From Secretary To Development Chief

Most public colleges and universities didn't run multimillion-dollar fund-raising campaigns in 1974, and most secretaries didn't become university vice presidents.

But that year Marilyn Batt Dunn, who had been a secretary for the University of Washington Alumni Association, was asked to come to the fledgling development office on the UW campus to help raise private donations.

And this year Dunn, as the university's newly named vice president for development, guided the UW over the top in an effort to raise $250 million for endowments, scholarships and other needs the state cannot satisfy. With eight months left in the campaign, there are $252.2 million in donations or pledges.

Dunn has an unlikely background for someone who plays with that kind of money. She was raised in Billings, Mont. No one in her family had a college degree until she earned one. While working and raising a family, she took classes at the UW, one or two at a time. In 1981, she received a bachelor's degree.

UW President William Gerberding says he promoted Dunn to head the development office in 1983 because "She was good. It was what you'd call a high-risk, high-potential appointment. But she just knows how to work with high-powered people, doing everything from making the calls to putting the arm on somebody."

Steve Camp, now vice president of Unico Properties, was Dunn's boss in the UW development office then. He says that when the university began to look across the country for his replacement, "I told them to look no further than Marilyn. She's very smart, she has a high energy level and she's very persuasive."

Dunn is part of a national task force that looks into ethical issues of fund-raising. There are two things donors can't expect in return for their money, she says: "There are no cutting of deals, no honorary degree that immediately precedes or follows the big gift. And we don't count any gift in the campaign if it got somebody a better seat at the football game."