How To Win Friends And Influence People
by Marcia Landskroener M'02
 Fresh
with the news that the Campaign for Washington’s College
topped out at $103.4 million, Jay Griswold sat in his Fells
Point office, reflecting on his role in the most successful
fundraising campaign ever conducted by a liberal arts college
in Maryland. All he did was talk to people. This Baltimore executive
has the touch that lets development officers sleep at night.
In his volunteer leadership role as Campaign Chair, he’s
proven to be Washington’s own Dale Carnegie, winning new
friends for the College and influencing others to give.
Dressed in a red sweater and speaking in easy, soft tones, Jay
Griswold, director of the Brown Investment Advisory and Trust
Company and Chairman of Washington College’s Board of
Visitors and Governors, reminds one more of a kind uncle than
of a corporate executive. He points out the window to the old
Alex. Brown building where, in 1800, his ancestors moved their
clipper ship business from Liverpool, establishing an international
trading company that eventually would become Maryland’s
first finance company. Suddenly, we’re old friends, talking
about common interests and people we both know. So this is how
it’s done. If I had a million dollars, I’d want
to give it to him.
“People give to people,” Griswold says. “At
the beginning of this campaign I wasn’t sure where we
were going to get $72 million, and I certainly never dreamed
of reaching $103 million. Let me say it couldn’t have
happened without John Toll. He put a stamp of approval on the
college, a validation that was very much needed at the time.”
When John Toll accepted the presidency of Washington College
in 1995, Griswold was a sophomore board member, drawn into the
college leadership position by College Trustee Jim Price, his
friend and partner at Alex. Brown, and then-President Charles
H. Trout. In 1993, Price was coming off the Board and encouraged
Griswold to take his seat. Griswold, then the parent of a Washington
College student, agreed.
“Sarah struggled at first,” Griswold says, “and
there were people at Washington College who helped her throughout
those six years it took her to graduate. I remember Dean [Maureen]
McIntire called me, advising that Sarah come home, get a job
and then come back when she was ready. I often think she would
have been lost in the shuffle at another, larger school. I was
impressed with the way she was treated at Washington College;
it meant an awful lot to me and my family.”
Today, Sarah is happy and successful in her role as director
of development for the Baltimore Educational Scholarship Trust.
She graduated in 1994, and is married to a Washington College
classmate, Matt Johnson ’94.
“People are a lot like horses,” says Griswold, whose
affection for equestrian sports runs to fox hunting and steeple
chase. “They don’t mature at the same rate. Some
three-year-olds are ready to run, and some haven’t fully
developed. To have a place like Washington College that is good
at developing the individual is just marvelous. I was convinced
of the value of Washington College by seeing what it did for
my daughter, and for my son-in-law. Even though the school is
larger now, at 1,300 students we can do what we do extremely
well.”
 That’s
a message that Griswold has been sharing with potential donors
throughout the Campaign, a belief in this institution he shared
with John Toll and others who convinced him to accept the leadership
of the most ambitious fundraising campaign in College history.
“It happened during a car ride I took with Louis Goldstein
[Class of 1935 and former Chairman of the Board] and John Toll
to see Finn Caspersen [chair of The Hodson Trust] back in 1997.
“Dr. Toll had stayed in Annapolis the night before, and
came to Baltimore with Louis. I woke up at 4:30 a.m., and Louis’
driver picked me up at Green Spring Station. From there we drove
to New Jersey. By the time we got there they had me convinced
I was to run the campaign, even though I had never done anything
like that before. They didn’t say it would be easy, but
nevertheless they made it known to me that it was important,
and that I was the one to do it.”
“We had every confidence
that Jay Griswold was the perfect choice to direct our volunteer
leadership,” says John Toll. “One of his greatest
strengths is his personal experience with the institution. He
is a first-person advocate, a passionate solicitor for the college.
And he’s just a heck of a nice guy. People respond to
him.”
Griswold recalls attending a Board retreat at Wye Woods in Queen
Anne’s County, with members debating whether the College
should undertake a campaign at all. The College had recently
weathered some financial difficulties. A feasibility study earlier
had placed a $150 million price tag on the College’s total
needs, but had recommended undertaking a five-year campaign
of no more than $65 million. The Board eventually set a goal
of $72 million, and then met that goal 18 months ahead of schedule.
“We were all sitting around a table, and I thought Louis
was taking a nap,” Griswold says. “Suddenly he wakes
up and says, ‘I’m in for a million dollars.’
Jim Price, who’s sitting next to Louis, chimes in, ‘I’m
in for a million dollars.’ I was third in line, and was
thinking, gee, I really don’t want to disappoint anyone,
so I followed suit.”
Griswold, in agreeing to lead the campaign, offered something
just as valuable—his time. Following the example of Michael
Bloomberg, who led Johns Hopkins University’s $1.2 billion
campaign, Griswold pledged to devote one day a week to Washington
College. For the next five years, he and John Toll would be
steady travel partners, calling on foundations and meeting one-on-one
with potential heavy hitters from Chicago and Los Angeles to
New York and Boston. He spent a lot of time on the phone—consulting
with the College’s development staffers and fellow Board
members, soliciting donors personally, and devising strategies
with President Toll.
“Without Dr. Toll and his sidekick, the very capable Bob
Smith, this campaign would have been very difficult if not impossible,”
Griswold says. “The more people saw how John Toll operated,
the more people got interested. The College’s earlier
campaign, which raised $43 million, had been quite narrow. This
was broader in scope, designed to fund the College’s priorities
as outlined in our strategic plan. As the campaign progressed,
we ran into very little difference in priorities between what
the College needed and what people wanted to support.”
Griswold credits Smith, the College’s vice president for
development (now retired) who earlier had worked with Toll at
the University of Maryland, for laying the foundation for a
successful campaign.
“Bob Smith’s arrival was very critical,” he
says. “Trustees don’t generally understand the mechanisms
that happen behind the scenes in fundraising. He helped build
the infrastructure within the development office that would
support the campaign.”
One of the earliest, and most heartening, validations of the
Campaign for Washington’s College came from the Starr
Foundation. The foundation, with College Trustee Emeritus John
Roberts on its board, pledged $5 million to establish the Center
for the Study of the American Experience.
“Charlie Lea [a College trustee] and I went with Dr. Toll
to have breakfast with John Roberts in New York. We told him
about the idea for the Center, and said we were backing it ourselves.
John thought it was a good idea and said he’d like the
foundation to put some money up. The Starr gift was the largest
single gift they’ve given, and they’ve been supportive
all along.”
The Starr Center was one of two academic centers established
during the Campaign. The other—the Center for the Environment
and Society—builds on the College’s environmental
studies program and its location in the heart of the Chesapeake
Bay region. Both are housed at the College’s Custom House,
a striking Georgian structure that particularly appeals to Griswold’s
sense of history. The former chairman of the Maryland Historical
Society was instrumental in forging the College’s ties
to Kiplin Hall, the English ancestral home of Maryland’s
Calvert family. The University of Maryland was sending students
of architectural history and preservation to Kiplin Hall each
year. Griswold saw a broader potential for Washington College
students, and brought it to the attention of the board and the
faculty. The result: a summer study abroad session, directed
by English professor Richard Gillin, that takes students hiking
through England’s Lake District, in the footsteps of English
lyric poets. The students are housed at Kiplin Hall.
“I’m intrigued by history,” says Griswold,
who easily warmed to the idea of a campaign that drew attention
to the school’s founding patron and its history as the
first college chartered in the new nation. “What appeals
to me is taking an institution that has a long and wonderful
history and bringing that into the modern world, bringing it
alive.  We’ve
done that with Kiplin Hall, and with Washington College. It
also speaks to my wonderful experience at Alex. Brown, where
we took an older institution and gave it momentum through the
1970s, ’80s and ’90s.”
The campaign also capitalized on the College’s longstanding
history with The Hodson Trust and its close relationship with
Finn Caspersen, who each year awards seven-figure checks to
four Maryland private colleges, Washington College among them.
Griswold played a role in devising a giving incentive program
funded by the Trust. The Hodson Trust would match dollar-for-dollar
each gift of $100,000 or more to endowment, up to $15 million.
In all, The Hodson Trust gifts accounted for $25.2 million,
or 24.4% of the Campaign total. As market declines slowed the
progress of the campaign in its final months, The Hodson Trust
support became even more critical.
“The Hodson Trust was desperately important to this Campaign,”
Griswold said, “because donors could get twice the bang
for their buck. The $500,000 Adrian Reed endowment is a perfect
example of how people give to people. Adrian was a friend of
mine, and he had a lot of rich friends in New York. They didn’t
necessarily know much about Washington College, but they were
happy to give to the memory of someone who meant something to
them.”
Asked what single achievement of the Campaign gives him the
greatest satisfaction, Griswold is loath to play favorites.
“Exceeding $100 million is certainly something,”
he says. “That’s a pretty serious number, and represents
a huge team effort.”
The campaign might be over, but Jay Griswold promises to stick
around. As Chairman of the Board, he is committed to seeing
the presidential transition through, and is already considering
what steps the College must take in order to continue its momentum
in the march toward its place among the nation’s top 50
or 60 liberal arts colleges.
“We’re going to take a little breather and then
launch into another campaign,” he predicts. “I hope
we don’t go through a quiet period, because the momentum
we have is terrific. We’ll always need additional funds
for scholarships and endowment. Earlier assessments have identified
the need to improve the waterfront facilities, the library and
the performing arts center, and the need for a student center.
I’m not afraid to say that our athletic facilities are
embarrassing. These projects, in part, will be driven by who
comes up with the money. What concerns me is where the next
group of donors will come from.”
Griswold possesses many strengths as a leader. First, he leads
by example, putting money behind projects he believes in. The
Princeton graduate admits to giving some money to his alma mater,
but the lion’s share of his philanthropy comes our way.
He says, “the resources I have won’t make much difference
at Princeton. I can make a hell of a difference at Washington
College.”
Second, he is a friend and mentor, an intensely likeable and
trustworthy companion who is always just a phone call away.
Whether it’s John Toll, Finn Caspersen or the newest board
member on the line, Griswold always answers the call. It is
imperative, he says, that a new generation of philanthropists
step forward. And it is imperative that the next president be
as successful at fundraising as John Toll has been.
“It was Dr. Toll’s credibility and genuineness that
made him so successful at it,” he says. “And he
has the connections. He knows people, and people respond to
him.
“During the last campaign, Douglass Cater talked about
putting Washington College into higher orbit. With this campaign,
John Toll has lifted it even higher, and we are poised for truly
great things. Now we have to go to Mars, instead of the moon.”
Marcia Landskroener is the senior writer for Washington
College.
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