Veteran administrator Harmon '78 leads alumni outreach

Harmon was Princeton’s director of communications from 1987 to 2000, when he left for a position at Wesleyan. He was director of university communications and in 2006 became vice president for public affairs at the Middletown, Conn., college.

Harmon’s job will be to coordinate and develop a comprehensive outreach strategy for the University’s fundraising efforts. The University is currently in the middle of its “Aspire” capital campaign, which seeks to raise $1.75 billion by 2012.

Harmon said that Princeton has some of the strongest alumni outreach in the country, noting that 60 percent of alumni give back to the University. Though he said he believes that this is an enviable percentage, Harmon said he wants to “reach out to alumni of all stripes ... [and to] reach out to folks who haven’t had opportunities to participate before.”

He added that he looks forward to “fly[ing] in the cockpit of the plane and gain[ing] a sense of how institution planning and decision making are going forward and ... contribut[ing] to institutional strategy.”

Both Harmon and members of the University are eager for his return.

University Vice President and Secretary Bob Durkee ’69 said he was “delighted that [Harmon] has decided to come back to Princeton and join the development team.”

“It will be wonderful for ... the University [to have someone] who is as skilled as he is, but also someone who knows Princeton as well as he does,” said Durkee, to whom Harmon reported when Harmon was Princeton’s director of communications.

“When we were looking for someone to fill this position, I was pleased this was a time in his life when he wanted to come back to Princeton,” Durkee added.

As director of development communications, Harmon will report to the University’s vice president for development, Brian McDonald ’83, and to Director of Development Studies Julie Shadle.

“I feel very strongly that, while I am a fan of Wesleyan, this is their loss and our gain,” McDonald said. “We’re delighted that he’s returning to the University and community,” he said.

It is “sort of like getting Michael Jordan to come back to his original team,” he added.

Harmon’s reasons for leaving Wesleyan, however, remain vague. His decision to leave is “not [one] that I would discuss in a newspaper context,” he said.

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An April 2008 article in the student newspaper, the Wesleyan Argus, said that his departure was “part of a reorganization of the University’s Public Affairs Office.”

Tackling the job

McDonald outlined three major tasks that Harmon will undertake as director of development communications.

Harmon will work with Princeton alumni and “take charge of a group that is already considered to be the best at what it does [giving financial support to the University] and make it even better,” McDonald said.

Harmon will also need to “work closely with ... the alumni association ... and other departments that work hard to inform and engage all of our constituents,” McDonald explained, adding that Harmon should “make sure what we do in development is closely integrated with work that the other offices are doing.”

Harmon’s third challenge is to “figure out how to effectively communicate to our younger alumni,” McDonald said. Alumni can now be contacted through e-mail, the internet, text messaging and other online resources, like facebook.com, due to technological improvements in the last decade, he noted.

McDonald said that Harmon’s job is important because “high levels of engagement lead to more people giving and people making larger gifts.”

Harmon said he also wants to reach out to alumni in ways they find “useful and convenient,” noting that they are often sent a large amount of information.

McDonald also said he admired Harmon’s vocational versatility, noting that it is “not that often that someone who has had a very senior position at a university transfers to another [senior position].”