July 15, 2011
Williams announces personnel moves
Mark Carter’s experience as a collegiate athlete has served him well during his career as a development officer at several major universities.
Carter was recently promoted to become Vanderbilt’s Associate Director of Student Athletics, Executive Director of the National Commodore Club and Athletics Development. It’s a big title for a big job, although he sees it as much more than that.
“This is a challenge but it’s also a very big opportunity,” he says. “Our mission is clear: we are to give our administration and coaches the resources they need to attract the finest student-athletes in the nation and compete in the nation’s best athletic conference.”
Carter is competitive, befitting of a former catcher whose role it was to be the hub of a baseball team’s defense. His job description back on the diamond was to be sure his teammates were in proper position for each batter, understood their assignment, to call for the right pitch at the right time and to work with a staff of pitchers that would greatly influence the outcome of the game. It’s no place for the faint-hearted.
The University of Memphis graduate has been at Vanderbilt since March of 2010 and in his new role it hasn’t taken him long to identify priorities and immediate goals.
“Over the past 15 years or so, the number of our donors and their composite giving has stayed relatively the same,” he notes. “During that time, many of our peer schools have grown rapidly in both areas so our goal must be not to grow by small amounts, but rather to push both our annual membership and our giving total in larger increments. We must do this to accomplish our mission.”
It’s that kind of fire and enthusiasm that made Carter the logical choice a year ago when he was lured to Vanderbilt from Duke, where his last role was as the Director of Major Gifts for Athletics. While in Durham, he was part of the most successful six-year period in the Blue Devil’s athletic history.
The soft-spoken Carter knows that like baseball, achieving goals requires a coordinated team effort.
“We have one of the smallest development staffs among the BCS institutions,” he says, “but we have an extremely good team, both inside our development office and throughout McGugin Center and campus. I am really looking forward to working with my colleagues.”
Like any successful professional, Carter has had his share of excellent mentors. They include Scott Rabenold, a development executive at Memphis, two former Duke associates — Jack Winters and Tom Coffman — and John Currie, now the Director of Athletics at Kansas State but a development officer when Carter worked at the University of Tennessee for one year.
These men and others taught Carter that development work has to become personal, that fund-raising and friend-raising need to be intertwined.
“Philanthropy is not for everyone and being a sports fan is not for everyone,” Carter notes. “But when you can link the two it can become very exciting. It doesn’t matter how many zeros are on the check, if the match is a good one to someone’s passion, the giving part usually takes care of itself.”
Carter understands some things require time and he has the persistence for the long haul.
He keeps a thick binder on his desk – “my Book of Nos” as he calls it — as a reminder of how many rejection letters he received years ago when he was seeking to break into athletic fund-raising. He credits his baseball experience with giving him the perseverance to continue chasing his dream.
He had gotten his first taste of life outside the competitor’s uniform when chronic back problems forced him to hang up his catcher’s mask.
“I went to R.C. Johnson (the Memphis athletic director) and asked him if I could volunteer or work for peanuts to gain experience. He gave me a shot and it was an eye-opening experience. I got a chance to see that development was one of the biggest pieces of his job and realized it was an area where I could eventually make a difference.”
Vanderbilt coaches, administrators and even the student-athletes – whether they realize it or not – will be counting on Carter and his colleagues to make that difference in the months and years to come. There is another opportunity for this old baseball catcher to rally the team toward yet another victory.