16 DEANS AND DEVELOPMENT wealth or charitable interests. Yet contact reports have to be long and detailed. Often, prospects have to be visited or contacted by multiple staff from the University. Your institution will come off as much more caring if you are not the third person who asks basic information from the prospect. Changes must be made in the University Development database in order to prevent old, inaccurate information in a contact report from misleading the next person who visits the prospect. This is one area in which the Research Office of University Development is crit- ical. Divorces, job changes, promotions, marriages of children, major health issues, other charitable commitments—there is almost nothing of significance about a prospect that is not helpful to know. A good development officer has eyes worthy of Sherlock Holmes. My officer and I had dinner with a prospect whose level of wealth was a bit of mystery to us. I discerned no clues over a pleasant dinner, and we said goodbye to the prospect. But as we walked back towards our hotel, the following exchange occurred: Development officer: “Looks like he’s doing well.” Dean: “Really? How do you know?” Development officer: “You didn’t see his key chain when he laid it on the table with his iPhone?” Dean: “No.” Development officer: “His key chain was for a Porsche.” Dean: “Really? Wow. Thanks.” Development officer: “I get paid to do this.” Cultivation can involve delicate diplomacy. Prospects can have strong views to the right or left of the political spectrum, be deeply religious or outspokenly agnostic, and harbor old resentments about what an instructor, coach, or dean of students did or did not do decades earlier. If you have strong views leave them at home. It is better to be in the center with donors. Prospects can also, without even realizing it, still see the college as the place they knew at twenty-one. While society around them has changed with breathtaking speed, they still imagine their alma mater as a place where students wear bell bottoms or freshmen beanies. One prospect still resented what she perceived as a lack of appreciation