Lisa Gibert, CEO of Clark College Foundation, is being honored as one of the nation’s top fundraising leaders.
Gibert is the 2018 recipient of the Award for Leadership in Institutionally Related Foundations, presented by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).
The council typically honors one leader from a foundation that supports a two-year college and one official at a foundation linked to a four-year college, Gibert said.
“There probably are 1,600 community college foundations in the country,” Gibert said after Friday’s announcement.
The selection committee cited the growth Gibert has overseen at Clark College Foundation. It topped $100 million in managed assets in 2018, an impressive milestone at the community college level, according to a news release.
Gibert came to the foundation in 1998 as its chief financial officer and took over as president and CEO in 2005. This year, the job title was simplified to CEO, she said.
Tim Leavitt, former Vancouver mayor and a foundation board member, measured Gibert’s impact over the wider philanthropic landscape. The foundation “has flowered into one of the most important sources of nonprofit funding in the area and the entire state,” he said.
“A recent review of foundations lists Clark College Foundation as one of the top 30 foundations in the state of Washington — a truly remarkable standing considering Washington serves as home base for some of the largest and most transformative foundations in the country,” Leavitt said in the news release.
Gibert, meanwhile, said that “I’ve been really lucky, to be associated with an institution so fabulous, and to have been here for 20 years.
“It’s not just institutional; it’s been personal,” she said. During challenging times, “they’ve been there for me.”
Since 1973, the foundation “has given more than $60 million in capital, faculty, academic program, technology, scholarship and research support” to the school, President Robert Knight said.
“In 2017, the foundation and the college together handed out nearly $2 million in scholarships, awards and other student financial support. As a result, our students graduate with significantly lower tuition debt levels than the national average.”
Gibert will receive the award in April at the international CASE conference in Miami. She will be joined by Tiffani Shaw, executive vice president of the Center for Advancement at the University of Iowa, representing outstanding leadership for four-year colleges and universities.
