Development
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Connecting with alumni and friends
LLU Dentistry: What are the unique qualifications (including work experience) that you bring to the School of Dentistry?
Dr. Allen: My degree is in chemistry, and the first grant I ever
received was while I was in graduate school. From that point I became
accustomed to the idea that if you receive a gift there is a stewardship
you do in terms of response to that. I’ve not done a lot of grant-writing
over the years, but there has always been the element that you receive
a grant and then have to provide stewardship for it.
That grew to a new level when I was involved with the World Museum of
Natural History at La Sierra, I was soliciting gifts and those gifts were
coming in. We were developing museum partners with people who were supporting
us on a regular basis and we needed them to provide feedback and the stewardship
for those gifts. I continued to work for the museum, continued more and
more development of gifts for the museum and then, three years ago, they
asked me to do it on a full-time basis.
And as a teacher of chemistry I’ve seen a lot of pre-dents and have
contacted a lot of those. Indeed, an alumnae I talked to yesterday attended
La Sierra. I remember her husband very well, and so relationships with
these former students of mine also builds a relationship as I get to see
them again, get up to date.
For the last three years I’ve worked in development full-time for
La Sierra. That seems like a natural progression and has been a very natural
transition in my life.
LLU Dentistry: The people you are meeting with are very interested
in the sciences. So that’s something unique that you as a fund-raiser
can bring to the School—the ability to communicate on many levels.
Dr. Allen: I think there are some wonderful fund-raisers who start
out very young. And I think they do a glorious job. I interact on a professional
level—not exactly dentist to dentist—but as a respected professional
to another highly respected professional. In my previous work at La Sierra
I was primarily working with retired people and routinely in their homes.
And inasmuch as my father was a building contractor I consider that to
be my natural trade. I’ve always enjoyed visiting in nice homes.
LLU Dentistry: What are your goals, looking forward, for the School
for development?
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Dr. Allen: Professionals talk about the next 20 years in the United
States as having the greatest period inter-generational transfer of wealth
the world has seen. Enormous numbers of individuals are reaching retirement
age, seeing their estates mature, with wealth transferred from one generation
to another. And we also have an era when the government wants to take
55 percent of much of our wealth, and through charitable and planned giving,
we can see money diverted into a worthwhile objective.
My work is to contact a small group of people with the biggest potential
for making contributions, to build a relationship with those individuals
that is deep and profound, and to see them become partners with the School.
At that point fund-raising ends and you are simply working together. My
goal is to develop a cohort of significant partners for the School who
will serve us in terms of making major gifts during their lifetime, and/or
through their estates.
Having said that, I would like to emphasize that if we use the words “major
gift,” “major gift” as defined by the institution may have
a particular dollar value. Major gifts as defined by the donor may be
different. The widow in the Bible who gave her mite gave a major gift,
because she gave all she could. And it is to be appreciated, and thanked,
and considered significant, because she did all she could do.
LLU Dentistry: People remember things that happened to them while they
were in school, and that affects how they feel about the School. How do
you handle that?
Dr. Allen: One of the things I do is to spend the maximum amount
of time listening and have the other person do most of the talking. One
of the techniques to get people to talk about their lives is to talk about
when they were in school, about their life, their hobbies, that sort of
thing. There’s no question that when we get them talking about the
School, our goal is to bring back positive memories and to get them to
remember what the institution has done for them.
You don’t have to say, “folks, you owe your life to the School,
your income, and all the rest is due to what a lot of dedicated people
have given you.” But you get them talking about their School, and
what they were doing, and with people the age I visit they certainly can
reflect on what the School has meant to them. People really love to talk
about their favorite teachers.
LLU Dentistry: What excited you about working for the School?
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Dr. Allen: There is an interesting homogeneity about working with
a professional group that has gone through a professional program. My
work is primarily with dentists, but that is not to discount the fact
that we also have dental hygienists, dental assistants. But my focus is
primarily with dentists.
There is an internal working relationship in fund-raising that’s
significant. And especially in the area where you’re looking at professional
gifts and major gifts, and deferred giving.
There is a special relationship between the individual doing that work and the chief operating officer of the organization, in this case, Dean Goodacre. I saw in him someone whose work I could supplement, and enhance through my efforts. By doing the field work, I could enhance his work as a fundraiser/development officer. I sensed a connection that made me feel like we would be working together, and we would be well-teamed together.
The first person [at the School] I talked with was Barbara Bostwick. I
had lunch with her and she was my first contact. And I realized that there
is a team of people here that I would feel very compatible with, and would
be synergistic.
LLU Dentistry: Tell us about your family.
Dr. Allen: I have a wife of more than 38 years, Laurentine. The
pastor who performed the service in Takoma Park, Maryland, was William
Loveless, whose office is across the way in the School. We have a daughter
and son—our daughter, Barbara Herbel, lives in Caldwell, Idaho. She
is married to an engineer with the state highway department. They met
at Walla Walla College, when he was taking engineering. They both earned
their master’s degrees at Washington State (hers is in nutrition).
In the last three years our daughter gave us our first grandchild, Caleb;
and a little more than a year ago our second grandchild, Reuben. My son,
Gregory, a little younger, is in the MD/PhD program here at Loma Linda.
He has finished his PhD, and is now is in his final year of medicine.
He is married to Ramona, who has a doctoral degree in piano performance
from Claremont. She performs in vespers and in local churches, and is
a noted concert pianist. She teaches private students, and teaches at
University of Redlands.
LLU Dentistry: What are your hobbies?
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Dr. Allen: I still have two connections with La Sierra University—I am director of the World Museum of Natural History and I agreed to maintain the Potok website on their server. And I also have another website that I maintain of a personal nature.
The websites I do are written in html, very simple stuff.
I have not taken the time to do the fancy stuff, not yet. A student does
the website for the World Museum of Natural History, but the Potok website
I’ve done entirely on my own, and I maintain a website of poems.
Over the years I have been active in sports. Baseball and basketball in
academy…tennis and badminton in college…golf in graduate school,
biking, hiking/walking during my working years.
Today I play racquetball with a group of men every Tuesday and Thursday
morning at 6:00 (when I am in town).
At the World Museum of Natural History I give overall leadership and administration
to the voluntary organization. My special interest is in the fluorescent
minerals and meteorites. I’m quite active in acquiring meteorites
for the collection.
Oh yes, I am a collector of kaleidoscopes.
LLU Dentistry: Can you recall a defining moment in your life?
Dr. Allen: One of the most defining moments of my life came when
I was about 40. My brother had decided to take a bike trip in Great Britain
and I joined him. We biked through England, Wales, and southern Scotland
for six weeks.
The following summer I invited him to join me for a bicycle trip along
the west coast. We flew to Seattle and rode around the Olympic Peninsula
and down the coast. Day after day I was energized by the sights, sounds,
and smells of the natural surroundings. I still can’t believe the
five-mile bridge crossing of the Columbia River at Astoria. The ride through
the redwoods was a special blessing due to the leisurely pace. But, when
I reached Sausalito I had an epiphany. As I gazed across the bay at the
city of San Francisco, I realized Christ came to save people. While the
natural wonders were refreshing and perhaps a model of a place where people
could best live, nonetheless it was for people that Christ came to the
world. If I was to follow His example and pursue His mission, my life
would be living and working for people. That mission required living in
an urban setting. We all hate living in the urban environment, we are
all tarnished by sin, but our mission is here…with people. I couldn’t
wait to get home and back to work. We raced through Big Sur and the central
coast, so much so that to get the blessing of the trip I returned later
and did a solo ride from Salinas to Ventura.
Editor’s note: Dr. Allen is enjoying meeting with alumni and friends
of the School of Dentistry.
Selections of his poetry and his website featuring Chaim Potok may be
found at these URLs:
http://www.lasierra.edu/~ballen/potok
http://www.lasierra.edu/~ballen/poems
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All rights reserved. Revised February 14, 2001
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