52 DEANS AND DEVELOPMENT You should decide what communications with the college’s previous and potential donors are personalized. From our experience in talking to donors, neither form letters nor letters containing general boilerplate text are engaging or satisfying for their recipients. (BSD) To this end, I set a threshold whereby gifts of $5,000 or more will receive a personalized letter from me (this has me writing 10-15 letters a month which is a reasonable load for me; you can set a threshold appropriate for your college). When I receive a gift, I have a system in place for a support staff member to send me the address and a few “facts” about the individual from their Foundation profile. I hand write a 5-6 sentence “thank you” card which incorporates some of those facts. I have learned many of these recipients keep my cards, and that they do not keep any of the other thank-you letters from the institution. (JCH) Some communications look more personal than they actually are. I have a special email account that shows my name, but is managed by the development staff. It is primarily used for communicating with my college’s campaign committee. If someone responds to that account, the staff forwards the message to me and I respond from my personal email account. As dean, you are accountable not only for the college’s development strategy, but also for the success of your development officer. You can help organize your schedule and activities to help make him or her successful. The officer’s success directly supports your college, and a good partnership will help you retain a good officer. Reserve several days for travel each semester and provide those dates to your development officer, but do not be surprised if appointments are possible for only a few of those dates. Many of your donors have schedules just as compli- cated as yours, so you will need to be flexible with your calendaring. Few on-campus meetings are critical; ask if you can be represented by an associate dean or department chair so that you can accommodate a visit with a potential donor. It will also be helpful to your development