The Daily Orange hires business manager, fundraising manager

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Chris Tobin wants The Daily Orange’s fundraising to more closely reflect what donors value. Instead of getting a free bumper sticker when you contribute, he said people would rather feel like part of The DO team.

Tobin, the fundraising manager, along with business manager Chris Nucerino, joined The DO over the summer. Both hold part-time roles within the organization.

“I think the kind of fundraising that works best is ‘we’re going to earn your philanthropy and your vote of confidence on our ideas,'” Tobin said.

In January, Nucerino began building his own financial consulting business, but said he had extra time on his hands and wanted to do something meaningful. Chris Tobin is also in the process of starting his own consulting business, Rootstock, with a friend of his. But as he grows his customer base, he said he has the ability to do more.

“I have enough … free time where I feel like I can still contribute to a worthwhile organization,” Tobin said.

The new hires are aimed at creating a more sustainable future for The Daily Orange, said Beth Fritzinger, vice president of The DO’s Board of Directors. The board concluded that the organization needed more leadership for both fundraising and business management, roles now filled by Tobin and Nucerino.

Over the past decade, The DO has slowly moved toward fundraising as a form of revenue. SU student Haley Robertson, who previously served as the paper’s editor her freshman year and fundraising coordinator her senior year, said that even in recent years the attention at The DO fundraising has soared.

“Before I was involved in fundraising at the Daily Orange, it existed only within management responsibilities, and fundraising campaigns were tied to specific special projects,” Robertson said.

Previously, Nucerino and Tobin’s roles took the form of a single title, CEO. Mike Dooling, who left the organization last summer, was the last person to hold the role.

Robertson now works as a development associate with The Ground Truth Project, Report for America’s parent company, doing work similar to her role as The DO’s 2021 fundraising coordinator.

Stephen Dockery, chairman of the board of directors, wrote to The DO in an email that he expects fundraising to become “an established pillar of our revenue stream” within a year or two. Tobin said he is excited to get to work helping The DO increase its fundraising.

“My role is really to help execute the systems and the practices, but also to build some new strategies and a bigger culture where philanthropy and alumni engagement is there to help the OD thrive, succeed and grow,” Tobin said. “This is my job.”

Both Tobin and Nucerino said their first few weeks with the organization have been spent understanding both its systems and its culture.

Tobin said he wants to understand specifically what’s “under the hood” of The DO, find out what fundraising efforts have been successful in the past and how the newspaper operates. He also said he wants to help identify the message of The DO’s fundraising efforts.

Like Tobin, Nucerino also wants to examine the business. Her first year at The DO involves observing and learning from both the students who work at the company and its board of directors. For now, Nucerino wants to support.

Nucerino has been working with local YMCAs for nearly 30 years. For the past six years, he has served as CEO of the Auburn and Skaneateles YMCAs. Working at the YMCA, Nucerino said she enjoyed working with the typical college age group, both in programming and employment.

At The DO, he considers his work to be based on trust.

“(It’s about) building that trust in the community and with the students and with the school and with the board,” Nucerino said, “making sure that we’re doing everything we need to do as good stewards of the revenue that’s given to us they arrive.” in, expenses and, of course, donations”.

Dockery wrote that The DO has “dated” both Tobin and Nucerino.

“They have decades of experience in their fields, with top-tier organizations in the higher education and nonprofit space,” he said.