fundraising revenues. Now I am available to help your
00:09:32
Speaker
Now back to the show. And I went to Bowling Green. I'm a first generation college student. I'm a very proud first generation college student. My parents started working right after high school. My grandfather did go to college later in life in his fifties. He got an accounting degree and he was very invested in me and education as were my parents where they said.
00:09:52
Speaker
education opens the doors. The unique story that I sometimes share, and it's kind of silly because you're not even going to find me on a roster, is the reason I went to Bowling Green is because I was a high school field goal kicker. I was a soccer player and a kicker and I went to Bowling Green as a walk-on kicker for a coach named Urban Meyer.
00:10:16
Speaker
o So I kind of picked Bowling Green because, long story, but they sent like an assistant coach to our high school and that was back in the day when you had tapes on a VHS tape and I was like, here's a video tape of me kicking field goals and stuff. I mean, I wasn't like recruited by any means. I just thought, oh, I could go walk on there. So me and a couple of my buddies from high school, we all decided we're going to Bowling Green and I was going to walk on the football team.
00:10:41
Speaker
So that's kind of what I did. And I went to BG and after my first season as like a fourth string kicker, I was like, i i okay, I'm not cut out for football. And then I just got really involved on campus. Like I just joined a bunch of organizations and I just leaned into all that. And my senior year I decided I'm going to grad school for higher ed. I wanted to do the higher ed student affairs track.
00:11:03
Speaker
I love being a college student, and I felt that I would love working on a college campus. And so I started applying for jobs and or for grad school in higher ed, all the different programs. And Bowling Green was an amazing school for higher ed. They have a great master's in PhD. And they take a lot of their undergrad students and say, have you ever thought about working at a college? So there's tons of people that work in colleges that have a degree from BG, because but BG really like invest in that area.
00:11:29
Speaker
and I was one of the kids that they were like, you should think about higher ed. Meanwhile, my senior year of undergrad, I got involved with the senior class gift program. It was, make your first gift, give back kind of stuff. And that's where I sort of got my feet wet in the development world. I didn't know that really existed. I suppose I knew there was an alumni association, but I didn't really know about the development. And and remember talking with some folks in the development office Like, so tell me what this is about. And they're like, you know, we engage with our alumni and and parents and friends, talk to them about giving back to the school. And it was kind of like we travel the country and meet with these people and host these fun events around BG. And I'm like.
00:12:10
Speaker
wait a minute like that's a job like that's i can have a career where i can work on a college campus travel meet with really interesting and successful people and talk to them about giving back i'm like this sounds you forgot the parties part and three great parties that's i left that out because a lot of times i think people that don't work in our careers think that's all we're doing is like All I do is host cocktail hours and and on the golf course. and and and I wish that was all I did, but unfortunately, a lot of times it's not that lucrative, but it is really fun. And so I did you go to a few football tailgates where the development team was there and stuff. And I'm like, hey, this this perfect. like I love it.
00:12:55
Speaker
So you I'll try to fast forward this so that we're not going detail by detail. But I went to Clemson, did my master's in higher ed and student affairs there. While I was there, you had to do an assistantship and an internship somewhere on campus. And I reached out to the development office, and Clemson was really supportive in saying, yeah, come on.
00:13:13
Speaker
The vice president of student affairs at the time said, you know, I have a director of development for student affairs. He's a great guy and he could take you under his wing and mentor you. And so for two years while I was at Clemson, I kind of worked in the student affairs office. They had like a parents program where I traveled to Charlotte and Greenville and a couple other more local cities with the director of development and just watched him, how he talked to parents and alumni and just building relationships. And there was never a time where I thought, oh, this isn't for me. I don't really enjoy this. It was always a, this is so fun. I'm so excited. I get to go to this new city and meet these people that are doing really well and talk to them about giving back. And everybody's so nice.
00:13:56
Speaker
And so, you Clemson was really where I got my first start in working with a true development office after BG had sort of put the bug in my ear that it could be done. And then 2009 was the great recession of our generation or my generation where it was like the housing market and the stock market was dropping and then it was kind of like just get a job anywhere. and and trying to get a job with a master's degree and not a lot of real-world experience when the stock market's basically falling out of the sky and the housing bubble burst was very difficult. Lots and lots and lots of rejection emails and like, sorry, we're not hiring. But really fortunate that I was able to return to Columbus, Ohio, where I had a lot of friends from college living.
00:14:41
Speaker
And I started my career at Ohio Dominican University. I was with Ohio Dominican in their office of annual given. I oversaw the phonathon, the smile while you dial kids. And they did a great job. And I did a lot of direct mail. And I was just you really enjoying that. But the one thing I missed was direct. I really like it in front of people. and this role is more behind the scenes. And so I was fortunate to find a career at Ohio Westland. and I moved up to Delaware, Ohio, and I was still living in Columbus. And I was a major gift officer there for almost four years. And I was
00:15:20
Speaker
traveling the country, you know, just a road lawyer, West Coast, East Coast, all the things major gifts, really learning major gift fundraising there. Ohio Wesleyan is where I first got my opportunity to go and talk to people about endowed scholarships and professorships, estates, all the things that go into major gifts I was able to learn at Ohio Wesleyan. And so they were a wonderful school to work for and the alumni just love that university. And so it was just a fun place to work.
00:15:49
Speaker
And I'd been there about four years and you I was living in Columbus and there was a little school down the street from me called The Ohio State University that to me it was kind of like the pinnacle of work if you got there in development. And so an opportunity opened there in 2013 maybe at the business school. At the time, the woman that was the director there, I had met her at a few AFP events through just networking and said, you there's ever an opportunity,
00:16:16
Speaker
And, you know, thanks to that networking at an AFP event in Columbus, she said, Hey, there's a position coming to open. You should apply. And that's how I got into Ohio State. I was at the business school for, I think three and a half, four years. And then I was over, able to go over to the college of engineering.
00:16:33
Speaker
And that was a really great experience and I just learned so much about engineering and and really that was one of the first places I really learned about kind of like the corporate foundation side because the College of Engineering Ohio State does such a good job with their relationships in the corporate sector and And I just learned a lot there. And then, you know, if I'm being honest, I started grad school at Ohio State. I did a second master's in public policy and management at the Glenn College, and I graduated in 2019. I'd been in Ohio State for almost seven years at that point, and I just kind of started to get that itch of
00:17:09
Speaker
what's next in my career. You know, Ohio State is such a great place. It's such like a family field. Every Saturday, it's you so fun on campus, but I just sort of started to get that, you know, is there is more opportunity out there? Should I be doing something? And lo and behold, a colleague of mine that used to work at Ohio State that was then at Vanderbilt, I connected with him on LinkedIn and I said, you know, hey, how are things? And he was like, give me a call.
00:17:34
Speaker
And he said there's a new associate dean of Peabody College opening up at Vanderbilt and let's chat about it. And by August of 2019, I was unfortunately packing up my Ohio State shirts and trading them in for Vanderbilt gear and moving to Nashville, Tennessee. But it was a scary thing to do. I didn't know anybody in Nashville. I was moving down here solo.
00:17:58
Speaker
But I felt like it was the right opportunity and the right time. And I didn't have anything holding me back in Columbus at the time. And so I jumped at it and I thought, let's see where this goes. And it's been an unbelievable experience. Like I've learned so much. I've grown so much. I've gotten the chance to manage now. And I've just met so many good people, worked with so many good people. And it's just, you know, I want to say five years has flown by because I was mentioning earlier, I've been here five years. I'm not sure what it feels like because COVID, you know, it seemed like 100 years during that 18 months or two years, we were kind of stuck inside. And so that is something you never plan for is how to do development when you, you know, during something like that.
Vanderbilt's Ambitious Campaign
00:18:41
Speaker
But of course, just
00:18:42
Speaker
we all have our own lived experiences and so some people had families to take care of or little kids at home or jobs where they still had to go in like the medical fields and service industries and so it was like you can't really call and complain to anybody else about your experience because everybody was going through it at the same time.
00:19:00
Speaker
And you fortunately, we seem to be back to some normalcy in society. And I've just been trying to do my best with the opportunities I've been given at Vanderbilt. And we're doing pretty well so far, I'd say. We're a $3.2 billion campaign.
Podcast Conclusion
00:19:16
Speaker
And I think that if we continue in the trajectory we're going, we will definitely surpass that
00:19:29
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. I'm your host, Tom Daubert. Thank you for joining me as we journey together towards Major Gift Mastery on the Abundant Vision Fundraising Podcast.