Organizing the Dean’s Office for Development 49 donations, but not nearly enough to move ahead. Other major prospects had evaporated. My development officer and I have exercised much careful diplomacy to work with the major donors (and the Lone Ranger) to demonstrate stewardship of the earlier gift, while pointing the way towards alternative means of realizing their intent. Your strategic plan’s development priorities should be shaped in concert with department chairs and faculty; you need their support for your time associated with development. You will need to set a goal for how much of this funding should be targeted for endowments and for the competing category of expendable cash. In the context of a campaign, you will need a range of options at different giving levels, from capital projects and endowed professorships to current-use scholarship funds, projects, or equipment. Giving levels for naming opportunities may need to be approved by a central Development Office. While donors will ultimately decide where their money goes, based on your objective, your development officer and marketing staff will guide their conversations towards supporting immediate projects or long-term endowments. Your college’s development strategy will include getting alumni and friends (henceforth collectively referred to as ‘alumni’) to become engaged with college activities towards annual giving and culminating in providing major gifts (see figure on page 50). Alumni engagement creates a pool of potential donors who may become annual donors in the short term. Investing time on alumni engagement is a tradeoff with 1) time to develop donors who are able to support the college now with major gifts, and 2) time for stewardship which encourages major and even annual donors to give again. How much time you and your development officer spend in each activity will depend on institutional support for these activities outside the college (e.g. an Alumni Associa- tion office), and the cash versus endowment needs for the college. The strategy you select for your development officer depends upon whether you or someone outside the college is the direct supervisor. Beyond stipulating your development officer’s use of time, you are also responsible for protecting that time. You may be surprised to see