Eileen Heisman wasn’t thrilled with her new job in the nonprofit sector. After working in the fast-paced world of politics, she found her first few weeks as a nonprofit fundraiser slow and—well—boring.

That changed when a particular envelope landed on her desk; she opened it to find a check for $650,000. “It was an ‘aha!’ moment,” she recalls. “I said to myself, ‘This is a lot of money!’ Then and there, I decided I was going to try to understand how this work happens.”

2Gifted NewsflashShe began by spending the good part of a year learning everything she could about how big gifts come about and what prompts people to give, developing an understanding of the process and the people skills involved in the philanthropy of big gifts.

After a few years honing her skills in the field, Heisman, in 1998, became president of the newly created National Philanthropic Trust (NPT), a nonprofit that helps donors, foundations and financial institutions realize philanthropic goals. She transformed the NPT into the largest independent provider of donor-advised funds in the United States; it has raised more than $4 billion in contributions to date and made more than 90,000 grants totaling $2 billion to charities in 57 countries.

“You have to be creative and practical: you can’t just think of ideas for the sake of ideas; you also have to be able to put them into practice,” says Heisman (DC’76) of the lessons she learned during her time at Carnegie Mellon. “And that’s a lot of my job today, thinking of things creatively and then putting them into practice.”

Heisman has been named the 2014 Outstanding Fundraising Professional by the Association of Fundraising Professionals. She is also one of only approximately 100 fundraisers in the world to achieve the Advanced Certified Fundraising Executive credential.

Janet Jay (DC’07)