January 23, 2003

Staff profile: Fred Ash

Title and length of service: Development Researcher in the Office of Development. I’ve been in this job since coming to Northwestern in 1976.

photo by Mary Hanlon

What do you do? I help provide information regarding donors, volunteers, gift and volunteer prospects and award nominees, to development staff and other university personnel. The most frequent type of request I receive is for verification of a person’s address or telephone number, when a development officer is in the process of planning a stewardship or solicitation trip. I also write all obituary reports for the department. Additionally, I maintain a database of former Development Department staff. I assist with projects such as the annual nominations for various university awards and for membership on volunteer committees such as the Board of Trustees and the Council of One Hundred. The Development Research Department plays an integral role in the university’s current $1.4 billion fundraising campaign, to be completed Aug. 31.

What is your favorite part of the job? I love the detective work. I enjoy unraveling a merger/acquisition deal to determine who got how much and when. I like to wade through a mass of documents to determine that the subject of an obituary did attend Northwestern if only for three months in 1922.

What is the biggest challenge of your job? Being efficient and managing the huge and constantly shifting mass of information that is available, particularly on the Internet.

Where did you go to school? I have a bachelor’s degree from Lawrence University and a master’s degree from the University of Missouri at Kansas City, both in American History.

What do you do for fun? I love to rent movies and eat junk food with my wife. I do a lot of biking. In fact, I bike to work all year. Every weekend, I go to garage sales in search of antiques, interesting clothes and whatever else catches my eye. I read a lot and play the Appalachian dulcimer. My favorite musicians are Del Shannon, Bob Dylan, the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, Steeleye Span and Procol Harum. I also enjoy tennis and volleyball.

— Marilyn Idelman Soglin