New La Salle president has made much of his career as a university fundraiser

Decades ago when Daniel J. Allen was a young fundraiser at Loras College, his alma mater in Iowa, he called a donor to ask if he would consider increasing his gift that year from $250 to $1,000.

The donor readily agreed: “I bet that was the easiest call you had all day.” Allen wasn’t done. He asked if he could visit the donor in person to hand him a gift receipt and thank him. That relationship grew into a $25,000 gift the next time, then a $250,000 gift, and finally, the donor joined the trustees board of the Catholic college and gave $1 million, Allen recalled.

“It’s about making the effort to be present,” he said. “The gratitude I needed to share had to happen in person.”

» READ MORE: La Salle University president leaving for Ohio job

Now, Allen, 53, senior vice president for university advancement at DePaul University in Chicago, will be making that effort on behalf of La Salle University in Philadelphia, where he will become president in April, La Salle announced Tuesday. Allen was not on campus for the announcement but plans to visit in the next couple weeks.

He replaces Colleen M. Hanycz, who left La Salle in June to become president of Xavier University in Cincinnati. Timothy O’Shaughnessy has been serving as interim president of the Catholic college, with 4,624 undergraduate and graduate students.

Allen, an Illinois native and Catholic who has worked in Catholic education most of his career, has spent the last seven years at DePaul, with more than 22,000 students. He previously worked for four years at Lewis University, also in Illinois, another Lasallian institution emphasizing service, social justice and community, and the University of Chicago’s public policy school.

He’s never been a college president, but his more than two decades in college fundraising was among the chief attributes that caught the attention of La Salle, which has struggled with enrollment and finances in recent years and like many universities lost enrollment and cut staff during the pandemic.

“We recognize that one of the pieces of the puzzle that allows a La Salle University to flourish is to be able to raise capital that allows you to fund the operations of the school,” said William W. Matthews, a 1990 alumnus and trustees board chair. “That has to be part of the calculus for any university, but certainly for the one that I care about.”

» READ MORE: About 100 employees at La Salle University face layoffs or salary cuts

In 2015, freshman enrollment at La Salle plummeted 18% and some staff were laid off as the school faced a $12 million deficit in its $132 million budget. La Salle was restructured under Hanycz, including a tuition reset and marketing campaign. Still, the university this year has close to 1,000 fewer full-time equivalent undergraduates than it did five years ago, according to financial documents. And since 2018-19, the university has shown three straight years of declining revenue and three straight years of losses, though the loss narrowed to under $200,000 in fiscal 2021, the documents show.

Allen said during an interview that the strain La Salle has faced is no surprise and that he took the job “with my eyes wide open.” He will focus on finding new revenue through fundraising and forming partnerships, he said.

He also will need to search for a provost and business school dean, giving him ability early on to shape some of his leadership team.

Isabelle Pope, 21, a senior from Alaska and student body president, said she hopes Allen will consider pay for students in leadership positions, which would make the posts more accessible to students who have to work to help pay for school. She liked him when she met him last month, she said.

“I thought he was attentive, kind, a really great listener,” said Pope, a communication sciences and disorders major.

» READ MORE: La Salle lays off staff in wake of shortfall

Matthews, a corporate lawyer, cited Allen’s successful fundraising during a pandemic. DePaul launched a $60 million campaign for student scholarships and support and raised more than $93 million in 2021.

During a podcast last April, Allen said his team kept a “hyper” focus on students and how they were impacted.

“We are serving students who need us now more than they ever needed us,” he said. “The message was if we don’t raise as much as we did last year, it sure as hell isn’t going to be because we didn’t try.”

Matthews said the selection team also liked that Allen had experience working at a complex institution like DePaul, the nation’s largest Catholic university, also in an urban environment.

“Dan certainly brings a unique set of experiences that is what we need at La Salle right now,” said Swee-Lim Chia, associate professor of marketing and faculty senate chair, who noted that Allen is committed to faculty governance and growth and has worked with faculty to raise money for academics and extracurriculars.

Allen’s doctoral work at Loyola University in Chicago focused on how universities can better serve students from underrepresented groups, an area he said he has continued to focus on. More than 40% of La Salle’s undergraduates are students of color with more than one-third eligible for federal Pell grants and more than one-quarter the first in their family to attend college.

“He’s a strong advocate for those on the margin and those in need of access to higher education,” said Jim Collins, president of Loras, who hired and promoted Allen and has been a long-time friend.

Allen grew up in Joliet playing basketball and got his bachelor’s in English literature. Eying a career as a college basketball coach, he got a master’s in physical education with an emphasis on athletic administration. But when he interviewed for a job in a small town and learned about the travel it would require, he thought again. He was about to get married.

“Here, folks like to go to the rodeo on the weekends,” the interviewer told him. “I thought, oh, this isn’t going to work. My wife is going to be without her partner for weeks on end and going to the rodeo.”

He took a job as an admissions officer at Loras instead.

An avid runner and fan of performing arts, Allen said he will move to the Philadelphia area. He’s married with three children, the youngest a junior at Xavier, the school that La Salle’s former president now leads.

He said his wife, Theresa, is director of technology for a Catholic school. He’s not so social media savvy. During the podcast, he said he’s on LinkedIn and occasionally follows Twitter, but prefers phone calls.

“I’m chair of the luddite club at DePaul,” he joked.

Staff writer Harold Brubaker contributed to this article.