2014 Fundraising Professionals of the Year Awards Winners

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

In 2007, Mulvey led MD Anderson to initiate Making Cancer History: The Campaign to Transform Cancer Care, with a philanthropic fundraising goal of $1 billion. The campaign was completed in 2011, a year early, with pledges received from 630,000 donors worldwide.

In 2012, Mulvey was awarded the prestigious Byron Welch Award for Lifetime Achievement in Fundraising from the Association of Fundraising Professionals. He received The Gerry Gunnin Professional Achievement Award as Outstanding Professional in 2002 from the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy — Rockies and Southwest Region, and he was honored as the 1996 Outstanding Fundraising Executive by the Greater Houston Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

"Pat is truly a remarkable leader," says Maureen Carlson, principal at Good Scout. "He not only inspires his team to consistently raise impressive amounts to fight cancer every year, but he has done so while fashioning an environment of sharing, mentoring, entrepreneurism and true collegiality.

"Pat never shies away from the challenges," she writes, "but instead leads his team confidently by example toward remarkable success."

FUNDRAISING STARS (NONPROFIT)

Marcy Bursac,
director of resource development
Connections to Success

Marcy Bursac's work encompasses some of the most important building blocks to successful fundraising. One of the first clues that we were looking at star material was the fact that within a few months of joining the staff at Connections to Success, Bursac led the organization's first-ever staff giving campaign, and as a result, the organization can now share with its funders that it has 100 percent staff giving — a real confidence builder when it comes to deciding which organizations to support.

Bursac also created a major-giving club and was instrumental in getting a resource development team off the ground in the organization's Kansas City region. In addition, she has been instrumental in securing private grant funding — an area that had been less than successful for the organization — and she affordably added six people to the 30-person staff by connecting with the AmeriCorps VISTA program.