NU Foundation Ben

Curtis Bright Author

04/21/2016 Added

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Foundation interview with Ben

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[00:00:00.000]Say your first and last name
[00:00:01.244]and spell it for me.
[00:00:02.429]Benjamin Kriegler.
[00:00:04.252]It's KRIEGLER.
[00:00:08.092]We often get a number of unusual calls
[00:00:10.536]forwarded our way from various places,
[00:00:12.915]front desk, accounting, and other things,
[00:00:15.731]and it's kind of a catch-all in the research
[00:00:18.621]and reporting area to field those kinds of questions.
[00:00:21.479]I think this gentleman had been having a conversation
[00:00:24.168]with Jane Steinbeck in accounting about his pledge.
[00:00:27.793]That might not be correct.
[00:00:29.884]It doesn't matter.
[00:00:31.015]But he had a question about finding an old yearbook,
[00:00:33.255]namely the one from his graduating year, which was 1958.
[00:00:36.508]And so the call came my way, and you never know
[00:00:38.866]quite what you're gonna get, and you say hello,
[00:00:40.999]and he just had a simple request.
[00:00:43.835]He wondered if I knew of anywhere I might get
[00:00:46.593]such a thing, and I said we have a big collection
[00:00:49.714]and I know that the University of Nebraska at Lincoln
[00:00:52.070]archive has the most extensive collection too,
[00:00:54.843]and we talked a little bit about the yearbooks
[00:00:57.073]and the funny things about them.
[00:00:58.972]But I said I don't have one to get for you,
[00:01:01.713]but I want to do some checking,
[00:01:03.601]so let me make sure I can find a good time to call you back
[00:01:06.812]and we'll talk about it, I bet you I can find you one.
[00:01:09.083]So we do research, so it was very easy
[00:01:13.126]to get online and find yearbooks.
[00:01:15.611]Of course, you're usually finding them on eBay
[00:01:17.596]and places like that, and I didn't feel like
[00:01:19.238]I was able to send him there because
[00:01:21.030]he probably wouldn't have had good luck with that.
[00:01:23.046]And you can't ensure the reputability of the seller,
[00:01:26.801]so that's tough too.
[00:01:28.839]So I'm trying to do what will work very easy for him.
[00:01:31.602]So we found a rare book seller, they had a 1958 yearbook,
[00:01:34.599]I connected the two people and made sure to follow up
[00:01:37.467]so I ensured that he got his yearbook,
[00:01:39.868]and he was very happy about it, but humble
[00:01:43.846]and didn't want us to go to so much trouble to help him,
[00:01:46.790]and it was a fun opportunity to thank him for his giving,
[00:01:49.297]which he assured me was very modest,
[00:01:51.323]and I told him it didn't matter.
[00:01:55.453]It felt good to be able to help someone out in that kind
[00:01:57.479]of way, and I don't care how the call came my way,
[00:02:00.529]but it needed to stop there so that we could do something.
[00:02:03.398]You need to have a conduit sometimes.
[00:02:07.692]It's a good point, but to kick that person around
[00:02:12.123]any further would just kind of drive them crazy,
[00:02:14.770]'cause I try and put myself in their shoes,
[00:02:16.913]and none of us like doing the keypad thing
[00:02:19.579]where you don't even talk to a person until
[00:02:21.467]17 or 18 key punches, and I assume that people here,
[00:02:25.489]particular our donors, no matter what level
[00:02:27.345]they're at, feel the same way,
[00:02:29.222]and what did it cost me, half an hour,
[00:02:32.263]45 minutes to do something like that?
[00:02:34.459]Which probably was worth more to him than a half an hour,
[00:02:36.614]45 minutes of my time, so easy decision.
[00:02:39.804]How many times do you think
[00:02:41.894]you spoke with him over the course of that time?
[00:02:44.966]Three.
[00:02:46.407]I wanted to make sure that he could get in touch
[00:02:49.126]with a dealer and also that if email was okay,
[00:02:54.375]the communication routes, and then I wanted to follow up
[00:02:56.859]to make sure it went okay, 'cause I would feel really bad
[00:02:58.715]if I sent him to some fly-by old yearbook dealer
[00:03:01.979]and he didn't ever get his yearbook and he was out
[00:03:04.646]$70 or whatever it cost to acquire one.
[00:03:07.654]So it was important to me.
[00:03:10.215]Once you take on a task like that,
[00:03:11.633]it works out better if you just see it through.
[00:03:15.131]What's funny is that people sometimes, I think,
[00:03:19.686]misunderstand it, they gird themselves for someone
[00:03:21.905]who's really angry, 'cause there'll be people that
[00:03:23.686]have concerns about the way their name is formatted
[00:03:26.396]or how it appeared, and I've always found,
[00:03:29.830]and this is a phone-athon thing, that it's better
[00:03:32.059]to just confront it and completely hear them out,
[00:03:34.577]'cause they sometimes just need someone to vent to,
[00:03:37.158]and then the venting's over, and it's done with,
[00:03:39.067]and you can actually almost,
[00:03:40.679]I don't think I've ever failed to do this,
[00:03:42.139]unless it was Husker related,
[00:03:45.559]but to turn the conversation around
[00:03:48.268]and start talking about good things again,
[00:03:50.380]like their gift history or the good things they've done
[00:03:52.515]for us or how it made them feel, and I think
[00:03:55.660]that opportunity is there almost 98% of the time.
[00:04:00.464]If you employ the buck stops here philosophy
[00:04:02.780]on the phone calls, then you almost always end up
[00:04:04.754]with a situation that is slightly beyond your control
[00:04:08.082]or understanding, and you have to also know
[00:04:10.824]if it needs to be forwarded to someone else.
[00:04:13.106]But if it doesn't, and you can be that concierge
[00:04:16.316]for that person, then you just need to know
[00:04:20.114]who to reach out to and you kind of need to know
[00:04:21.981]how this place functions, but even if you don't,
[00:04:24.338]it's two phone calls away to figure that thing out
[00:04:26.333]to help that person, and if you make a transition
[00:04:28.871]from yourself to someone else, you have to tell them,
[00:04:32.098]I'm going to do this, I'm going to put you with this other
[00:04:35.075]person, I'm gonna follow up back with you
[00:04:36.759]to make sure that it all worked out,
[00:04:38.243]and I remember doing that a few times.
[00:04:40.013]Did everything get resolved?
[00:04:41.314]Was it good? Yes.
[00:04:42.615]I don't think I can think of a time where
[00:04:44.300]the person didn't really appreciate that,
[00:04:46.307]'cause it's so rare these days that that happens,
[00:04:49.155]and it all comes from my own experiences and kind of
[00:04:53.090]the golden rule thing about how I would like
[00:04:54.861]to be treated in a similar situation.

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