May 10, 2014
Million-dollar man: Joe Brum ’68 rich in fundraising, friendships
By Vicki-Ann Downing
A chance encounter brought Joseph P. Brum ’68 to Providence College.
Fifty years ago, when Brum was senior class president at Durfee High School in Fall River, Mass., Rev. Joseph L. Lennon, O.P. ’40, a longtime PC administrator and a popular radio and television host in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, spoke to his CYO group.
After the talk, Brum thanked Father Lennon, who asked where Brum planned to attend college. Brum said he would follow his sister to Bridgewater State University. Had he considered PC, Father Lennon wanted to know? Brum, a fan of Friars basketball, said he had, but that he couldn’t afford a private school.
“Father Lennon looked over at Father Paul McCarrick, who was the head of the CYO, and said, ‘Paul, if you bring this young man up to my office next week, we’ll talk about this,’” Brum remembered. “Sure enough, we went to Providence the following week, and he ended up offering me a half-tuition scholarship, which really closed the gap. I did the math and I thought, ‘If I work summers, I can really make all this work.’”
Brum did make it work. He studied political science, was a member of the Friars Club and Student Congress, and wrote for The Cowl. He had law school acceptances in hand at commencement when the war in Vietnam intervened and he was drafted. He served a year in the U.S. Air Force, received a medical discharge, and got a job as an insurance underwriter in Boston, but it bored him.
When Brum heard that PC was seeking to hire its first full-time director for alumni affairs, he applied for the job. The search team was headed by David A. Duffy ’61 & ’11Hon., then president of the alumni association and later founder of the advertising firm Duffy & Shanley. Until then, alumni relations was a volunteer effort assisted by a part-time employee.
Brum was hired and went to work for PC in December 1971. Development duties were added to his job in 1979. In 1988, he was appointed vice president for alumni and development, and since 2003, he’s been special assistant to the president for development projects.
He estimates he has raised more than $175 million for the College in that time and solicited about two-thirds of its 458 endowed funds, which include 405 scholarships. He headed the Providence 2000 capital campaign, which raised $70.4 million, far surpassing its goal of $50 million.
And he’s done it with a humble approach and a personal touch that have led College President Rev. Brian J. Shanley, O.P. ’80 to call him “the greatest friend-maker in the history of Providence College.”
When he started work, Brum met alumni from the 1920s and 1930s — meaning he has known graduates from every decade of the College’s history.
“Their stories were the most fascinating, because you literally had people who came from very poor backgrounds,” said Brum. “They had families that had immigrated to the U.S., and college was just not in their plans. But maybe a parish priest or a neighbor or somebody took them under their wing, and Providence was an avenue for them.”
Brum could relate. He immigrated to the United States with his parents from the Azores when he was 2. His father was a cabinetmaker, his mother a housewife. Without Father Lennon’s intervention, he wouldn’t have been part of the PC story, either.
“The College has come a long way, but it never wants to lose that moniker of being a place of opportunity,” said Brum. “That’s part of the mission, that’s part of the school’s soul. It just resonates with donors, and I lived it, so it’s a very easy sell.
“It’s story-telling,” said Brum. “It’s sales, but you’re selling an intangible, and something you believe in deeply, because you’ve experienced it.”
Rev. John S. Peterson, O.P. ’57, chaplain of PC’s National Alumni Association, said that in the days before personal computers, Brum used 3-inch by 5-inch index cards to keep track of alumni. He hand-wrote personal letters that were typed by his secretary.
Travel was modest, too, whether it was to the West Coast, Midwest, or Florida. When Father Peterson’s brother, the late Very Rev. Thomas R. Peterson, O.P. ’51 & ’85Hon., was president from 1971-1985, Brum traveled with him to receptions that were hosted in the homes of alumni. The two would stop at a deli to buy finger rolls, ham, and turkey for the guests and at a liquor store for wine and beer, Father Peterson said.
More recently, he remembers Brum in a hotel with a catered dinner for 50.
“Joe was unchanged from the first to the last. He had come from the 3-by-5 index cards to a very fine hotel, but it was the same person,” Father Peterson said. “Joe has an enormous ability to retain things and people with whom he has had contact. To be in a group of 50, or 75, or 100 people, and plunge into the midst of them and begin calling them by their names, that’s such an invaluable asset.”
Circumstances never rattle Brum, said his longtime friend and classmate, Brian Maher ’68, director of the Long Island Educational Opportunity Center at SUNY Farmingdale.
“We might be going to a big sporting event or a big dinner, an alumni event, and people are running around, or cheering, or wondering, ‘Are the tablecloths the right color?’, but Joe is calm, and we talk privately about family,” said Maher. “In a position where everything is promotion, Joe doesn’t promote himself. That’s where the gift is.”
Through a career that has spanned nearly five decades, Brum “has never said an unkind word about anybody in my presence,” said Maher. “I’ve seen him in some very stressful situations, but he’ll always see the good in people. He might shake his head when a name is mentioned, but he’ll never criticize anybody.”
Brum and his wife, Carolyn, a retired second-grade teacher, have lived in Tiverton, R.I., for 35 years. Their three sons — Jason ’93, Evan ’99, and Aaron ’00 — are alumni, as is Jason’s wife, Maura (Green) Brum ’94. They have three grandchildren.
For almost 50 years, through five presidents and many more deans, professors, and coaches, Brum has been the face of Providence College. At A Night in Black & White, the College’s signature fundraising event held in April at the Boston Marriott Copley Place, he was honored with the Black & White Award for distinguished service to PC and the community, and a scholarship was established in his honor.
“I’ve literally had hundreds of mentors,” Brum said. “They don’t know it. I try to take a little piece of each one and put it in my life. It’s been a great privilege to get to know some of these men and women. It’s broadened my horizons.
“I mean, I was a little kid in a tenement house in Fall River, and because of Providence I’ve gotten to meet people all over the country and all over the world who have gone on to achieve wonderful things but still have their feet firmly planted on the ground — good and gracious people. It rubs off on you.”
