In 2023, Laura Child joined The Grainger College of Engineering as the associate director of advancement. With a background in financial planning as well as higher education philanthropy, Laura brings a wide range of experiences to her role as the college’s leader of fundraising, alumni engagement and donor stewardship. Ahead of her 2024/25 trans-continental travels to visit alumni and donors, she shares her philosophy of philanthropy, reflections on her first year at Grainger Engineering and her thoughts about future endeavors.

Tell us about your professional background and what brought you to The Grainger College of Engineering.

I have been in development and advancement for a little more than 12 years; prior to that my background was in financial planning. I've always been comfortable with relationship building. Everything I've done in my career since graduating from college has had something to do with customer service, building rapport or working with people and money management. My foray into fundraising and advancement was a natural fit with the positions I'd held in the past.

Before coming to the University of Illinois, I lived in a small town, Pullman, Washington, for 19 years. I worked for Washington State University in a leadership role for the College of Arts and Sciences. Because my children had grown up and left, it seemed like a really good time to look at other opportunities, and when I learned of the position at Grainger Engineering through one of my WSU colleagues, I decided to throw my hat in the ring. It was a pretty spur of the moment decision. The more I learned about the college and the amazing things that happening here, after the final interview, I went from “Let's just see what happens” to “I really want this job. I want to work with these people, I want to work with this organization.” The rest is history.

How do you describe your philanthropic philosophy?

Something that's very important to me and very important in the work I do is helping people reach their philanthropic goals — discovering what's important to them, why it's important to them, finding a way to make what they want to do come to fruition and then honoring them for their generosity. I want to make sure they see the impact and understand how important and beneficial this is to the people that they're supporting. 

I let the donor set the agenda for what they want to do and then find ways to make that happen within the framework of the college priorities. 

August 2024 was your one-year anniversary at Grainger Engineering. As you reflect on your first twelve months, what challenged or surprised you?

The challenge was just the breadth of the organization —the cutting-edge research and the resources that are available, and there's still so much more that can be done.

During my first nine months I had to MapQuest every building I went to because it’s such a big campus. There’s also a very heavy reliance on acronyms. Early on people would talk about things using an acronym, and I had no idea what it was. I’d write it down and go look it up when I got back to my office.

Grainger Engineering has an extensive alumni base — about 110,000 living alums. How do we, as a team of 11 frontline fundraisers, and an additional 10 alumni engagement and donor stewardship staff, reach that number of people? How do we work efficiently and effectively? That’s probably the challenge and the surprise.

What do you consider the most important accomplishments in your first year?

We had a wonderful year for fundraising. We received an impactful gift of $50 million for the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science. That was a great accomplishment for the college and a testament to the leadership team.

For me, learning the new processes and getting to know the team were key. I also considered different staffing models to find an efficient way to be more productive, allowing me to participate more fully in fundraising and offer some managerial opportunities for long term employees. 

Across the nation, in the advancement profession employee retention is a challenge. Advancement is well known for frequent job changes because often, to take the next step in your career, you have to leave. I really want to create a space where we can keep our excellent talent by giving people opportunities for career development without having to go elsewhere. 

Looking forward, how are you planning to enhance engagement with Grainger Engineering alumni and donors?

This is probably the first year we've fully gotten away from the repercussions of COVID. People are more willing to take meetings and are more interested in networking and coming to events again.

For the fiscal year 2025, I expect we will have more events nationally. We’re trying to create a big event in Chicago, probably in the spring. We are also planning to do a big event in the Bay Area this fall.

The things we’re doing at Grainger Engineering are all-encompassing with AI and quantum and computing and bioengineering, plus our partnerships around the campus with Carle Illinois Med. There's entrepreneurship. There are things we're putting into place to increase the student experience, create a more robust and prepared job pool for employers, to support faculty in their research. There’s just so much going on!

Bringing alumni and donors in to learn about those visions and impacts is just essential. Frontline fundraisers do it on a one-on-one basis, and events do it on more of a group basis. We really need to be good about trying to figure out how we can do it even more, and more robustly.

I think AI is going to be a big part of that in the future. AI is really going to start impacting advancement in how we engage with alumni and donors. AI will help us create a more customized and impactful donor and stewardship experience.

On the whole, public institutions are not very good at creating a culture of philanthropy with their young alumni. We need to change that narrative a little bit. We need to find ways to create a culture of philanthropy while students are still here, like you see at private peer institutions. 

Tell us about the importance of alumni and donors to Grainger Engineering's success.

We have so many amazing alums that, aside from the money portion of Advancement, we can bring in some of these brilliant minds as thought partners, advisors and mentors to our students. As you know, there's a lot you can do with an engineering degree and our alums can really help people think outside of the box.

Also, we need to do everything we can to provide a Grainger engineering education to students who otherwise might not be able to afford it or might not be able to qualify for it immediately out of high school. Through programs such as ARISE, we identify students who may not have the math or the science background that they need to get started with Grainger Engineering, and provide them an opportunity to say, “Yes, I will do this extra work to be able to be a part of this program.” Supporting those types of programs is essential, especially for underrepresented communities.

My vision is that we create the opportunity and the resources to open the possibility for someone with the dream and drive to become a Grainger engineer.

Final thoughts?

Almost daily, there's an element of shock and awe. I'd like to be able to convey that sense of wonder to our alumni base so they can say, “That's my college. That's my university. I'm part of that ecosystem.” I would like to find a way for alums to feel that pride and astonishment that I feel daily.

I'm really grateful for the opportunity to work with Grainger Engineering. My year has gone by exceedingly fast. I've learned so much, and I know there's so much more to learn.