McKay School of Education > News > Bonnie Taylor
“Kind of like A Christmas Carol”: Bonnie Taylor, Director of Major Gifts
While living in the metropolitan Washington D.C. area as a young, recently graduated BYU student, Bonnie Taylor, now the associate director of major gifts at the McKay School, noticed that strength and happiness showed in those who took responsibility for themselves, and even more happiness in those who used their responsibility to help others in the community.
“So I came up with a philosophy, a guiding philosophy. I wanted to help foster responsibility in people,” Taylor reported. So she decided to go forward with a master’s degree in social work at the Catholic University of America in D.C., keeping that philosophy in mind.
To pay for college, Taylor was hired to raise money to build a new law school at Catholic University, her first time working with fundraising responsibilities. She enjoyed the work so much that she stayed with it after graduation for six more years until she returned to Provo, Utah where she began working with LDS Philanthropies. With this organization, Taylor found the job that finally fit her original philosophy of helping people use personal responsibility to help others.
Meeting with alumni and friends to help them understand how they can give to BYU is inspiring to Taylor. One of her favorite aspects of her job is seeing the switch turn on in people’s faces when they finally realize, “I can do something.” Taylor observes time and time again the fire that sparks in people who finally “get philanthropy.”
“It’s kind of like A Christmas Carol,” she relates. “Scrooge spent his whole life withholding and withholding until finally something clicked in him and he couldn’t sleep because he was so excited. He had to go out and buy presents and give. Scrooge finally understood philanthropy.”
As she meets with people to explain how they can give to BYU, Taylor notices that many people want to give or do something, but they don’t know how. “My role is to show them how.”
As the associate director of major gifts (http://education.byu.edu/giving/) assigned to the McKay School of Education by LDS Philanthropies, Taylor works directly under the Presiding Bishopric of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “It definitely feels like a calling,” she expressed. “There is much prayer involved and I even dress like a missionary.”
Bonnie Taylor served a mission for the LDS church in Geneva, Switzerland where she learned French. She enjoys slightly unusual hobbies such as running half-marathons, participating in triathlons, pruning trees (using what she explained as an espalier technique), compiling and preserving family histories in pictures and movies, and spending time with her family.
2 September 2009