Nine-Man Council Charts Course for Development

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY. DARTMOUTH DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

1F DARTMOUTH should announce today a gift of $14,000,000 each of us would take excited notice of the event, would be fully conscious of its significance and would be filled with curiosity and praise regarding those who brought it about. Probably our reaction to the figures reported elsewhere in this issue showing a lifetime record of gifts by alumni, parents and friends of living Dartmouth classes in the amount of $13,809,000 will not evoke quite such a dramatic response, yet it is m many ways more significant in that it not only measures a past achievement but foreshadows what may happen in the future.

That future possibility has long been a concern of interested alumni who understood that the ability of the College to fulfill its ideals of service would be increasingly related to the financial support it received. Such considerations led the Trustees and Alumni Council to take joint action a few years ago in creating the Dartmouth Development Council as an organization to be responsible for the wise conservation and guidance of this priceless reservoir of support for the College.

At its inception the Council's concern "was necessarily with the fund-raising work of the College, evaluating what was then being done and attempting to evolve a program adequate to meet the future needs of the College. The work was begun under the chairmanship of Sigurd S. Larmon 14 and brought to fruition during the chairmanship of H. Richardson Lane 07 with the announcement of what was called the Dartmouth Plan. This was a broad statement of the policies which would govern the Council's activities. Its main features provided for a major reliance on the Alumni Fund for "living endowment" or current-use money, plus three programs for seeking the capital funds necessary to build a permanent foundation under the progress made possible by the Alumni Fund: the Class Memorial Funds, a Bequest and Estate Planning Program, and a search for individual gifts to endowment and buildings.

The Dartmouth Plan also provided that a constant effort should be made to obtain support from interested individuals who were not alumni, from corporations and from foundations. In this the Council recognized that the alumni had already demonstrated an extraordinary interest and loyalty which would continue, but that it was important that the whole burden should not fall on them when other sources of help were available.

Having established its broad program, the Council's work shifted from planning to execution. At that time there were some 35 men on the Council and a smaller group seemed desirable for the new phase of activity. Accordingly, with the approval of the Trustees and Alumni Council, it undertook a reorganization through which it was reduced in size to nine members. Also, by agreement with the Trustees, it took on a responsibility for assisting that body with planning for the future development of the College. As a result the new, smaller Development Council is currently engaged in supervising current fund-raising for the College and is also cooperating with the regular agencies of the faculty and administration in studying the objectives to be established for the Dartmouth of 1969 when the College will celebrate its Bicentennial.

The magnitude of the opportunities and responsibilities facing the Council should make its membership of great interest to all alumni. As now constituted the Council has three representatives from the general alumni body, a representative of the faculty and one from the Board of Trustees, a non-alumnus, and three ex-officio members: the President of the Alumni Council, the Treasurer of the College and the Secretary of the College.

The three representatives from the general alumni are Thurlow M. Gordon '06, Edwin W. McGowan '17 and Ellwood H. Fisher '21.

Mr. Gordon was elected chairman ot the Council at its reorganization last spring and will fill that position until June 1954- He graduated from Dartmouth a Phi Beta Kappa and led his class in Harvard Law School, graduating there in 1911. For many years he has been a partner in the nation- ally known New York firm of Cahill, Gor- don, Zachry and Reindel, where he has earned an outstanding reputation as a spe- cialist in anti-trust law and trade regula- tion. He has served the College many times professionally in difficult legal work and voluntarily as class agent and bequest chairman.

Mr. McGowan entered the Army in April 1917, and saw action in France until wounded. In 1919 he joined the Wyandotte Worsted Company of Waterville, Maine. He has continued with the company and is now Executive Vice-President. Although he has not held class offices he has long been keenly interested in the affairs of the College.

Mr. Fisher is Chairman of the Board of Fisher Bros. Co., a retail grocery chain in Cleveland, Ohio. He is also Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Fenn College in Cleveland as well as being prominent in many civic affairs. During World War II he served in the Army Quartermaster Corps with the rank of Lt. Colonel and received the Legion of Merit for his contribution to the war effort.

The faculty representative is Professor Earl R. Sikes '28h of the Department of Economics. He is a graduate of Trinity College (now Duke University) in the class of 1915. After graduate work at Pennsylvania and a year in the Army he went to Cornell where he served as instructor for two years and started work on his doctorate. He came to Dartmouth in 1922 as an assistant professor, completed his Ph.D. degree in 1926, and became a full professor in 1928.

Member of the Council from the Board of Trustees is Charles J. Zimmerman '23, who was elected an Alumni Member of the Board in 1951. Mr. Zimmerman graduated from Tuck School in 1924 and entered the insurance field where he earned recognition as one of the nation's outstanding salesmen, being so named by Forbes Magazine in 1935. He served as a Captain in the Navy during the last war following which he has been with the Life Insurance Agency Management Association in Hartford, Connecticut, currently serving as its Managing Director. Long active in Dartmouth affairs, he has been president of two local clubs, chairman of the Alumni Fund and an Overseer of Tuck School.

Currently president of the Dartmouth Alumni Council and ex-officio a member of the Development Council is Kenneth M. Henderson '16 of Winnetka, Illinois. Mr. Henderson has just finished a highly successful two-year term as chairman of the Alumni Fund. Since 1919 he has been associated with Ditto, Inc., having worked his way through virtually every job in the organization to become its president.

The Vice-President and Treasurer of the College, John F. Meek '33, and the Secretary of the College, Sidney C. Hayward '26, scarcely need introduction to Dartmouth alumni. Mr. Meek graduated from Yale Law School and after a year of private practice in New York returned to Yale as Assistant Dean of the Law School for four years. He held the rank of Lieutenant in the Navy during the war, following which he returned to private practice and was serving with the Hoover Commission when he accepted his post as Treasurer of the College in 1949.

Mr. Hayward has been in the Dartmouth administration since his graduation in 1926. He started as assistant to President Hopkins and became Secretary of the College in 1930. Dartmouth's leadership in many areas of alumni work is attributable to the imagination and energy he has given through the years.

The non-alumnus position on the Council still remains to be filled, but it is anticipated that an appointment will be made during the first half of 1954.

The Council is served by a full-time staff in Hanover under the direction of Justin A. Stanley '33, Vice-President of the College and liaison between the President and Trustees and the Development Council. Mr. Stanley graduated from Columbia Law School in 1937 and joined the Chicago law firm of Isham, Lincoln & Beale. Except for three years as a Lieutenant in the Navy during the war, he continued with the firm until joining the Dartmouth administration in 1952. His service to Dartmouth covers many fields, the most notable being membership on the Alumni Council, including a term as its president

The Development Council conducts its actual operations primarily through the traditional agencies for such work, the committees of the Alumni Council. The Alumni Fund and Class Gift Committees existed long before the formation of the Development Council and continue to operate those programs in cooperation with the broad policies of the Development Council. The Alumni Council Committee on Bequests and Estate Planning became the agency through which organized bequest work was undertaken in 1951.

At the last meeting of the Alumni Council it was voted, on recommendation of the Development Council, to create two new committees, one on Corporations, Foundations and Special Gifts and the other on Capital Gifts, to be the organizations through which the development program would extend its work into those fields.

When Dartmouth reaches its Bicentennial in 1969-70 and takes inventory of its achievements in all areas, an important part of its most recent progress will be traceable to the wisdom and devotion of the men who have voluntarily served the College on the Development Council, helping to chart its course of greatest service and providing the sinews through which its opportunities may be fully realized.

THURLOW M. GORDON '06, who is president of the Dartmouth Development Council for 1953-54.

KENNETH M. HENDERSON '16, ex-officio member by virtue of being president of the Alumni Council.

CHARLES J. ZIMMERMAN '23, who represents the Dartmouth Board of Trustees on the Council.

EDWIN W. McGOWAN '17, one of three Development Council members from the general alumni.

ELLWOOD H. FISHER '21 is similarly a representative of the general alumni on the Council.