Posted on: Friday, February 22, 2002

UH names chief fund-raiser

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

Sloane: Trinity fund-raising went up 500%

Elizabeth "Betsy" Sloane, who increased corporate and foundation giving by more than 500 percent as a chief fund-raiser at Trinity College under Evan Dobelle, will now do the same work for the University of Hawai'i.

Sloane, 51, was expected to be named president of the UH Foundation this morning, after a three-month search to replace former president Pat McFadden, who resigned in November.

Sloane was one of three finalists, all of whom were from the Mainland.

"The University of Hawai'i is lucky to get her," said Brodie Remington, former vice president of development at Trinity who worked with Sloane from 1996 to 1999.

At Trinity, "we had very explicit goals and targets and she exceeded them by a wide margin each year," Remington said by phone from the University of Maryland, where he is vice president of university relations.

Sloane is married to J.R.W. "Wick" Sloane, who was named chief financial officer of the university in November as one of UH President Dobelle's first major appointments.

Sloane's fund-raising successes at Trinity included a $5 million grant from the Kellogg Foundation that for Trinity was "huge," said Remington.

It signaled a whole new path for the college, he said, and one that would connect it to the community in new ways. That grant helped lay the groundwork for financing the "learning corridor" to replace a downtown ghetto and reinvigorate the community.

Most recently in Cambridge, Mass., Sloane was part of the private consulting firm, Katapult Inc. whose clients include the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Trinity College and CEOs for Cities.

Sloane had praise for the recent foundation fund-raising campaign that raised $116 million over four years and hopes to take those efforts "to the next level."

"There is a whole international network of people who have had something to do with the university over the years — on the Mainland and on the Pacific Rim — and building partnerships with those organizations and potential donors is going to be very important," she said.

An early priority: raising $150 million for the second phase of the new medical school in Kaka'ako, to be named the Health and Wellness Center.

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.