Woods:
Welcome, and welcome to SEMO. All right, so tell us a little bit about your background.
Snodgrass:
A little about my background...I grew up in a small rural community in Kansas named Wathena, Kansas. It was not far from Saint Joseph, Missouri, so I grew up close to the Missouri River. I grew up on a farm for most of my life until I was in junior high, and I'm the youngest of nine kids. I have a wife and son, Jaime and Wyatt. My son is eight years old, and my wife and I have been married for quite some time now and I married way over my head.
Woods:
So what brought you to SEMO?
Snodgrass:
Several reasons. First and foremost, you have to start with the mission and the vision of Southeast Missouri State University. It has a long history. We're going to be celebrating 150 years this year of being in existence, so that's very exciting to be a part of. And then, two, I mentioned that I was the youngest of nine, and there's eight of us still living. And so, Cape Girardeau was actually located very strategically for me. I have a brother in Kansas who actually just visited with me last night. I have three sisters up by St. Joe, Missouri, and brother in Iowa, sister in Michigan and brother in Indiana, and then my wife's two brothers are in Michigan. So this is located very, very strategically for me to be able to still be within driving distance to get to where we’re going.
Woods:
You came to us from Texas, right, so it's a lot closer than….
Snodgrass:
Well, in Texas, a five-hour drive as a short drive in Texas. So, yes, I moved here from West Texas. I was at a wonderful institution, University of Texas Permian Basin, under great leadership with Dr. Woodley. Good things are happening there, but my wife's grandmother passed away a few years ago, and so we saw this as an opportunity to come back to the Midwest.
Woods:
That's great. So, tell us about your office and what kind of things that you're in charge of. I know there’s a lot, so kind of break it down for us.
Snodgrass:
Well since you’re interviewing me, I think I should probably start with KRCU. KRCU is one of the areas that reports up to me with you as the General Manager of the group is so very important to me. We have three different radio stations that we support…it's 88.7 FM, 88.9 FM, and 90.9 FM. I remember those things. So, the radio station reaches many in Southeast Missouri and Illinois, as well, so it does a great service in the area. We have Development. Obviously, we raise money for the University that tries to help advance the mission. Alumni Relations is another area that reports up to me. We have about 80,000 alumni out in the world, so we want to engage them and make sure that we are there for them wherever they're at in the world. And then, we also have the Foundation. So as the Executive Director of the Foundation, we have a lot of resources that we are managing. We have over 900 endowments that we are managing at the Foundation. So many, many things, most of which are scholarships, endowed scholarships. But we have other items for support at the institution that were able to work through. So those are some of the bigger challenges. I hope I didn't miss anything.
Woods:
I think you got it all. One of the things that’s interesting, and you've probably already picked up on this, is that the community is very, very supportive of this University, which helps with the fundraising and everything else, because folks really care about the institution. It’s been around 150 years; I think that speaks to that. What challenges, opportunities do you see? I know you're still getting the lay of the land, but what do you see?
Snodgrass:
Again, Nora [Bouzihay] mentioned, you know, not having challenges, but one of the biggest challenges that I have right now with my staff is having enough staff. Again, I mentioned 80,000 alumni around the world. We need people to be able to visit with them, engage with them and help advance the mission. So that would be the challenge. The opportunity is the same thing that I was just talking about. The opportunity is to engage with alumni and engage with donors and to be present in St. Louis and in the Bootheel, and in Dallas, Texas, and in Chicago. And then we have major pockets of alumni around the U. S. and the world that we want to engage and make sure that they understand that their degree is as strong as it is when they graduated.
Woods:
Eighty thousand is a lot. There's a lot of potential, I think, for connections that maybe we haven't even made yet with that number of people. Do you see a lot of opportunity there?
Snodgrass:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And again, first and foremost is we need to be able to tell our story to the alums because they're the ones that can reach back and help other Redhawks move forward. So, we want our alumni to…we want to be able to share our alumni stories because they are the outcome of our education. We want to make sure that we can tell the stories of all the great alumni that are doing wonderful things in their community, whether that's being a CEO of a company or being a mother or father or a leader in their community.
Woods:
We can't get into all the aspects of fundraising, but it's about relationship building. You need to speak to how important that is, not just…I mean you’ve got to really get to know somebody and that takes time, right?
Snodgrass:
It does.
Woods:
And sometimes that doesn't happen quick enough for some of us, right? How do you how do you navigate that?
Snodgrass:
Just being transparent and being genuine. One of the things about being the youngest of nine is I got to, you know, be humbled by my brothers, and babied by my sisters, and now the roles are reversed. My sisters pick on me, and the brothers take care of me. So, again, I think the key part is just being genuine with who you're visiting with and being transparent with why you're there visiting with them and to hopefully ask them at some point in time to invest in the mission of the University.
Woods:
It’s one of those situations where you might have a conversation with someone, and nothing really happens then. And three, four years down the road, something fantastic happens, and you may not always realize…I’m sure you’ve had the experience where you’ve planted a seed and maybe you didn't really see the fruit come along until years later.
Snodgrass:
Yes.
Woods:
It's very rewarding, though.
Snodgrass:
It is very rewarding. And again, part of what we—as I explained to my colleagues in Advancement and in the Foundation—is our role is to find out what the donor’s passion is and try to match their passion with the needs of institution.
Woods:
How do you measure success?
Snodgrass:
Many different ways. Obviously, at the end of the day, you want to know how much money you brought in the door. But one of the key things for me is measuring how many donors that we have. I mean, how many people are giving to us on a yearly basis? How many new donors do we have? How many repeat donors do we have? We have a lot of repeat donors at the institution. In addition to that, are we able to help the Admissions Office recruit students? Are we able to help the Provost’s Office retain students? And Student Affairs…And, again, that's part of success. We need to be able to document, in some capacity, that we are helping others out, because we're a service entity for the institution and we're there to serve.
Woods:
And there are a lot of great tools to help with fundraising. I know we have one here at the University we use, Blackbaud. But that's one of those tools that's really just…you’ve already taught me some things that I didn't know that it could do. It's an amazing tool that really helps aid in the fundraising process, right?
Snodgrass:
Well, there's an art and a science to fundraising. Part of the science is being able to segment out your population and, again, we want to we want to target our solicitations—the larger solicitations as far as the general solicitations. So, for example, we want to ask our art alumni for art things. And if they played football, we want to ask them for football. If they were on the basketball team, probably for basketball. But if they majored in agriculture, we want to ask them for agriculture. So, it's trying to take the data and being able to use the data to help us tell the story.
Woods:
And that's critical, especially when, as you said, you don't have the staff you’d like to have. The folks that you do have have to work smart. Very critical. So, what's something about Wendell that may surprise us?
Snodgrass:
Hmm…Something about me…One, I love cutting firewood. So, I unfortunately bought a house that does not have a wood fireplace. We have a gas fireplace. But I do love cutting firewood, and I like to golf. But as I tell people, the thing I love to do most is be with my wife and son. And watching him grow is pretty amazing.
Woods:
Family time is important. So, I'll ask you what I asked Nora. If we can go ahead in a time machine and look back on this past year a year from now…. If you look back on the year 2023, what would you look at to say, yes, that was it. Right on, that's exactly what I wanted. What would it be?
Snodgrass:
That structurally within the department that we have the resources that we need to do our job, making sure that we are structured in the appropriate way, making sure that we are able to allocate staff to the needs that we have, making sure that are able to staff KRCU, whether it's the Alumni department, so on and so forth. For me, looking back in a year is have we made an impact on the University in multiple ways. So, are we getting the direct student support that we need? Do we have enough money to cover student emergency fund? And we also have a student food pantry. Making sure that we have enough scholarships to make college attainable for prospective students.
Woods:
We've got about a minute or so left. Do you see any other things that are out there that are possibilities? That there's a seed there that maybe could be more with a little bit of water?
Snodgrass:
I think the key thing is helping alumni to understand how they can help us. One, is they need to give a yearly check. I'd love for them to consider a yearly gift, whether it's $5 or $500. They can help us with internships and job placement. And, I think the biggest thing they can do is help us recruit students, so it'd be great if they could help us recruit a student to come to their alma mater.
Woods:
And sometimes it's just volunteering their time, right? I mean there's always opportunities beyond the writing a check, and we obviously appreciate that, too. But there could be other opportunities for folks to get….
Snodgrass:
And being mentors…there are many different ways that alumni can get engaged.
Woods:
And the idea is to make this experience at this University for the students even more, more valuable.
Snodgrass:
Absolutely.
Woods:
We got about a minute or less. What are your words of wisdom? Any encouragement, I guess, to folks who are listening who maybe have been engaged a little bit with the University? How can they get plugged in more and what can they do to help?
Snodgrass:
I think most importantly is to reach out to us if they if they would like to get engaged. Reach out to us and let us help you find the best avenue for you to support the institution, whether that's financially or through volunteerism or some other avenue.
Woods:
We can even give them a tour of the campus.
Snodgrass:
Absolutely. We can give them a tour of KRCU or whatever that might be.
Woods:
We do give tours of KRCU. Well, Wendell, it's been good visiting with you. And again, we enjoy having here at the University and look forward to keeping the conversation going and looking for great things.
Snodgrass:
Alright, thank you very much.
