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VP Christopher Reaske to retire in July, after a decade of record fundraising
By David J. Craig and Jessica Ullian
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Christopher Reaske Photo by Vernon Doucette |
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Christopher Reaske has a personal philosophy that he shares regularly with his staff: in your work and in your life, make sure every year is filled with “new accomplishments, experiences, and awakenings.”
The adage has guided Reaske very well professionally: since becoming vice president for development and alumni relations nine years ago, he has been instrumental in helping the University nearly triple its gift income. And now, he feels, it’s time to apply his philosophy even more fully to his personal life.
Reaske will retire on July 31, 2005, in order, he says, to spend more time with his family and to pursue his passions of writing, physical exercise, travel, and investing. “My wife, Mary K., whom many of you know, has herself been retired now for one-and-a-half years,” Reaske wrote in an October 26
e-mail to his staff announcing his decision. “She and I want to spend more time together, and have the freedom and flexibility to make quick plans. We have two daughters and three grandsons with whom we want to spend more time, and I in particular want to be able to get to the basketball games of my two oldest grandsons. We only have one life, and it is important to me to have this coming period of enriched family time.”
Reaske’s accomplishments at BU are perhaps best understood with numbers. When he arrived in 1995, annual gift income was approximately $36 million. He led the University to eight record years of fundraising, with annual giving peaking at $103.4 million in fiscal year 2003. He helped secure the University’s largest single grant ever in 2001 — the $14 million Whitaker Foundation Leadership Development Award for biomedical engineering programs, which BU matched with an additional $18 million in new research funding. In addition, Reaske has raised $380 million in the “quiet phase” of the University’s $1 billion capital campaign, which is expected to be launched publicly by BU’s next president after the quiet phase has reached about $500 million.
Aram Chobanian, who has worked with Reaske both as president ad interim and previously as MED dean and Medical Campus provost, says that Reaske’s knack for developing and maintaining contacts within the alumni community transformed the Office of Development and Alumni Relations. “He’s reorganized it into a well-functioning organization that is able to reach out to the Boston University constituency,” says Chobanian, “and to raise funds more effectively than has ever been done in the past history of the University.”
Adds Alan Leventhal, chairman of the Board of Trustees: “During his tenure, Chris raised yearly giving to Boston University to remarkable new heights. He strengthened corporate and foundation giving, unified the fundraising efforts of our schools and colleges, and brought a renewed sense of vigor and camaraderie to our alumni outreach programs. Most importantly, he has set the foundation upon which the future success of Boston University’s major fundraising campaigns will be built.”
Reaske also brought to his position a special combination of serious academic credentials and a love for fundraising. A cum laude graduate of Yale, he received his master’s degree in 1964 and his Ph.D. in English literature in 1968, both from Harvard. He was an assistant English professor from 1968 to 1974 at the University of Michigan, and subsequently served as dean and then provost at Russell Sage College and vice president at Franklin Pierce College before returning to Yale in 1983. There he held several senior administrative positions between 1983 and 1995, including associate vice president for development and alumni affairs. Reaske also has written or edited nine books, on topics ranging from English literature to ecology.
His extensive academic experience has made him an ideal fundraiser, say BU faculty members, because he understands and genuinely appreciates their work. “You don’t find a lot of development officers that understand the meaning of liberal arts education” as does Reaske, says Ron Richardson, a CAS history associate professor and director of the GRS African-American Studies Program. “He has been an intellectual, a moral, and a material supporter of African-American studies at Boston University.”
Reaske’s credentials are “truly unique,” says BU Trustee Richard DeWolfe (MET’71,’73). “First of all, he has a doctorate, second, he’s taught, and third, he’s been in administration. So when you’re trying to raise money for a university, you engender the respect of your peers and your deans and the administration very quickly, because you understand the scope of an assignment, and you understand how to explain the cause. I think that makes him unique in higher education.”
SMG Dean Louis Lataif (SMG’61, Hon.’90) points out that Reaske’s long tenure as BU’s top fundraiser has provided an important source of stability for the University. “His longevity in a position which had a history of rapid turnover is a fitting testament to his ability to work well with others and to set and reach ambitious targets,” says Lataif. “He will be missed by all of us who so enjoyed and appreciated his expertise and collegiality.”
This year, Reaske intends to push the University’s capital campaign closer to the $500 million mark, and also to hire consultants to review several aspects of his department, such as the effectiveness of its publications and alumni events. Another top priority, he says, is soliciting gifts from BU trustees and others for the $15 million Fund for Leadership and Innovation, which was launched in September with a $5 million gift from Leventhal and his wife, Sherry. The fund will be allocated at the discretion of BU’s next president, to any BU school, college, program, or center of his or her choosing.
Reaske says that President Emeritus John Silber, who recruited him from Yale, has always been a “tremendous source of support and motivation.” In addition, he says, “the two overwhelming reasons I came to BU have held true: one is the wonderful internationalism of the University, in that we attract students from all over the world and have deans and faculty members who regularly travel overseas. The other is that BU is a school still in a state of becoming, a research university taking giant steps regularly, and evolving from a commuter school to a more traditional campus school, which allows for greater identification among students and therefore alumni. That is a good situation from a fundraising standpoint, and presents huge opportunities for the future.”
The secret to successful fundraising, Reaske says, is tenaciously working toward manageable goals, day by day, month by month, year by year. “It’s not about throwing the bomb pass, but developing a sound ground game, building on your success steadily, and adding to it every year,” he says. “No miracles have happened here.”
“What I’ll miss most are the colleagues I’ve worked with,” continues Reaske, whose plans for retirement include finishing a book about the history and future of humans’ uses for ice. He also is enrolled in a MET course on criminal justice, another topic he is considering writing about. “I’m awfully proud of the people I work with, and I’d like to think that I’ve made my department a caring place, where staff members know that they can come to me for help. And I plan to stay in contact with many people at BU. You really get to know people in a job like mine, which might involve traveling through a rain forest with a professor whose project you’re raising funds for. Frankly, that makes it very difficult to leave.”
Plans for filling Reaske’s position, Chobanian says, have yet to be fully formulated.
5
November 2004
Boston University
Office of University Relations