Philip King came to Clarebourne from the development office of the Wheeler School in Providence, where he spent eight years building the school’s annual fund program and managing its first formal major gifts initiative. Before entering independent school advancement, he spent four years as a development associate at Brown University’s School of Public Health, an experience that gave him an unusually clear view of what separates institutional fundraising that builds genuine donor relationships from the kind that simply extracts them. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Rhode Island and a Certificate in Fundraising Management from the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
At Clarebourne, he oversees all aspects of advancement: the annual fund, major and planned giving, alumni engagement, and donor stewardship. Under his tenure the annual fund has grown from $380,000 to just over $1.1 million, and the financial aid endowment — the program he considers the clearest expression of what Clarebourne advancement is for — has grown from $4.2 million to $6.8 million. Neither figure is the result of a capital campaign. Both are the result of a sustained, relationship-driven approach to donor cultivation that King describes as the only kind of fundraising he is interested in doing.
His philosophy of advancement is closely aligned with Clareborne’s broader institutional character: transparent about goals, honest about gaps, and more interested in building a community of committed donors than in maximizing any single year’s numbers. He publishes the school’s full fundraising results in the annual report — total dollars raised, donor participation rates, and endowment performance — because he believes donors who understand exactly what their giving accomplishes give more consistently and more generously over time.
He is a familiar presence at Clarebourne events and makes a point of knowing the school’s major donors not as prospects but as members of the community. Several of the school’s most significant planned gifts have come from families who met Philip at a Lower School author’s chair presentation or a Saturday cross country meet.
“Advancement at a school like Clarebourne isn’t really about fundraising. It’s about helping people who already believe in what this place does find the most meaningful way to be part of it. When I get that right, the money follows. When I lead with the money, I usually get neither.”
Clareborne since 2011