Fifty Million for Faculty and Students: My Fundraising Years

This memoir is a good read and reference for those interested in learning about supporting faculty and students in college, raising money for worthy causes, working with legal systems, avoiding problems with college presidents, and recognizing the benefits of collaboration, especially for small colleges.

The author describes her 25 years of leading an association of 35 colleges, first as a program at the University of KY and then as a nonprofit association housed in Berea, KY. She became head of the Appalachian College Program (ACP) three years after the program started at UK and president of the Appalachian College Association (ACA) ten years later.

With little experience in fund-raising, Brown built the association into one so familiar to federal agencies and foundations that when she retired after 15 years with the ACA, she left an endowment of $25 million, a reserve fund of about $250,000, $3 million for active grants, and contacts with roughly 20 foundations and federal agencies that had funded the association for many of her 25 years.

This memoir chronicles 25 years of persistence and dedication in higher education by someone who came to understand many aspects of higher education that as a faculty and staff member herself she never knew. Readers can benefit from her 25 years of routinely learning something new about the field of higher education, how to survive and even succeed in it.