History Teacher Bob Crow was fond of Telling his Deerfield students that well before JFK's inauguration, Choate's longstanding school motto was, "Ask not what Choate can do for you, but what you can do for Choate." The phrase was likely intended to tug at the heartstrings of alumni, because there is nothing hopeful or whimsical about fundraising, or "friend raising" as Assistant Headmaster David Pond calls it. At Deerfield, the income derived from the Annual Support effort is as relied upon as a parent's tuition check. Last year it provided for approximately 13 percent of the school's operating budget. That money--about $3.6 million--was raised by a volunteer workforce about 350 strong, each with his or her own sense of mission.

What Deerfield is doing, I hope, is retaining the notion of civility in a world governed by narcissism," says Linus Travers '54. "I live next to a school where never once does a kid look up and say 'hello' when I'm walking down the sidewalk. At Deerfield, I can walk down Albany Road and the 'hellos' never stop."

Travers, an English professor at UMass-Dartmouth, has sat on Deerfield's Board of Trustees, been a reunion chair, did a five-year stint as a class agent, and served on the Executive Committee of the Alumni Association, all the while gaining insight into what he terms "an extraordinarily well run educational process."

His volunteer efforts have been used of late by Director of Alumni Relations Laura "Mimi" Morsman. "A lot of us who want to give something back to the school can't write checks of significance but we can come up with bright ideas on occasion," Travers comments. "Mimi creates an environment where her volunteers can make intangible but significant contributions."

One such idea suggested by Travers was to have alumni discuss how fate and circumstance had choreographed their professions. "Students are always presented with career role models who have already reached where they're going," explains Travers. "They never saw their father scrounging a newspaper off a subway seat or their mother in medical school. I thought it would be advantageous to have them listen to people talk about the pathways that took them to their current stations in life."

Morsman liked the idea and enlisted a diverse roster of 23 alumni who volunteered to speak at last October's inaugural series called "Pathways." The panel included Paul Lufkin '60, a Vietnam veteran and now a sports agent in Boston; Peter Romeyn '81, who left investment banking to become a physician; and Stephen Smith '67, who went from being city hall reporter at a small daily to editor of US. News and World Report.

"Anytime we can get alumni and students together, Deerfield wins," says Morsman, a self-described "Type A" person capable of transforming ideas into action. Her latest project is to launch an alumni summer school--bringing Deerfield grads back to take courses and "get an appreciation for the quality with which Deerfield presents itself."

"It is," she says, "part of an over-all mission to reconnect alumni with Deerfield Academy. We don't like to hear people say they've had nothing to do with Deerfield since they graduated. We're trying to touch more and more alumni each year."

Three years ago Morsman met with John Stobierski '78 and "Sandy" Alexander Weissent '69 to begin a national network of alumni clubs. Today the Deerfield Club of New England lists approximately 240 members, Chicago boasts over 80, the Deerfield Club of Washington, DC, has held several events since its formation, and the Deerfield Club of the West held its inaugural event this past June.

"We wouldn't have these clubs if it weren't for the volunteers," says Morsman. "They've been super, major, critical.., their mission is to keep the spirit of Deerfield alive in a geographic area, and their involvement doesn't require a dollar sign. You can't pin-point what makes Deerfield so special to them. It's in the woodwork."

If it is indeed in the woodwork, then Deerfield houses its alumni and development staff in the apt environment of the Ephraim Williams House, where Frank and Helen Boyden lived from 1926 to 1968. Upstairs on the second floor the "Field Marshall's" office is strewn with book bags, logo-emblazoned Frisbees and leftover mailings. A clay jar is inscribed with the words "Quid Pro Quo"--"quid" as in money, not headmaster.

Marshall Schell, Deerfield Academy's director of annual support, gets his marching orders from the Finance and Budget Committee and delivers them to an army of class agents who embark on a campaign that will include as many as six general appeals, four class letters and a six-month telephone drive.

If giving is a reflection of the state of the school, then Deerfield is on top of its game. A survey conducted by the Hotchkiss School revealed that Deerfield led in peer school participation in 1999-2000 with 52 percent of its 8,500 active alumni contributing. Exeter was second at 51 percent, followed by St. Paul's (46 percent) and Taft (44 percent).

Not to be outdone, 150 current Deerfield parents have raised over $1 million per year from fellow parents.

"As David Pond likes to say, 'If you don't contribute you're in the minority," says Schell. "In our peer group only one other school can say that."

Schell lays the mantle for that success entirely upon the volunteers. "The first principle of fund raising is that people give to people and not to causes or institutions. Mailings are only background music for the personal contact. The number one reason people say they contributed is because someone asked them. It's the relationships that matter."

Schell maintains that volunteerism is a distinctively American form of philanthropy. He quotes French social historian Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote in 1835 after touring the States: "I have often admired the extreme skill with which [Americans] succeed in proposing a common object for [use by] a great many... And inducing them voluntarily to pursue it."

At Deerfield, the genesis for alumni volunteerism began with the founding of the academy in 1797, when the Deerfield townsfolk raised $2,700, including $1,400 for the establishment of a "permanent fund."

Today that fund has grown to an endowment of $260 million, the interest from which is used to help pay for the annual operating budget.

The responsibility for cultivating and nurturing those alumni who are willing to leave capital gifts to Deerfield goes to Director of Development Michael Perry. "Deerfield is not the easiest place to get to so we go to the alumni--places like Montana, Florida and Arizona. We talk about Deerfield and their connectedness is heightened. They want to know what's going on here today and the more information they have the better they feel about giving to the school."

Asked about the role that volunteerism plays in Capital and Planned Giving, Perry says, "We ask some of our alumni to call their classmates and to convince them to attend our seminars about family philanthropy. We need people to become more aware of estate planning and of their philanthropy."

Former class agent John Knight '83 says he became a volunteer because his Deerfield days were the best three years of his life. "For a guy like myself who grew up in Worcester, it was like a candy store. The resources were incredible and I wanted to participate in as much of it as I could. Rink Master Jim Antone even taught me how to sharpen hockey skates."

"There are two types of class agent," adds Knight. "The numbers-driven type who is motivated by a number he has to get to, and the community type that tries to create opportunities for alumni to interact, keep them interested, and therefore make them more likely to give. I'd say I fall into the latter category. I started a monthly e-mail newsletter but the academy could provide me with only 35 of 175 e-mail addresses. Now we have 115 and that's important because e-mail is a non-threatening way of getting into that conversation with your classmates that they don't want to have."

While some classes have as many as ten volunteers working on a campaign, Richard "Dick" Boyden and John B. Horton were the Starskey and Hutch of '52, convincing 83.3 percent of their class to contribute.

Boyden's father, Bartlett "Bart" Boyden taught English at Deerfield from 1928 to 1966. "The alumni money makes a lot of things possible," says Boyden. "When my father retired there was no retirement plan; you retired on what the Headmaster wanted to give you."

Thanks in part to alumni volunteerism and generosity, faculty salaries have risen dramatically and the school now offers a substantial pension fund. "We have extraordinary faculty who thrive on the 'triple threat' of teaching, coaching and dorm life," says Schell. "These days it's hard to find people willing to do that, but it's crucial to the Deerfield experience because it makes the relationships much stronger than at other schools."

Class agent Alexandra Marshall '94 concurs, "When we speak about boarding schools we're speaking about children who are away from home, and you can't say that sending a child off to boarding school is a natural progression in life. Deerfield does its best to replicate a family experience. It made the Deerfield experience incredibly unique. To this day I'm still in contact with two of my dorm parents."

Worker Bea

The real work in the Alumni and Development Office is done in the trenches--applying stamps, churning out information on the computers and compiling lists. "It's incredible how complicated this can be, yet these people get the job done," says Director of Annual Support Marshall Schell.

Leading the charge from her second floor office in the Ephraim Williams House is Administrative Assistant Beatrice "Bea" Bowman. Bowman arrived at Deerfield ten years ago after previously working in banking, legal affairs and social services.

During her tenure she has honed her organizational skills to provide class agents with the ammunition they need to pick up the phone and get to work. Her reports to them include class-by-class updates of alumni who have already given, others who have made pledges but have yet to follow through, and which alumni have given in recent years but haven't responded to the current campaign. Although keeping tabs on 8,500 alumni who've graduated since 1918 is a daunting task, Schell says that Bea handles her chores with aplomb. "Bea is unflappable and serene while juggling numerous balls in the air. When they want it done right and fast they call Bea."

Former class agent and current Trustee Ed Jaeger '60 concurs: "The main reason everything got done and was done well when I was chairman of Annual Support was Bea Bowman. She's a tiger with details and always pleasant under pressure."

The number of class agents has nearly tripled since Bea began in 1991, growing from 125 to 341. "Consequently," she says, "it's harder to get the reports out with that many agents and I don't always have a chance to do things the way I'd like, but I'll never be perfect, so I don't worry about it."

For those who count on her, Bea Bowman is already perfect enough.

Freelance writer Chip Ainsworth '69 lives in Hadley, Massachusetts, and is a frequent contributor to several regional DEERFIELD MAGAZINE.

As published in the Summer 2001 issue of Deerfield, the publication of Deerfield Academy's Alumni Office.