Perhaps it’s fitting that a boy who grew up in Arkansas with limited financial resources would grow to become one of the top fund-raisers for the University.
After all, he’s just giving back to the school that gave him an opportunity of a lifetime.
David T. Blasingame grew up in rural Arkansas, where his mother was a secretary. His father died when David was 2.
Blasingame moved to Little Rock when he was 10, and a few years later, in 1965, started looking for colleges.
“One of my guidance counselors told me (Washington University) was a good school that I should look into,” Blasingame said, “and as it turns out, my two best friends’ fathers went to school here. They were coming up here one weekend to visit, and I decided to tag along, but I didn’t really know too much about the University.”
The only problem was money. And that’s when the University came to Blasingame’s rescue by offering him a full scholarship, including room and board.
It’s an act that has stayed with Blasingame his whole career.
“I couldn’t have managed to attend Washington University without that,” he said.
After graduating from the University with two degrees (B.A. in 1969; M.B.A. in 1971), he joined the Army for a couple of years, aided by a condensed ROTC program he enrolled in while taking graduate classes.
Then came a moment every young person goes through when at a crossroads in his or her life.
“I was working for the Postal Service,” Blasingame laughed. “The former dean of the business school had been on their board of governors, so I went to work for them as part of an exciting management program they had initiated around that time.
“However, I decided after a few months that I didn’t want to pursue that career, and I just sat down and tried to think through what I wanted to do with my life.”
He kept returning to Washington University, the more and more he thought about things.
“I had a great experience here,” he said. “I loved the University, I loved the professors and my classmates, and they were some of the best years of my life.
“I was also very grateful for the scholarship support and the professors who took an interest in me. I thought it was a great place and wanted to be a part of it so I could help do for others what had been done for me.”
So, without eyeing any particular job or position, he walked onto the campus and said he’d be interested in working here, and started asking about available jobs — with admittedly no concept of what development was.
But a position was available in development — and he turned it down.
“I didn’t think I’d be very good at it, but luckily they came back to me a couple of weeks later and asked me to reconsider,” Blasingame said. “I thought I’d try it out for a couple of years, and I’m still here.
“I’ve loved every minute of it.”
He started as associate director of alumni relations, and has risen through the ranks to his current position of executive vice chancellor for alumni and development programs.
While here, he has seen his son, Josh, graduate from the University with a political science degree in 1992.
While his responsibilities have grown from those first years when he handled Founders Day and some other alumni programs, the goal has remained much the same — to develop mutually beneficial relationships between the University and its alumni, parents and other constituents, and to help marshal the financial and volunteer human resources to enable the University to achieve its mission.
“David Blasingame has been an effective leader at the University and specifically in the campaign, because he has taken the time to learn what the students and faculty need,” Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton said. “He is a quick study and understands what it takes to strengthen the University. His personal dedication and exceptional ability to encourage others have been most rewarding to our effort to accelerate the ascent of the University.”
And the ascent of his department. When he started in 1974, the office was very small in terms of both space and personnel.
Blasingame credits his predecessor, Herbert F. Hitzeman Jr., who oversaw the University’s fund-raising efforts from 1968-1990, for starting the transformation that Blasingame continues to this day.
“Herb was a great mentor to me and gave me the opportunity to do what I’m doing today, which I greatly appreciate,” Blasingame said. “He and his wife, Jane, are very close friends.”
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a large part of the staff was devoted to planned giving, corporate and foundation relations, and alumni relations, but no development staff was assigned to work specifically for the schools at the University, and there was no major gift office.
Those additions in the past two to three decades have had a major impact on the University, but the changes don’t stop there.
In 1990, in preparation for the Campaign for Washington University, Blasingame created the office of major gifts and capital projects, which has helped build a strong network of alumni and friends outside of St. Louis, and allowed the University to enhance its gift support from outside St. Louis.
Through these regional efforts, Blasingame estimates that more than $300 million was raised from alumni, parents and friends in the recently concluded Campaign for Washington University.
“We have a regional development team that works outside of St. Louis, because it’s inefficient for each of the schools’ development officers to travel to each of the cities in the United States,” Blasingame said. “Also, a greater percentage of our alumni (about two-thirds) now are living outside of St. Louis, so this investment was made for this reason, as well as some others.
“Our alumni and friends in St. Louis, however, remain vitally important to us, and our greatest share of gift support comes from our home community, St. Louis.”
“David Blasingame is one of Washington University’s unsung heroes,” said Julia Jane (J.J.) Stupp, chief financial officer of Data Search Systems Inc., chair of the Alumni Board of Governors and ex-officio trustee. “Many of the University’s development successes over the past 20 years can be attributed to relationships that he has built.”
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David Blasingame Blasingame and baseball: When he was an undergraduate, Blasingame played for the Bears under coach John Claiborne, who would go on to become general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. Several years later, David’s son, Josh, also played baseball at the University. It’s still a part of their blood — a few years back, Josh was playing in a league in Forest Park and was short a player. “He came out and said they were going to forfeit if they couldn’t get another player,”David laughs. “I was out there playing with those young guys, and it was kind of frightening. You look at the stats and I did OK. I had I think three squirrelly hits, a pop fly no one could get, a squibbler between a couple of guys. Over the years my legend has grown, but I was pretty dismal in the field.” Also, former Cardinals All-Star infielder Don Blasingame is a distant relative. |
Blasingame was in on the campaign from the ground floor, and was part of the group that recommended the ultimate goal to the Board of Trustees.
“The campaign was launched to provide the resources to implement the Project 21 strategic plans that were developed from 1993-95,” Blasingame said. “The full cost of implementing the plans was $1.5 billion. So, to set the goal we looked at our past experience, the experience of our peers and then we analyzed our prospect pool and estimated what could be raised to implement the plans.
“At that time, I think there were only a couple of billion-dollar campaigns in the country, so we initially recommended that we set a goal of $750 million in the quiet period, then raise it to $1 billion in the public phase if our friends responded with enthusiasm. We felt it was a goal that would definitely stretch us and keep us awake at night, but we also felt that we had a realistic chance of making it.
“It was scary at times, though, to be honest.”
But the campaign was unequivocally a success.
“David is the epitome of dependability, forthrightness, and integrity,” said Marie Oetting, one of the University’s most dedicated alumni volunteers, past recipient of the Eliot Society’s Search Award and former chair of the Alumni Board of Governors. “His steady, even temperament, combined with his enormous energy and persistent way, is motivating to every person who knows him.”
Blasingame shrugs off any individual accolades, though, because he truly loves his job and he stresses that the results of the campaign were due to a great team effort involving thousands of volunteers and numerous staff, faculty and administrators.
“Mark Wrighton and our campaign chairs — John McDonnell and Sam Fox — provided great leadership,” Blasingame said. “Our trustees led the process and were extraordinarily supportive. Our alumni and friends were very generous.”
“It is rewarding to know our efforts make a difference,” he said. “We are securing scholarship support for outstanding students who couldn’t come here without it, research funds for faculty working on cures for cancer and other diseases, and for new and renovated facilities, to name just a few examples.
“In the big picture, as a member of the alumni and development team, you are really investing your life in a great institution that is doing extraordinary work for the benefit of society.
“I tell prospective employees that when you work at Washington University, you go home at night, you look in the mirror, you feel great about what you did that day because you are working with great people and on very worthy endeavers.
“I try to regularly remind our staff that they are involved in the process of building a great university that has a very positive impact on many, many people.”