McDonald '83 leaves job as vice president for development

The University has raised roughly $1.7 billion since McDonald began in his position in 2002. The Aspire campaign, which has raised $1.143 billion toward its goal of $1.75 billion, recently surpassed the Anniversary Campaign as the University’s largest fundraising campaign. The Anniversary Campaign raised $1.14 billion from 1995 to 2000 in honor of the University’s 250th anniversary in 1996. There are 28 months remaining in the current five-year campaign.

McDonald said that he first spoke with President Tilghman about leaving his post “about two years ago, when the campaign had been sucessfully launched and we had just a fantastic, you know, first two quiet years of the campaign, and then the first public year of the campaign, and everything was going very, very well.”

The development office had finished the strategic planning phase — which McDonald said he most enjoyed — and was transitioning to its implementation phase of day-to-day fundraising.

“I like that as well, but I thought that it might be a good time to talk to the president,” he said.

But when the financial markets collapsed in fall 2008, posing a major challenge to fundraising, “that turned out not to be a good time for me to depart,” McDonald explained.

“I think that we have weathered the downturn in the economy exceptionally well,” McDonald added, which gave him an opening to once again bring up the possibility of leaving the University.

McDonald said he asked Tilghman and the Aspire campaign’s co-chairs to consider his departure, though he “made it very clear to the president and the campaign co-chairs that while I welcomed the chance to seek another challenge, I was prepared to stay through the campaign and give it my full committment and all of my energy. But if they felt that there was an opportunity for me to seek a new challenge at a time when it wouldn’t in any way jeopardize the success of the campaign, I asked them to ... consider giving me that opportunity.”

“I am somebody who loves new challenges,” he added. “I love the idea of having a bit of time to think about what comes next and how I might best serve society.”

He will be succeeded by Elizabeth Boluch Wood, who is currently assistant vice president of development for capital giving.

Wood has worked in the Office of Development for 11 years. She spent six years, starting in 1995, as a senior associate director of leadership gifts at the University before serving as chief development officer for the Cancer Institute of New Jersey from 2001 to 2005. She then returned to the University, rising to assistant vice president in 2008.

“I would say that my initial reactions are just delight in the opportunity to be able to play a leadership role,” Wood said.

When former vice president for development Van Zandt Williams Jr. ’65 announced his retirement in 2001, 11 months elapsed before the University announced McDonald as his successor.

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By the time McDonald’s appointment was announced in January 2002, the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees had already approved his appointment at their meeting on Dec. 14, 2001.

Tilghman said that Wood’s appointment was announced before the Board of Trustees provided its official approval. The board last met Jan. 21–23. Tilghman said she will seek official approval of Wood’s appointment when the board next meets on March 25–27.

Tilghman said that the accelerated pace of this transition was necessitated by the demands of managing the Aspire campaign.

“I think the big difference [is that] in 2001, we were not in a campaign, and in 2010 we are in the middle of a campaign,” she said.

This year, “we did not have the opportunity to do an extensive search,” she said, noting that the transition would not have taken place so quickly had she “not believed that there was [the] ideal successor already in the Office of Development.”

A quick transition is important because the program needs to be “in full gear for these 28 months, and I did not want any kind of a transition where there was any degree of confusion,” Tilghman noted.

McDonald said he has full confidence in Wood.

“It feels really great to be succeeded by a member of the home team, which is very rare in higher education these days,” he explained.

Trustees Robert Murley ’72 and Nancy Peretsman ’76, co-chairs of the Aspire campaign, could not be reached for comment on Monday afternoon but said in a University statement that “it has been a privilege to work with [McDonald] for many years, both as vice president for development and as a legendary volunteer.”

“We are confident that [Wood] is the right person to lead us forward,” they said.