>> Hi, my name's Ashley Cooper; I am currently the director of corporate
and foundation relations at the USC Dana and David Dornsife of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Okay, so there's no real typical day as a development officer.
Working in corporate and foundation relations, every day is different,
which is one of the things I love about my job.
I work internally with constituents at the university from faculty members, administrators
and staff to try to identify priorities for fundraising and to develop, you know,
programs and projects that we can put out there in front of potential funders.
And then I also work externally with corporations and foundations obviously
to develop relationships that hopefully will lead, you know, to grants that are funded
in the future so the idea is to develop funding streams for priorities at the Dornsife College.
So right now, we're in the middle of Capital Campaign so we're really pushing, you know,
trying to raise money for endowment at the university but in addition to that,
we also have a lot of outstanding projects that we need support for,
as well as scholarships for students.
So, you know, we could be out there, talking with a company about how they can create,
you know, an internship program, as well as provide, you know, scholarship funding
for students, developing, you know, mentoring opportunities.
So it's a win for the students, it helps them get through school,
it's great for the companies 'cause it also links them up with, you know,
the talent that we have here at USC.
You know, occasionally I'll be working with faculty members on, you know,
the research that they're doing their laboratories which as a nonscientist is always
so fascinating because I get to take, you know, what they're doing in a petri dish or, you know,
under the microscope and try to translate that into something
that a lay person could understand and kind of get behind.
I absolutely -- actually my primary job responsibility is interfacing with, you know,
potential donors, as well as current donors that we have so it's everything from, you know,
cold calls, trying to get that initial meeting, introducing them to USC, to USC Dornsife,
letting them know what we're all about to hopefully, you know,
developing that relationship and ideally when the time comes and we identify something
that may be of mutual interest, we can, you know, put a proposal in front of them,
hopefully, you know, they fund it for us and then the work doesn't stop there.
Once we get a grant from a corporation or foundation, a lot of work goes into, you know,
keeping that money here at the university.
So we need to be good stewards of the money that they give us,
make sure that we're spending it appropriately, letting them know about our progress
and the idea is, you know, we finish that grant and we can go back and ask for more.