60 DEANS AND DEVELOPMENT to efforts of the institution to coordinate mailings, including annual giving requests), or they find the addresses out of date. The tactic your departments will employ is to build a ‘ghost’ database which they main- tain and update, but they don’t share their information with the central database. Your departments do not need to waste their time keeping such databases: some alumni send address updates elsewhere in the institution; thus, a department’s database will also become inaccurate. In return for not keeping a ‘ghost’ database, the University must provide unfettered access to the addresses of each department’s alumni, and the department must agree to coordinate mass-mailings with the institu- tion. Departments within Arts and Sciences contact vast numbers of alumni for outreach and annual giving, so this is a reasonable compro- mise which is best for the institution as a whole. Department chairs will often know more than the dean about initia- tives in departments or centers, and they may enthusiastically be able to represent them. Some priorities for funding will be straight forward for you to explain (e.g. adding freshman scholarships), while others will be complex and more often than not out of your area of expertise (e.g. adding a research center). So ask your chairs and assistant/associate deans for help in developing prospects for complex projects. Remember, you want to raise funds for the college. It does not matter who helps the potential donor to see the value in a project. The donor must be connected to the project and the institution, not just to you. Also, by getting your chairs involved in development, they will better appreciate the process and the time that you invest in it. If you get department chairs or your associate deans involved in a development project and they are to meet with the potential donors, they must be coached on what to do and when to do it at the meeting. Either you take on this responsibility for coaching, or delegate it to your development officer. When they are prepared for a meeting in the same way as your development officer prepares you, your department chairs can be very effective in asking for major gifts. (BSD) In one visit, involving two donors, me, a University Devel- opment officer, and a center director, we had just sat down to present a “major ask” when the center director unrolled a building plan on