Why We Soar: From student caller to consistent giver

Without Lyric Fields ’18, student philanthropy at the University of Dayton would look very different. It’s likely that without her student job in fundraising, her own philanthropy would look very different, too. 

Fields, who is now senior director of fundraising consultants at CCS Fundraising in Washington, D.C., is among the donors who have helped UD meet its campaign goal for the Front Porch Society, recognizing consistent giving. 

As a student, she helped cultivate those consistent givers. 

The summer before her senior year, Fields became an intern with the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. She helped UD rebuild a student philanthropy program that hadn’t existed in decades.

“There had been a rule that we don't ask students for dollars and we don't ask alumni zero to five years out, which sounds good in theory, but in reality, it's not great for pipeline building,” Fields said. 

While working the internship, Fields also became a student caller, asking alumni for donations over the phone. 

“I was getting to see both sides of actually making the call and raising the dollars, and then going into the office the next day and getting to see it on the back end,” Fields said. 

Fields held focus groups and started developing a strategic plan. After the internship, UD hired her to continue her work through her senior year. She presented her plan, which included hosting a “tag day” that marked university locations with signage of how donors funded them.

It gave her a real-life example of how learning and leading can have tangible impacts — including on dollars raised to help support student success. It also helped her chart her path forward. 

During her senior year, Fields helped gain 223 pledges and raised just over $125,000 for the university.

“It helped me expand the way in which I can serve and help others in a day-to-day career,” she said.

Fields took the position at CCS Fundraising last November so she could work more on the strategic side of fundraising — the same way she thought about the evolution of a student donor to an alumni donor.

Fields, while still an entrepreneurship major, donated $10 to the business school in 2019. Over the years she’s given annually to experiential learning in entrepreneurship and the UD Fund. Fields’ recent monthly gifts to the Mona Guerrier Fallen Endowed Scholarship for Multi-Ethnic Education and Engagement Center will soon total $10,000.

Fields said her donations have helped her think more critically about her career with CCS Fundraising:

“If you give, you understand the motion that somebody might go through making the decision to part with dollars.”

Fields continued, “It’s very important for me to be a person that participates in the thing that I’m asking others to do.”

This July, Fields will become a five-year member of the Front Porch Society — and she has bigger goals. She dreams of endowing her own scholarship someday and being able to give more of her time through volunteer work; she previously served a term on UD’s board of trustees as a young alumni trustee and served on UD’s campaign cabinet.  

“Don’t discount people who’ve been giving consistently just because they’re small amounts,” Fields said. “I think of myself as that person. I started off small because of where I was at, but that will only get bigger, ideally as my resources grow, and that will only happen with a continued relationship with UD.”

Reflecting on the work she did as a student at UD and the work she continues to do through fundraising, Fields said she takes pride in being a part of a collective impact. 

“Being a part of our group of individuals that have committed to consistently giving to support the university and what it is trying to do is very meaningful,” Fields said. “I’m not in the Front Porch Society by myself. A society can’t exist without lots of other people to help support.”

photo courtesy Lyric Fields