Andrea Lucard is development director for International Baccalaureate, an international education foundation based in Geneva, Switzerland. In this position, Lucard is responsible for fundraising and partnership development, working with donors and schools in the Middle East, Europe, North America, South America and Asia to enable students to benefit from a high-quality education regardless of personal circumstances. Prior to the IB, Lucard was director of development at Colorado College, a liberal arts university in Colorado. While there, she was the architect of the college's $300 million Vision 2010 campaign. She can be reached at andrea.lucard@ibo.org.

You are taking the development program at IB in a new direction. Can you talk about how it has expanded under your leadership?

I inherited a mostly North American development operation. It had one and a half staff members and a focus on foundation funding. My remit was to grow the program from 1 percent to 10 percent of the organization's revenues and to internationalize the program. We've gone to approximately 5 percent of organization revenues during three years by building on our foundation's strengths while entering into large-scale partnerships and individual major gifts. We have staff in Geneva, New York City, Ottawa, Canada, and now in Singapore. Virtually all our donors are new, but most are not alumni. Why?

Alumni IB are a complicated proposition for us. IB alumni are actually alumni of their schools first, and the IB second. Having been an educational fundraiser in a university, I am well aware of our need not to cannibalize our schools' alumni. At the same time, many IB alumni want to connect with one another globally. Thus, we've been working carefully to develop an alumni programme to support schools in their educational mission and alumni work while keeping students connected to their IB identity.

We are currently beta testing a Web-based alumni programme due to launch in the third quarter of 2010. To give you an idea of scale, before I arrived, the IB had not kept track of any of the names of the-then 500,000 alumni. We now have approximately 650,000 alumni-17,000 of whom have now contacted us and told us they want to stay in touch. Quite a challenge.

Please discuss the importance of travel in your job and whether you have experienced a reduction due to the economic slowdown. If so, what have you done to stay connected with donors?

For the first two-and-a-half years, when I was the only professional fundraiser on staff, I was on the road 60 percent. The world is a big place to cover when you travel coach. Now, with some regional staff, my travel has reduced to about 30 percent with my frequent trips to North America being replaced by frequent trips to Asia.

Travel is a difficult issue to tackle. Our travel budget is now more limited due to cutbacks and environmental concerns. On the other hand, there is no substitute for getting face-to-face with your donors, whether for prospecting, closing a gift or stewardship. Part of it is the need of the fundraiser—is this person a real prospect? What is the donor hoping to achieve with his or her philanthropy? Can we work together? Part of it is the need of the donor—is this an organization that I trust? What are they going to do with my money? Can we work together?

Just as I don't expect to be able to hire key positions without a face-to-face interview, I don't expect to be able to find major gifts and partnerships without face-to-face discussions. This is especially true in cultures that rely on a handshake, personal relationships and negotiation.

That said, the longer you're with an institution, and the longer you work in a particular country context, the more likely you are to be comfortable augmenting your working by other means, including video, telephone and email. So the real cost savings is to keep your fundraisers.

Besides the economy, what do you think is the most pressing problem facing advancement professionals today?

Talent. Fundraising is a nuanced profession, requiring technical, strategic and people skills. Like all skills, it takes a lot of time, a lot of visits and a lot of mistakes to develop expertise. At the same time, fundraising is poorly understood within organizations. It often looks really simple—you ask people for money, they write checks, right? As a result, really skilled fundraisers burn out, the new ones take time to ripen, and the shortage of talent grows deeper—just at the moment when there is increased global need. The need drives competition for fundraisers up, competition drives salaries up, high salaries drive expectations up and expectations without understanding drive stress up.

How has CASE membership influenced your career?

Let me count the ways...

• Every fundraiser I've ever had has been to at least one CASE training session or has been a CASE trainer.
• I go to at least one CASE training per year myself for technical refreshing.
• I got this job through CASE classifieds.
• I hired at least one person through CASE classifieds in this job—and scores more before this job.
• Knowing CASE Asia-Pacific was being established as I first went to Singapore for fundraising gave me a confidence boost in a new market knowing that I would have CASE expertise and support if I needed it.

This article is from the September 2009 issue of BriefCASE.
Please share your questions and comments with Pam Russell via e-mail at russell@case.org or by telephone at +1-202-478-5680.