Final candidate for ESU Foundation Job interviewed on Campus Friday
By Scott Rochat
Saturday, February 10, 2007
The final candidate to be Emporia State University’s chief fund raiser was interviewed by the university Friday.
The candidate, Wendell Snodgrass of Topeka, answered questions in an on-campus forum Friday. Snodgrass is the executive director of the St. Francis Health Care Center Foundation and previously held fund-raising positions at Central Methodist University of Fayette, Mo., and at Benedictine College in Atchison.
If hired, Snodgrass would become ESU’s director of university advancement and president of the ESU Foundation. Earlier in the week, Judith Heasley of Durango, Colo., and Sandra Fruit of Newton were also interviewed for the job.
Snodgrass took his present job a little more than a year ago, after his mother became ill in December 2005 and continued to have difficulty.
“I realized how far from home I was,” he said. “When an e-mail from St. Francis arrived that night, I saw it as an opportunity to get back to Kansas.”
He’s enjoyed the position, he said, but never realized how much he would want to return to academia.
“I think education is a field I miss,” Snodgrass said. “I didn’t realize it was so good.”
He first came into fund-raising while he was a student at Washburn University.
“My girlfriend, now my wife, worked in the advancement office and the person who was working the phone-a-thon said ‘I can’t get any callers,’” Snodgrass said. “So my girlfriend thought of me and thought ‘What does that person do?’”
Snodgrass quickly got addicted. Good fund raising, he said, can be the key to generating enrollment, keeping and recruiting faculty, and even keeping the campus in good shape.
“Infrastructure is the non-sexy part of fund raising, but it’s a need,” he said. “Having the ability to maintain that facility is a big question. That’s an overlooked need in fundraising.”
There also need to be strong connections between the university and its surrounding community.
“I understand that there’s kind of a wall between ESU and the city,” he said. “We need to see how we can break that down.”
One campaign he worked on at Benedictine raised $15 million for the school. He is currently in the midst of a feasibility study for a campaign at St. Francis.
Joyce Davis, ESU’s dean of libraries, asked about his experience in raising money for a university library. Snodgrass described how he had worked with a potential donor on a $2 million gift for the library at Benedictine.
“I found out books were a passion of his, along with wine,” Snodgrass said to a few chuckles. “So, after a meeting, I took him down to the library and we took in the atmosphere.”
Unfortunately, Snodgrass said, the gift fell through after he moved on to St. Francis.
“The ball was dropped,” he said.
He said he hoped to work with the deans and faculty in raising funds to meet their needs. He also emphasized the importance of building relationships with a donor and giving him or her some options.
“I’m not one to tell a donor what he should be giving,” Snodgrass said. “He might give me that once, but never come back again. You have to build that relationship over and over again.”