Alum Profile

Wildcat Highlight

Distinguished Alumni

Wildcats on the Move

B.A., Social Welfare, ’81; M.P.A., Public Administration, ’89

Alma mater is Latin for “fostering mother,” not a bad thing to keep in mind when yours calls to ask for money. According to Kim Dufour, development officer for CSU, Chico’s College of Natural Sciences, this is likelier now than ever before, thanks to the heavy hit California education has taken in recent years. Over a plate of nachos at Tres Hombres, she talks about the shift in state fortunes and how it has necessitated a shift in attitude. Says Dufour, “We’ve kind of had to re-educate our alumni. When I went to Chico State, no one ever said to me, ‘Your education is possible because other people have given before you. When you go on, it would really help others if you would give back.’ In private schools that ethic is ingrained in you from the day you walk in the door.” She dips a chip into some sour cream and salsa. “Education happens because people make it happen.”

Since she began working as a fund-raiser for Chico State, Dufour has been very successful at helping alums see the value of giving back. Natural Sciences has received $1.3 million in gifts in the last five years. One alumnus, Floyd L. English, recently agreed to donate $50,000 a yearthat’s right, annuallyfor scholarships. This year that money went to sixteen different students, ten of whom received $3500 and six, $2500. Dufour is too modest to take special credit for any of the donor “cultivation” needed to inspire generosity of this magnitude. Instead, she says simply, “He feels he got a really good basic education here.” [See Chico Statements, spring 1998, inside front cover, for photos and article on Floyd L. English.] She is quick to add that gifts of any amount are greatly appreciated. “If just a quarter of the ten thousand alumni of Natural Sciences were to give a hundred dollars a year,” she points out, “the college could count on $250,000 annuallymoney for upgrading equipment, hiring research assistants….” Her smile reveals she knows she’s being idealistic, but she did after all get her undergraduate degree in Social Welfare. Isn’t this social work by another name?

“I didn’t wake up one day and decide to become a fund-raiser,” Dufour admits, explaining that after she graduated in 1981, she got a job as CAVE director, then as a program coordinator for Student Activities while working on her master’s in Public Administration. She married in 1987 and moved to Sacramento, where she landed a job raising money for the Sutter Hospital Foundation. “Over the five years I worked there, I learned a lot of neat stuff,” she says, “but after I became a mom, I decided I didn’t want to raise my kids in Sacramento.” As it does with so many of those who leave, Chico drew Kim Dufour and her family back into its fold. Once home, she looked to her alma mater for employment and found that it was actively seeking someone in development. For a while, she worked half time for the College of Engineering as well as for Natural Sciences, but when Engineering wanted someone full time, she opted in favor of a twenty-four-hour work week instead, something she hasn’t regretted. This mother of two likes being able to pick her daughters up from school each day, work in their classrooms, and accompany them on fieldtrips. Her own job requires a fair amount of travel, so having some flexibility on the days she’s in town keeps the job from being overwhelming.

Then, I want to know, how do you take ordinary college graduates and turn them into philanthropists? “It often comes down to trust,” explains Dufour. “There’s a saying in this business: ‘People give to people, not institutions.’ Somehow we have to allow corporations and alumni to believe in us, to believe we are going to take their contributions and make a difference.” Dufour says she spends 80 to 90 percent of her time approaching alumni rather than corporations and foundations that “get hit up every time they turn around.” She finds out what’s important to the donors and lets them know what kinds of options they have. Several, as it turns out.

Although unrestricted donationsthose that don’t come with strings attachedare particularly nice to receive, Dufour is sanguine about the reality: “People like to say where their money goes. You can choose to restrict or not. You can say ‘scholarships in chemistry’ or ‘scholarships for women in chemistry’ or even ‘scholarships for first-year minority women in chemistry’or you don’t have to say at all.” She talks about donors without children who want to do “something thoughtful with their estate” and others whose gifts honor professors who made a difference in their lives. And she talks about some of the more interesting criteria donors have for their awards, such things as “potential.” Potential? “It’s kind of a hard thing to determine,” she says, but the application procedure includes having the students write a letter in which they discuss their potential to do well. Well, why not? Being funded is nothing if not a vote of confidence in one’s ability, often exactly what an underachieving student needs in order to succeed.

After lunch, Dufour heads back to her office in Holt Hall where she will work a little while longer before picking up the kids. And then? Maybe a run before dinner. “I don’t go very fast and I don’t go very far,” she says, “but I go.” She’s a go-getter, that’s for sure.

Beth A. Spencer, University Publications (This article first appeared in SANDstorm, winter 1998.