John Wolfkill is Executive Director of the Community College of Aurora Foundation, and he chairs the planning committee for CASE's upcoming (Oct. 4-6, 2023) Conference for Community College Advancement. He finds his passion in community building and describes his professional calling as “unleashing generosity.”
How did you get started in advancement?
My journey into advancement started when I was a kid. We lived on the edge of town in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, U.S. It was a large neighborhood. We didn’t have paved roads or street lights or city sewers. My mom organized the neighborhood. She got involved in the community as an advocate for her neighbors and she brought about change. Community engagement was lived out in my household week after week.
I went to graduate school at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, U.S., where I went to work at the Watts Labor Community Action Committee in South Central L.A. The leaders there took me under their wings and I got an education in all kinds of community engagement—workforce, youth education and arts, and senior nutrition and transportation programs. I spent three years there and was most inspired by seeing youth become empowered, gaining a vision for their lives. The people of Watts were so generous and that’s where I learned how to walk alongside a community. I felt my life mission was fine-tuned with a purpose in building teams of faith, education, belonging, and economic mobility.
From there I worked with community foundations and KIPP Public Schools.
Though I built several partnerships with higher education while at KIPP Tulsa Public Schools in Oklahoma, the Community College of Aurora in Colorado, U.S., is my first higher education role. I’ve been here since 2016. I remember finishing the interview and calling my wife and telling her, "If this offer comes through, these are the people I want to grow with.” This is the most diverse campus in Colorado, a Hispanic-Serving Institution. More than 70% of our scholarship recipients are first-generation students. The leadership is incredibly passionate and engaged. The commitment here is not just access to education but making the journey with our students for the long term. When I started, the foundation was raising a few hundred thousand dollars. Last year we received $1.1 million in private donations and another $1.2 million through the capital campaign. Our scholarship recipients have grown from 189 to more than 500. I work with a great team and we are experiencing exciting growth.
What do you find most rewarding about working in community college advancement?
We have the greatest job there can be. We wake up every day to opportunities to help students realize their dreams. For those of us in advancement, the question is, "How do I unleash the generosity of others to support those dreams?" It’s more than fundraising. We create space for others to experience meaning. Students experience meaning through achieving their aspirations and donors experience meaning from being engaged with us to improve student outcomes.
What are some of the biggest challenges facing community college advancement teams?
The biggest challenge to overcome is probably this myth about who the community college student is. Many people generalize our students to those who weren’t aren’t ready for a four-year experience right out of high school and/or are looking for technical workforce skills. Our students are so diverse, as are their goals. We are solving the affordability and access problem for all kinds of students, starting with high school students who are acquiring college credit with us all the way to the older student with a family who is looking to acquire knowledge and skills to earn a better living, and of traditional high school graduates who start smart at community college and finish strong at a four-year institution. What the majority of these students have in common is they stay in the community, adding to the long-term health of the local economy. From a donor’s perspective, that’s the impact story we need to tell.
What excites you about the future of community colleges?
In addition to preparing students for the four-year degree, we are preparing them with new skills, upskilling, and reskilling. We are blurring what were once fine lines between high school, community college, four-year/graduate institutions, and workforce development. We are creating more on- and off-ramps for student success. In the past, there was a clear start and finish line to education. And if you didn’t make it in time, it was a missed opportunity. When folks want to create more economic opportunity in their lives—for instance an artificial intelligence or a health care pathway—they turn to us. Students can exit and come back and pick up where they left off and stack another microcredential, certification, or degree. I think that stackable education is our the future. What we do better than any other industry is scaffold education, skills, and credentials critical for economic mobility for all students.
What can attendees look forward to at the Conference for Community College Advancement?
The programming is incredibly strong. That’s one part of it. There are also the experiences. We want to create space for our attendees to really generate internal and organizational momentum when they return to their campuses. Momentum can be so easy to lose when we see disruption in higher education and burn out. But our students, our alumni, our communities need us to keep the momentum going.
So when you attend the conference, I guarantee if you engage and participate you will leave with strategies and ideas and friendships that will drive new levels of energy, inspiration, and momentum.
The friendships are such an important reason to attend. As Lana Fontenot from South Louisiana Community College, U.S., says, "This is a time to hang out with your summer camp friends." I’ve been coming to this conference for several years now and I continue to add to the group of "summer camp friends." They become that lifeline, especially when you are facing challenges.
What have you enjoyed about being committee chair?
This group from all over the U.S. is just so fun and engaging and thoughtful. How often do you, in your day-to-day work life, take time to just sit around with people who are incredible at what they do. They are rock stars in marketing and communications, driving alumni engagement, and running foundations. When you participate with this group, you can’t help but feel great about the future of community college advancement.
What’s the best career advice you’ve received?
A mentor of mine from L.A., Erwin McManus, encouraged me with this advice: "Let the world feel your full weight." I had tendencies back then to hold back—I would take time to read the room and adjust accordingly. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in some circumstances. But he encouraged me to not be afraid to lean into my gifts, strengths, and relationships. I've done that in volunteering with CASE and I definitely get more than I give.
What career advice do you like to share with others?
Here at CCA Foundation, I encourage our team members to show up with their full selves. That can be messy because we’re humans. If one of us is having a rough day or we’re going through something in our personal life, we support one another. We have two colleagues who recently welcomed babies and we support them with baby-spam Mondays [a designated day to share baby photos]—just a small way of acknowledging there is more to us than our job descriptions. Team members have camped and hiked several 14,000-foot mountains with my youngest son and me. Our team enjoys doing life together.
Another piece of advice I offer is to be intentional in creating the systems that will generate the results you desire. We continually look at our systems to see that they are aligned to the strategic objectives of the foundation, as well as individual goals. We focus on the people first and then on the systems.