African American Giving
Presenters:
Nelson Bowman III
Nelson Bowman, III is the director of development at Prairie View A&M University. As the chief development officer, he is responsible for managing major gift prospects, donor stewardship initiatives and the University’s internal school-based fundraising program. Most recently, he oversaw the successful completion of the University’s first capital campaign of $30 million.
Bowman has presented on the topic of fundraising at Black colleges and universities at several major conferences. He is also the co-author of a new book, Unearthing Promise and Potential: Our Nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and two forthcoming books, Historically Black College and University Fundraising: An All Campus Approach and Understanding, Cultivating, and Engaging College Alumni of Color.
A native of Houston, Bowman joined Prairie View A&M in 2005, following a fifteen-year career in corporate management. He completed his formal development training at the Center on Philanthropy and in 2006, he received a Certificate in Fundraising Management.
The Morehouse graduate earned a B.A. in Business Management and is currently pursuing a Masters Degree. He a member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund’s, National Alumni Council.
Marybeth Gasman
After 10 years in college and university administration, Dr. Gasman received a Ph.D. in higher education from Indiana University in 2000. She came to Penn as an assistant professor in 2003. She received the Association for the Study of Higher Education’s Promising Scholar/Early Career Award given in honor of a scholar’s body of scholarship in 2006. In 2008, Dr. Gasman was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure and also won the Penn Excellence in Teaching Award. In 2011, she was promoted to Full Professor.
Dr. Gasman is an historian of higher education. Her work explores issues pertaining to philanthropy and historically black colleges, black leadership, contemporary fundraising issues at black colleges, and African-American giving. Dr. Gasman’s most recent book is Envisioning Black Colleges: A History of the United Negro College Fund (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). She has also written Supporting Alma Mater: Successful Strategies for Securing Funds from Black College Alumni (with Sibby Anderson Thompkins) (CASE Books, 2003), and (with Katherine Sedgwick) Uplifting a People: African American Philanthropy and Education (Peter Lang, 2005).
In addition to these works, Dr. Gasman is the editor (with Benjamin Baez and Caroline Sotello Turner) of Understanding Minority Serving Institutions (SUNY Press, 2008) and Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Triumphs, Troubles, and Taboos (Palgrave Press, 2009) with Christopher Tudico.
Dr. Gasman has also published many peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Teachers College Record, the Journal of Higher Education, the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Researcher, the History of Education Quarterly, the History of Higher Education Annual, and the International Journal of Educational Advancement.
In addition to her research, Dr. Gasman has worked with several institutions interested in reaching out to their African American alumni. These colleges and universities include Howard University, Bennett College, Cheney University, Philander Smith College, Stanford University, Prairie View A & M University, Georgia State University, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Gasman’s research on Historically Black Colleges has been cited in various media venues, including New York Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, National Public Radio, Inside Higher Education, U.S. News and World Report, and CNN.