It’s clear from the way she runs the office football pool that Amy-elizabeth Provost has a knack for raising money. That’s especially true when she backs her favorite team, the New England Patriots. So it’s IJ’s good fortune that Amy-e, as we call her, is an integral part of our development team where she serves as Assistant Development Director.

Raising our annual budget of $6.5 million takes a lot of work, much of it behind the scenes here at IJ. A good example of that can be seen in how we find new people to invest significantly in IJ. We seek to build our donor base strategically with both high dollar donors and those who give lesser amounts. That approach has led to a diversified donor base in which no single donor, of the several thousand who provide support each year, provides more than six percent of our budget.

Amy-e’s job is to identify those individuals who have the potential to become significant investors in IJ. And at that she excels. Through careful research, she identifies such prospective donors, and then she decides how best to introduce the person to IJ. Sometimes that means a letter with select enclosures; other times it may mean a phone call from me. Regardless of the approach, Amy-e enables us to personalize it as much as possible.

With her ever-present good cheer and professionalism, Amy-e sets an example for all of us in the office. As a die-hard Yankees fan, she even managed to endure gracefully the torment she received last fall from ecstatic Red Sox fans (including yours truly). Amy-e grew up in Connecticut and attended the University of Maryland. She started at IJ four and a half years ago, and since that time we have established relationships with dozens of new donors. Not bad, even for a Yankees fan.Chip Mellor is IJ’s president and general counsel.