Many Jesuit students know of the Advancement Office, located at the end of the B Hallway. However, many students don’t understand the impact of the Office of Advancement on nearly every resource that Jesuit students benefit from.
The Advancement Office is an umbrella term and within the office there are different pieces and components that contribute to the overall work of the office. The Advancement Office is made up of about fifteen staff members, and these people work each and every day to raise money to make sure that finance is not a barrier for students looking to come to Jesuit.
Tasked with overseeing the day-to-day operations of this extremely critical department is Mr. B.J. Antes, the Vice President of Advancement and Executive Director of the Jesuit Foundation. Within the Advancement Office, Mr. Antes oversees the many departments, which consists of the Alumni Department, the Endowment, the Development Office, the Communications Team, and Advancement Services.
The Alumni Department plays a big role in the Jesuit community, seeking to keep all alumni involved within the Jesuit community through various events. According to Mr. Antes, there are roughly 11,200 Jesuit Dallas alumni. Tasked with keeping all of these alumni together and connected with Jesuit is the Director of Alumni Relations, Mr. Sean McMullen ’96.
As Mr. McMullen stated, the department keeps the alumni involved through “reunions, affinity groups, and the alumni board.” McMullen added that the Alumni Department “tries to create as many portals where alums can tie in with their specific levels of enjoyment.” The Alumni Department connects alumni through events like the Magis Golf Tournament, Homecoming, the Alumni Family day, and various other events. Mr. McMullen does a phenomenal job keeping the alumni together and overseeing the committees who select alumni for the annual Distinguished Alumnus and the Blue and Gold Sports Hall of Fame inductees.
Another section of the Advancement Office is The Jesuit Foundation. The Foundation houses the endowment which is the primary source of support for students’ tuition assistance. Operating as a separate 501©3, the Foundation works to manage and grow the endowment through 
investment gains and fundraising with the goal of distributing as much money as possible annually in support of the school’s mission, currently manifested in the forms of student tuition assistance and faculty program support.
A department that people don’t realize is within Advancement that helps bring good publicity to Jesuit each day is the Communications team. At the head of the team is the Director of Communications, Mr. James Kramer. The team produces publications for Jesuit parents and alumni such as The Jesuit Today as well as the e-newsletter Jesuit Now that goes out to the Jesuit community each week. Another difficult task that the communications team fulfills is the branding around campus, such as the Jesuit signs along Inwood, and the handling of all Jesuit social media accounts as well as the top-of-the-line Jesuit athletics webpage.
Along with all the previous departments within advancement, Advancement Services helps the department immensely, doing all the dirty work to make things convenient for donors. The Advancement Services team works to handle all of the logging of donations, sort what the donations are intended for, and provide proper acknowledgment of the donors by providing the receipt for tax breaks on donations. The Advancement Services team keeps good records of the donations in order to properly recognize the donors, a duty that the Advancement Office highly values.
And the final, but arguably best-known department is the Development Office. With Mr. Dave Anderson as the director of Development and Mrs. Jessica Maddern as the Senior Director, the Development team works extremely hard raising money for Jesuit and hosting the major events each year such as the Celebration Auction, the Magis Golf Tournament, Adopt-a-Family, and any other fundraiser around Jesuit.
According to Mrs. Maddern, “The primary way [the Development Office] raises money is through face-to-face solicitations.” When asked if the Development office decides where the money actually goes to, Maddern responded by stating that “the designations for the funds are already made by the school before development goes out and actually raises the money.”
As Mr. Antes explained, the Development Office is faced with the task of asking people “to be generous with their time, talent, and treasure.” While this is a time-consuming task, it massively helps Jesuit. The treasure aspect means that the office asks people to financially support Jesuit in order to help the wellbeing of all Jesuit students by further improving their education and improving facilities.
By time, Mr. Antes is talking about a large number of people who offer their time to help Jesuit in various ways. Each year, the Development Office recruits over a thousand volunteers to help with different events such as the Magis golf tournament, homecoming, the auction and many other things.
Finally, the talent piece that the Development Office seeks from people in the Jesuit community is extremely important. The Development Office finds talented people within the community who have expertise in certain things through both education and experience. They find people who can add value to committees such as the investment committee, which advises Mr. Antes and President Mike Earsing on where to invest Endowment dollars as well as the Real Estate committee for the school. The office of Advancement relies on parents and alumni to add a great amount of value to these areas.
Other than the Endowment, the Advancement Office as a whole raises money in 4 different ways: through annual appeals, major gift fundraising, event fundraising, and planned giving. Through these four ways, the Advancement team raises massive amounts of money that help everybody in the Jesuit community.
Annual appeals require a lot of volunteers and time, but this method raises a great deal of money each year. Annual appeals consist of fundraisers such as the Challenge Drive, and the alumni-driven “phonathon.” The annual planned giving, according to Mr. Antes, is “what sustains [Jesuit] each year.” Antes added that “it’s very important that we ask people to be generous in a gift, year after year to help the school do the things it needs to do operationally.”
As well as annual appeals, money is raised through major gift fundraising, which enables Jesuit to do big things in a short period of time. Major gift fundraising is done through campaigns, like the “We Are Jesuit” campaign a few years back. They are typically big marketing campa
igns that ask for big gifts over a certain period of time, usually about three years. Major gift fundraising, as stated above, allows Jesuit to make massive changes to things such as facilities, and significantly improves Jesuit.
The third way that Jesuit raises money is the most commonly known way, event fundraising. Event fundraising consists of the MAGIS golf tournament, the Celebration Auction, homecoming and many other important Jesuit events. Mr. Antes explained that while event fundraising may be the most costly of the four, it is “also very important to improve the community.” These fundraisers bring the Jesuit community together and are often the most enjoyable for parents, alumni, and all other donors and participants.
The final way that money is raised is through planned giving. Planned giving is somewhat difficult for the Advancement Office to seek out because it requires a conversation at the right time. Planned giving is where Jesuit asks a small group of people who are passionate about Jesuit to include Jesuit in their estate plan. While only very few people are asked to do so, many are extremely willing to include Jesuit, as they want to improve it in every way possible.
While much of the work of the Advancement Office has been explained, words truly cannot describe their impact on the Jesuit community. The team of fifteen works tirelessly day in and day out to raise money in order to improve Jesuit and aid the students and faculty in any way possible. From top to bottom, this is an extremely well-run operation and they add great value to all things Jesuit. As Jesuit students, we owe the Advancement Department a lot of credit and they are extremely deserving of recognition.
