In Piva We Trust

He's the most important Duke administrator you've probably never heard of.

His name is John Piva, he's been at Duke almost as long as Mike Krzyzewski, and with nearly $2 billion in capital raised with 18 months left in The Campaign for Duke, he may be just as important as the beloved basketball coach to the long-term prosperity and vitality of Duke University.

Piva, who will celebrate 20 years in Durham next January, is the senior vice president for alumni affairs and development.

Development, in the world of higher education, is a code word for fundraising.

And Piva, in the world of development, is king.

"If there's someone you want to be like in this business, John would be on your short list," says Mike Goodwin, Georgetown University's vice president of alumni and university relations, who lists Duke's development network among the nation's top three or four. He adds that when Georgetown began its $1 billion campaign, the first person he brought in to talk to his staff was none other than Piva.

Across campus, perhaps the most remarkable thing about Piva is what people do not say about him. There is no public second-guessing, no signs of private second-guessing, but plenty of effusive praise for the $2 billion man, who is labeled unassuming, candid, funny, smart, witty, friendly, humble.

"John Piva is quite simply the best fund-raiser I've ever met--and I've met quite a few," President Nan Keohane wrote in an e-mail. "He is articulate, thoughtful, strategically savvy.... Many people have been important to the campaign's success, but I have no doubt that the most essential of all is John Piva."

True to character, Piva politely declined an interview request for this article, pointing to his long-standing media policy. Instead, he suggested that a member of his staff would be more interesting to profile.

Although many administrators are more than willing to share credit with the campaign's architect, Piva remains just as averse to publicity today as he did when he began sketching the blueprint for the campaign back in 1995. At the time, trustees were eyeing $1 billion as an unofficial goal. By the fall of 1998, when President Nan Keohane announced the campaign, the "quiet phase" had already amassed $684 million and the unofficial goal was raised by $500 million before it became official.

In 1999, with the economy humming right along, administrators and trustees, on Piva's advice, raised the campaign goal yet again to $2 billion. The campaign eclipsed the $1.5 billion mark last summer and as of mid-July this year, had raised $1.84 billion. Both the School of Law and the Pratt School of Engineering have raised their individual goals. Indeed, some top University administrators whisper they will be disappointed if the campaign doesn't achieve a final total of $2.5 billion or more.

But if Duke officials initially underestimated the amount they could raise, today they certainly aren't underestimating Piva.

"He has an amazing way with people," says Peter Nicholas, Trinity '64, trustee and co-chair of the campaign. "He must have a black book unlike anyone else's, second only to [former campaign chair] Joel Fleishman's. He inspires confidence."

Piva, who holds a bachelor's degree from Georgetown and has done graduate work at both The Johns Hopkins University and Harvard University, began his development career at Johns Hopkins, where he coordinated the school of public health's fundraising efforts.

"The legend of John Piva is still well in existence at Johns Hopkins and so we like to take a little credit for his success and in turn, Duke's," says Robert Lindgren, Johns Hopkins' vice president for development and alumni relations.

From there he moved to the University of Chicago, where he served as director of development starting in 1972 and was promoted to associate vice president in 1976. After Piva arrived at Duke, Chicago, which publically launched its own $2 billion initiative last spring, tried to pry its one-time development guru back to the Windy City to jump-start their campaign.

"One of the best days for us as a University was when John decided to turn down an attractive offer to run a campaign at... Chicago, in order to stay at Duke," Keohane notes. "In doing so, he committed himself firmly and lastingly to Duke."

Duke, meanwhile, has a firmly and lastingly entrenched development system largely due to Piva's efforts.

The first modern Duke campaign, the "Fifth Decade Campaign" of the 1960s, was set for a 10-year run and raised all of its $102 million goal within six years. But the "Epoch Campaign," which ran from 1973-77, raised only $136 million of its $172 million goal. The last campaign, which had a $400 million goal, raised $565 million, and got underway in 1984, as Piva was first settling in at Duke.

Nicholas says the 1980s campaign was wrought with confusion. In that campaign--which had limited organization and structure--miscommunication and lack of coordination rocked the campaign as multiple schools descended upon each possible donor looking to improve their own bottom lines, unsupervised by a central development team.

"The first campaign was a bit of a free-for-all," Nicholas says. "People went after whomever they viewed the best target to be for their particular need, be it law, business, arts and sciences or whatever." This time around, however, Piva established early on the ground rules for the campaign. "We don't have the left and right hands not knowing what the other were doing. That's been absolutely fundamental to its success."

In his second campaign, Piva has learned from the lessons of his early days at Duke, when the campaign was limited to Duke's traditional donors and close friends and associates of then-President Terry Sanford. The central development office's database is a finely tuned alumni outreach machine.

"[Without Piva,] I don't know if we would have succeeded in the same and happy manner in which we have," says Harold "Spike" Yoh, chair of the Board of Trustees. "It's been like WD-40 all over the place. Everything fits together, the animosities are limited."

Consistency, in tone, in manner and in personality, is the personal characteristic to which peers credit Piva's success. Other development chiefs say Piva's staff, assembled over time, is second to none. Keohane notes that unlike most major campaigns, Piva's development team has remained intact throughout the entire campaign. "Usually," she notes, "there is significant turnover as people are picked off by other campaigns or get restless or irritated by something."

Steven Rum, vice chancellor for development and alumni affairs for the Medical Center, says he considers Piva his mentor. Although the Medical Center's $550 million goal is the largest of the individual campaigns' goals, Rum says the Medical Center's fundraising infrastructure was in need of major work when he arrived and that he has patterned his own strategic plan after Piva's.

"He's kind of the Cal Ripken [of Duke]," Rum says. "He performs every day and he's got a great winning streak."

Yet, the real key to Piva's and Duke Development's success may lie just as much in its academic designated hitters as Duke's grand-slam behind-the-scenes fundraisers. Piva has masterminded the use of academic officers in the fundraising process--an aspect Goodwin says is remarkable in that not every school has deans so fully engaged. Although fundraising detracts from a dean's planning and day-to-day functions, academic officers provide the ideas that development can match with donors.

"I don't think it's an accident they're getting these big gifts," Goodwin says. "They have a rich donor profile, but so do a lot of other places.... Development people across the country will say, 'We don't have any shortage of megadonors. What we have is a shortage of megagift ideas.' That's not a problem at Duke. They have the ideas."

Lindgren says Piva's great skill is that he was working on that concept when using deans in fundraising was still a relatively new phenomenon. Piva has mobilized Duke's academic leadership to a degree that would have been unheard of at Duke even a decade ago. Although Keohane's travels across the nation and even the globe are well documented--she spends more time working for the campaign than any other single initiative--other officers, such as Pratt School of Engineering Dean Kristina Johnson, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences William Chafe and Provost Peter Lange are also among the University's top fundraisers.

"They have all developed an enthusiasm for fundraising, not in the abstract, but in a very personal way," Nicholas says. "Peter Lange's one of our most able fundraisers. Who would have thought that years ago? He's not only good at it, but he enjoys it."

That kind of involvement has also led to less friction in the current capital campaign. Wesley Brown, the Divinity School's associate dean for external relations, says Piva manages and shares donors very appropriately and that each professional school at Duke respects him to make the right kind of access decisions, so that donors get the most bang for their gift--and presumably, Duke gets the most out of each gift.

With the campaign's finish line in sight and indications Keohane may leave the presidency after the campaign, there is no word yet on what Piva will do once the campaign is over--and whether it will even be at Duke.

"Quite honestly, I don't know [his plans]. I have no clue," Shepard says. "Maybe John will become a ski instructor at Whistler. I don't know. And if he decides to do that he deserves it."