Susan Lambert (front row, left) poses with a group of donors she recently took on a mission trip to Glenmary’s missions in Eastern Kentucky.

Featured prominently on the shelves in planned giving officer Susan Lambert’s office are two large photo albums. She loves to pull them out and show her visitors the snapshots of the Glenmary missions she’s visited. The photo albums also travel with her as she visits donors throughout the United States. She uses the photos, and the stories connected to the photos, to link Glenmary missions and missioners to the donors.

“I decide which missions to visit depending on what I need to know to tell Glenmary’s story to our donors,” Susan says. That “need to know” takes Susan from Glenmary headquarters in Cincinnati to Mission Land, U.S.A., several times a year.

Susan has been a Glenmary coworker for over 30 years. She worked in the donor services department until the late 1990s when she became a planned giving associate. Father Dominic Duggins, Glenmary’s director of development, recognized her commitment to Glenmary and her outgoing approach in relating to donors. So he asked her to consider becoming Glenmary’s planned giving officer.

“I told him I didn’t have professional training,” Susan remembers, “but he said I had the ‘people’ skills for the job and that Glenmary could get me the training!”

Her people skills are still in place and she obtained the necessary professional development. And she remains committed to continuing to learn. She talks with Glenmary donors about bequests, annuities and charitable trusts—gifts that are important because they help Glenmary to project income and plan for the future.

Just as Susan visits Glenmary missions to learn about the mission and the region, she also regularly visits donors—both in the Cincinnati area and in many parts of the country.

Those visits, she says, are the favorite part of her job. During a donor visit, she shares information about how Glenmary missions and missioners are working in the U.S. home missions and answers any questions donors have about Glenmary or planned giving.

“It’s nice when a person can put a face with an organization and I think once that connection is made, the donors feel more comfortable calling me with questions,” she says. “I use the phone a lot!”

People respond to Susan’s open, fun-loving personality, so much so that she establishes personal relationships with many donors and the donors with her. “Sometimes people call to ask me about annuities or bequests,” she says, “but sometimes they call to tell me about something completely unrelated. A few weeks ago, a lady called to tell me that she had gone to The Masters in Augusta, Ga., and took a picture of Tiger Woods!”

As she learns more about the people she visits, Susan is able to connect them with aspects of Glenmary in which they might have a particular interest. For example, if a donor’s son served as a volunteer through the Group Volunteer Program at the Glenmary Farm in Vanceburg, Ky., Susan will make sure to keep that donor up-to-date with the latest news from the Farm and the Vanceburg area.

She also introduces donors to the men in Glenmary formation, via a handout that contains profiles and photographs of the 11 men in various formation stages. She asks that the donors keep these men in prayer. “The students really appreciate the extra prayers from the donors,” Susan says.

Over the past two years, Susan has also gotten into the tour business. Always looking for ways to connect donors more directly to the missions, she has organized and led two mission trips for donors to visit missions in Eastern Kentucky for the past two years. She says the trips have gone so well in the past that she thinks of them now as annual events.

In the space of only two days, she is able to take donors to Glenmary missions in West Liberty and Grayson, Ky., and also to visit the Glenmary Farm in Lewis County. All three destinations are less than 100 miles south of Glenmary’s Headquarters in Cincinnati.

Participants on these tours are able to glimpse life in a mission county and experience, through presentations, two models of parish leadership. The West Liberty mission is led by a resident pastor and the Grayson mission is led by a pastoral coordinator. Joe Grosek, the volunteer coordinator for the Glenmary Farm, gives donors a tour of the Farm, offering them a snapshot of the mission immersion experience that over 500 high school and college volunteers take part in each year.

“When they visit these missions and the Farm, donors get a good picture of how the gifts they give Glenmary are being used,” Susan says.

As much as she enjoys helping donors learn about the areas Glenmary serves, she also enjoys traveling and learning about the cultures present in the cities where donors live. “When I visit people in their homes, they learn about Glenmary and I learn about their lives and the area they live in,” she says. “I think I’d like to see every corner of the world!”

The next corner of the world she will visit is New England in autumn. She has scheduled visits with over a dozen Glenmary supporters, including a few who make gifts through the Boost-A-Month Club. “I love BAMers,” Susan says. “They’re some of Glenmary’s most loyal donors!”

She has new photos to share with the folks she will visit in autumn, including ones from the April mission trip she led to Eastern Kentucky.

“I really love my job and have been blessed to meet so many really wonderful people over the years who so generously support Glenmary’s work,” she says.

This article originally appeared in the June 2007 Boost-A-Month Club Newsletter