Making the Case for Arts and Sciences 99 to invite alumni back to campus to meet with students and faculty. Invite your alumni to speak to students about the value of the liberal arts education they received and how it helps them to achieve success. Explain to students who come to you for funding that generous alumni gave the dollars you have available to help them. And keep the members of your college informed about the ongoing debate about liberal arts by forwarding stories from the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, University Business, Liberal Education, and other sources. These strategies, while not necessarily directly related to successful fundraising, are useful in creating a vision for the college that can guide your development philosophy and priorities. Setting the Stage for Fundraising: Build a Vision Using Priorities While most colleges of Arts and Sciences have highly refined messages directed at students about the power of a liberal arts education, for our purposes here we have to consider how to translate these messages to prospective donors. As dean, your goal is to raise funds to support priorities within your college—priorities that in the development phase often require conversations with prospective donors about the general state of higher education and how your college is serving the needs and interests of students. (DB) AsanewdeanatUNOsomeyearsago,myfirstmeeting with prospective donors focused on how I was planning to brand the College of Arts and Sciences. More recently I met with donor who was interested in how the college was trying to maintain a connection with its historical past; in the end, we agreed on a regular feature in our college magazine featuring recollections by a retired faculty member or former student. (PSG) Given that I have been at Central Michigan for nearly three decades, alumni often ask me if I remember certain faculty members, and sometimes I do, which adds an immediate level of compatibility. These discussions often turn to the role of liberal arts. Our experience is that alumni are