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When
University Relations decided to spearhead a comprehensive campaign drive
seven years ago, they needed someone to work with corporations, foundations
and private funding agencies.
Carol
Scully was their leading lady.
As
director of Foundation and Corporate Relations, Scully helped Wesleyan raise
more than $30 million from 219 funding sources for the recently completed
Wesleyan Campaign. Most of these donations range between $10,000 and $3
million.
“We’ve
been quite successful,” she says, modestly. “But it was a team effort."
Scully has mastered a process to find grants.
She begins by researching prospective sources – foundations, corporations
and other public and private funding agencies – analyzing their support
interests and how much they could give or have given in the past. She’ll
send them a letter of inquiry, write up a grant proposal and invite them to
tour Wesleyan. Each tour is catered to the program officers, and usually
includes a meeting with President Doug Bennet.
“We
love to have them visit, so we can show off Wesleyan, and show they’ll be
making a good investment when they give to Wesleyan,” she says. “It’s
usually easy to sell Wesleyan. Funders are attracted to an organization that
knows where it is going.”
In addition to the Wesleyan Campaign, Scully’s
office helped raise more than $1 million - or 50 percent of the total
dollars – to start-up and fund the Green Street Arts Center. The funds were
contributed by corporations, foundations, and federal, state and local
government agencies.
Many foundation grants during the campaign
helped establish new academic initiatives. For example, grants from the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation have funded the Center for Faculty Development,
a post-doctoral program at the Center for the Americas, and the
environmental studies program. The Freeman Foundation gave Wesleyan $1.9
million that created the Asian Asian/American Initiative. In 2000, the W.
M. Keck Foundation awarded Wesleyan $500,000 to jump start its genomics
program, and the Surdna Foundation gave three $75,000 grants in 2003, 2004
and 2005 to support the Service Learning Center, part of the Center for
Community Partnerships.
“The
key factor is to maintain good relationships with our donors,” she says.
“When awarded a grant, we make sure we do what we said we would do and show
results. Funders like to know their money has made a difference.”
Though
Scully works for University Relations, she’s more than willing to help
anyone, campus wide, with grant-writing procedures. She encourages faculty
members to stop by with drafts of grant proposals used to fund their
research or special projects.
“We’re
sort of grant central here,” she says. “We edit, tutor and do whatever we
can to be helpful. Sometimes people need help every step of the way, while
others just need a signature.”
Scully’s office has collaborated with Academic Affairs and Financial
Services to create a grant Web site, http://www.wesleyan.edu/grants. The
site provides databases for corporate, foundation and government-affiliated
funding sources and highlights the grant-writing process. The three offices
work closely together to support the Wesleyan
community in their search for external funding - from the initial search
for sources, to development of the
proposal, to the administration of the award.
Scully,
who earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Fairfield University and a
master’s degree in communications from Syracuse University, said she
acquired most of her grant-writing skills on the job. She worked in
Wesleyan's development office doing corporate and foundation giving between
1983 and 1987. She tutored English at Manchester Community College and wrote
grant proposals for the Science Center of Connecticut and Saint Joseph
College in West Hartford. And in 1997, she returned to Wesleyan as the
director of foundation and corporate relations, building the new department
from scratch. She oversees Betsy McCormick, associate director and Christina
West-Webster, administrative assistant.
"She is
an extremely effective Director of Foundation and Corporate Relations
because she is very skilled, has extremely high standards, respects and
works well with many different constituencies, and is thoughtful and
proactive," says Ann Goodwin, assistant vice president for University
Relations. "She is also a delightful colleague and a consummate team player
who is always looking out for what is best for Wesleyan. We are very lucky
to have her."
Scully
is also co-chair of the Resource & Development Committee for the Project to
Increase Mastery of Mathematics (PIMMS) Advisory Council.
“Working at Wesleyan is very rewarding,” she says. “I get to work with many
different people from many different areas. It can be very interesting.”
Scully
lives in Hebron, Conn. with her husband, Jack and children Dan, 15, and
Maura, 18. Most of her free time is spent at high school athletic events or
in her garden. But before spring hits, she’s going to take up a new sport
herself – squash.
“The
new squash facilities here at Wesleyan are quite appealing,” she says. |
