Arts Center Picks Chief to Bring in Donations

The county’s largest arts institution has appointed a new chief fund-raiser, filling a post that had been vacant for two years.

J. Terry Jones, 54, was named Monday as vice president of development at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, effective Sept. 1.

Jones, an Irvine resident, has been the top fund-raising executive at Pitzer College in Claremont since 1992 and has extensive experience in university settings, including UC Irvine (1989-92) and UC Santa Cruz (1986-89).

He also has been on the Irvine Barclay Theatre board for seven years, and “was instrumental in securing the Barclay gift” of $1 million to name the theater, said Irvine Barclay President Douglas Rankin.

Jones said the center has signed him to a two-year contract at a starting salary of $148,000.

“We’re sending an important message with Terry’s appointment,” said center President Jerry E. Mandel, who also worked at UCI raising money, but three years after Jones went to Pitzer. “The fundamental message is that we are changing the entire culture of fund-raising here.”

Mandel said he expects Jones to generate 20% more in annual contributions within two years--about an additional $1 million--for the center’s operating budget. The money would be designated for specific programming such as the center’s costly dance series.

Until now, Mandel said, “the center has done traditional arts fund-raising. That means you go out and find as much money as you can to keep the operation going. It’s episodic. You run as fast as you can to get through the year.

“But with Terry we’re bringing in a stable process. We’ll start to focus on two things: endowment-building and programmatic fund-raising,” Mandel said. “The center has been doing that, but now it will be much more focused. The other thing Terry brings is his experience with capital campaigns.”

Because the center plans to build a second hall during the next decade, he added, “someone with that kind of experience is a big plus.”

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Jones managed UCI’s first comprehensive capital campaign, raising about $110 million largely for its graduate schools. At UC Santa Cruz, Jones said, he doubled gift revenue and found donors for its first three endowed chairs.

Acknowledging that he “has a lot to learn” in arts funding, Jones said in a telephone interview that he has “a number of transferable skills” from academic fund-raising. In addition to being a vice president of Pitzer College, for example, he also was secretary of the board of trustees, which meant coordinating board members’ duties in all areas, collectively and individually, but especially in fund-raising.

“If it were not for the strength of the center’s board and what I perceive to be Jerry’s vision,” he said, “I think that transfer would be much more difficult than I anticipate. When I was at UCI, I worked with many members of the [center] board. Those folks know me, and that will make the transition comfortable and challenging at the same time.”

The center hired Los Angeles-based Korn/Ferry International, the world’s largest executive search firm, to do a national search for the vice president of development. Neither the center nor Korn/Ferry would disclose its fee. A search fee for a top executive often equals the first year’s salary, experts say.

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Korn/Ferry also conducted a nationwide search for Mandel’s post. Mandel signed a five-year contract starting at $200,000 a year. He was on the center board when Korn/Ferry found him.

Mandel said he and Jones first met nearly a decade ago at meeting of fund-raisers in Boston but added that they are no more than professional acquaintances.

Said Jones: “I’ve known Jerry as a fellow professional for the last three or four years. When he joined the UCI staff after I had departed he asked me to come and speak with him candidly about who was there and what my sense was of [UCI’s] direction.”

Jones, a native of Ann Arbor, Mich., received a bachelor’s in English and a master’s in television and film production from the University of Michigan.