Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 4, 1993 TAG: 9301040024
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT BLANCHARD STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
TECH'S MAN WITH THE PLAN
WHEN VIRGINIA TECH needed to raise $17 million to keep its athletic program going, it turned to Mike Carroll to do the asking. Three years later, the response has been overwhelmingly positive.Mike Carroll knows, arranges, listens, remembers and never dithers to ask for other people's money.
The other people - Virginia Tech people - haven't spurned him.
Three years ago, Tech shoved off on a $17 million fund-raising journey to nourish its athletic program. The weather was recessionary and rough, and the vital supplies were Tech supporters who traditionally hollered but didn't pay.
The campaign formally docked Dec. 31 with a treasure chest of more than $17 million donated by more than 10,000 people, and 2,100 more annual contributors aboard than when it started.
The only obvious barnacles: State government red tape and evolving blueprints have put some of the wished-for $7.3 million in capital projects on hold, and the more than $8.3 million targeted for scholarships will buy less now because of rapid tuition increases. That, in part, has led to Tech's athletic department dropping two sports - men's and women's swimming - to add one, women's soccer.
In January of 1990, campaign chairman Joe Thomas Sr. said the "Second Century Campaign" would "determine the future of Virginia Tech athletics." Its success largely depended on the 38-year-old Carroll - the 1990 national fund-raiser of the year - who got help from his eight-person Virginia Tech Athletic Fund office, a 40-person campaign staff and hordes of volunteers.
Campaign workers and others praised Carroll's organization and professionalism, doubtlessly learned at the hands of his father, Warren, who was North Carolina State's top athletic fund-raiser for 18 years.
How structured is Carroll?
"He organized our wedding like a capital campaign, with charts and graphs," said Carroll's wife of four months, Victoria.
But Carroll's methods at Tech didn't mimic his dad's.
"He could virtually preach to people to get them to give money," said Carroll, who zings himself as uncharismatic.
Carroll was systematic. "Every `ask' has a plan," Tech athletic director Dave Braine said. Carroll relied on thick notebooks and thorough presentations. Those on the "Major Gifts Committee," for example, got a 10-page outline of how to go about their business.
Advice ranged from asking for as much as possible - it's more likely to be flattering than insulting - to drilling home that contributions, including securities and real estate, equaled tax benefits.
The campaign was formally announced after it already had raised $5.2 million, including a kickoff $1 million note from Tech benefactors Robert Pamplin Sr. and Jr. But even at the end, big gifts came in. During an interview for this story, Carroll accepted a $30,000 gift from a Lynchburg man he'd been courting for three years.
"The thing that has been so good about it to me," Carroll said, "is that so many people have given what may be their ultimate gift to Virginia Tech. It was really that important to them."
The campaign received 143 gifts of $30,000 or more, Carroll said, including 16 of $100,000 or more.
How did Carroll close a deal?
"You can't be afraid to ask," said Roanoke developer Dave Saunders, one of Carroll's close friends. "Mike's a guy like that. And there are lots of people who are afraid to say no."
Carroll and his co-workers were armed. They had a list of about 500 big-money prospects when the drive started and scoured them all, and would meet monthly with campaign workers, tracking progress on about 120 top prospects.
They had giving histories of Tech alumni, Dun & Bradstreet "financial thumbnails" of possible big givers and books listing the richest people in the U.S., and quizzed a prospect's friends and associates.
Some of it was intuitive. Someone whose office bristled with vacation pictures or, for example, golf outings, probably had a lot of money. Someone without children probably did, too.
"The best tool you can have is your ears," Carroll said. "They'll tell you why they want to give."
And Carroll wouldn't butt in. He's a conversation chameleon whom Saunders said "can talk about anything from coal to bubble gum." He knows the stock market and world affairs. His preferred authors, for example, vary from the staid intellectual William Bennett to the irreverent P.J. O'Rourke.
Those who worked with Carroll say his businesslike approach was appreciated by the businessmen he mostly dealt with. The former collegiate soccer player ("for one year," he says self-mockingly) can be prim at times and doesn't have much "locker-room" jocularity. A football players' reunion can leave him speechless.
"Sometimes, it's better not to have that emotional attachment," Carroll said.
Thomas said Carroll could be sitting between a $1,000 contributor and a coal miner and talk to each without missing a beat. "It's a knack a lot of people don't have."
Carroll's glibness may have its roots in North Carolina, where he worked in Democratic politicians' campaigns for two years in the late 1970s after graduating from N.C. State.
These days his politics run conservative, and you might figure the former set-up man would chat up a prospect with policy talk.
Only reluctantly, and then with the balance of a Wallenda.
"I don't bring it up," Carroll said. "You can converse with them, but you don't go to one side or the other.
"You've got to have deference to be in this business. Maybe I can do that. I like to hear about other peoples' lives and what they're doing. That's always worked well for me. I don't know that through charisma and charm I would be able to convince people to do something. The best way is if people like me."
Words alone don't win Carroll friends and their money. A positive approach - "He doesn't say, `We need this money or we're going to hell," Saunders said - a legendary memory for names and his appearance help. More than one campaign worker said Carroll, whose auburn hair and boyish face make him look closer to 30 than to 40, "comes off good" to prospects.
Victoria says Carroll believes deeply in his mission. But he's no mercenary. Several associates noted his genuine interest in and concern for the people whose money Tech wants.
"He's not going to try to squeeze every penny out of every person just to make himself look good," Braine said.
The key is making himself look responsible. Saunders, a veteran political fund-raiser, said, "When you give money to Mike Carroll, you ain't wasting it."
Carroll said that trust was helped when Tech built its new tennis center last year - a tangible result of the campaign.
The fund drive has been ahead of schedule since it started, Thomas said, but that doesn't mean every day has been heaven for Carroll. Victoria said there was at least one night when Carroll was distraught over a development in the campaign that later turned out fine.
And not every response has been positive. For all the big gifts the campaign has gotten, Carroll can quickly name the smallest: Twenty-nine cents. Somebody returned a stamped envelope Tech had sent with the message, "Save your stamp. I don't want to contribute."
"I admire them for going to the time and trouble," Carroll said dryly.
For the last four months of the drive, Carroll has had some personal worries. Victoria, a former news reporter on WSLS (Channel 10) in Roanoke, has worked for a TV station in Birmingham, Ala. since February of 1991.
They got married last August in San Diego, but Carroll says they see each other perhaps once every three weeks.
Victoria's career may determine whether Carroll remains at Tech, where he reorganized the fund-raising office in 1988 and installed a "Hokie Representative" program borrowed from Clemson to boost the number of annual contributors.
Enrollment in the VTAF has gone from 6,311 in 1988-89 to 8,947 today. It took the Hokies 34 years before they raised more than $1 million in a year for athletics, and they'd raised more than $2 million only once through 1987. Annual giving passed $4 million last year.
Carroll said he has turned down fund-raising jobs at Vanderbilt and Maryland in the past year. Victoria didn't rule out the couple making Blacksburg their home.
That probably would please those who realize Tech's athletic future depends on money. Just give Carroll a goal and let him go to work.
"Somebody told me one time, not being complimentary, that they didn't know whether I had a lot of vision," Carroll said. "I really don't mind that. Vision is just a term people throw around when they don't want to work very hard. I look at it as, I had a mission. It was pretty simple to me. I'm not a charismatic kind of person that can relay my vision to the masses, and everybody will follow . I'm a lot better at putting together notebooks."
Nor does Carroll believe that completing the most ambitious fund-raising drive for athletics in Virginia Tech history has exhausted Tech supporters' resources.
"There's always something in the well," he said, "as long as you can make your case."