42 DEANS AND DEVELOPMENT other faculty in the department meant a great deal to them. Before long, new endowments were added to accommodate the specific wishes of donors; they could choose whether to support student scholarships, student travel, speakers, internships, or faculty. Hoping to sustain their initial run of good luck, the Department of Portuguese began religiously sending thank- you notes to the many contributors. They wrote a little extra to the larger donors. The faculty began writing a newsletter sent to alumni that laid out the latest departmental happen- ings and described the use of the new endowments to support Portuguese. Student testimonials became an important part of that written record; students began inviting distinguished alumni back to campus to speak about their careers. Over the course of a decade, the department succeeded in establishing multi-million dollar endowments through gifts both large and small. Because the department was so well-heeled, it began attracting exceptional students away from other majors, or they had them as double-majors in Portuguese. The depart- ment gained a reputation for harboring the best and brightest. The Department of Greenlandic Norse decided alumni relations were tangential to their work as a faculty. They never asked their outstanding alumni for support. They didn’t bother sending a newsletter, so their former students soon lost touch with their favorite faculty. When the dean and major gift officers contacted potential donors to the Greenlandic Norse program, they were usually rebuffed. The former students long ago lost their emotional investment in the department. Neither faculty nor students were willing to invest time to invite back their successful alumni, so no culture of mentorship with current students developed. The Department of Greenlandic Norse had only about $1200 in a current funds account mostly coming from $25 donations when students called alumni for the annual fund drive. Not surprisingly, when they were heading out on the road,