24 DEANS AND DEVELOPMENT or a development officer can make lots of connections quickly and inex- pensively. These are also good acts of stewardship. Used properly, such events can also let the dean lay out the need for a major new initiative such as a building project or a faculty-student research program. As part of arranging for these events, and as stewardship, the dean or the Arts and Sciences development officer has to do a certain amount of alumni relations. The danger is that this kind activity—event planning and connecting with alumni—becomes an end in itself. Success becomes measured in how many people turned up at an event or how many responses Arts and Sciences received to its last newsletter to supporters or a similar metric. Development officers, particularly constituent offi- cers who are not surrounded by other development colleagues, can become distracted from their goal: asking prospects for money and getting some of them to say “yes.” Another danger arises when the dean introduces a fundraising goal to his or her department chairs, asks them for the names of alumni who might have financial capacity, and urges them to draw up their priori- ties. Which may lead the chair to wonder, “Why wait for the dean or some over-worked MGO to contact the alum when I can call and ask her directly for $10,000 to buy that piece of equipment that the vice provost for research is being so stingy about?” Department chairs and faculty usually have to have development strategy explained to them. Donors dislike being treated like a check book or a piggy bank to be raided when needed. They also dislike multiple requests of widely varying amounts. If the department chair asks for $10,000, the donor will assume that the needed piece of equipment is the highest priority of Arts and Sciences, and he may well give the $10,000. When the dean comes to visit the next week and says that the highest priority of Arts and Sciences is the new program in service learning to which the dean would like the donor to give $250,000, the donor will resent having been asked for the $10,000. You always want to give clear, consistent signals to prospects that you have your priorities straight, that you’re avoiding multiple or gratuitous asks, and that the prospect is a special person whom you’re presenting with an important opportunity to help the college. Another reason to keep the Lone Rangers reined in, or at least