As the new head of UVM’s fundraising efforts, Richard Bundy, vice president for development and alumni relations, acknowledges that the yardstick of success in his field tends to be the bottom line of dollars raised. But a more substantive measure of success, he suggests, is the impact that those dollars have on the institution.

“Philanthropy is much more compelling when we tell the story of the gift’s impact.  How has a particular gift allowed a student to obtain a UVM education, facilitated the recruitment or retention of an outstanding faculty member in the academic community, helped us to renovate a building like the Alumni House project or the Billings Library?  The tangible result of donor support is what motivates giving,” Bundy says.

He joins UVM after nearly eleven years at the Iowa State University Foundation, where he played a key role in an $800 million campaign that has surpassed its goal well ahead of schedule. Looking back on the experience of that campaign, Bundy says it was driven by an institution-wide commitment. “The foundation staff at Iowa State has been working in very close partnership with the deans, department chairs, senior faculty, and key staff to identify fundraising priorities, to execute cultivation plans for top donors, and to engage donors in the life of the campus in a way that has substance,” Bundy says. Building and solidifying those partnerships at UVM will be a top priority at the outset of his work with the university.

Higher education runs deep in Bundy’s blood. His father, Dick Bundy, is a longtime member of the music education faculty at Pennsylvania State University, where he has directed the marching band since 1996. When it came time for O. Richard Bundy, III, to apply to college, he sent out his application to just one school—hometown Penn State. The arc of his career has been immersed with land grants, from his first fundraising job at his alma mater to work as a major gifts officer at Michigan State to Iowa State and now to the University of Vermont.

Getting settled in Burlington in January, Bundy says he’s pleased to be back east, closer to his family in State College. He also appreciates the shift to working for an institution that’s on a smaller, more human scale. Looking ahead, Bundy says he especially welcomes the opportunity to help lead the university at a critical juncture — as it establishes an independent fundraising foundation and begins to lay the groundwork for the third major comprehensive campaign in UVM history.

He is encouraged by his early sense of UVM’s base of support: “In my interview process, I met a number of our alumni and what I heard from them was a deep affinity for the institution and a desire to see it get stronger, to grow, to maintain a very prominent position in American higher education.”

An avid runner since all the way back to seventh grade, Bundy says he takes guidance from the lessons of marathon training as he focuses on the professional challenges ahead. “I see my work as a series of training runs,” Bundy says. “The race is not going to be won this week, this month, even this year. But we need to be thinking about how we build the right base. We need to be able to do an eight-year campaign, and do it right, and get to the finish line ahead of goal — with a little energy left to keep going when the campaign is over.”