No wane in Riggin’s passion after stepping down

August 15-21, 2016

By Jay Edwards

Outgoing UALR Alumni Board President Don Riggin said that when he was with the Arthritis Foundation he used to tell his staff they could accomplish anything they set their minds to. Their response was, “But Don, you will never be satisfied.” He laughs long when recalling the memory.

After a two-year term as president, Riggin departs the Alumni Association with total endowment and planned giving in better shape than when he came on as president in 2014. But he is quick to point out that it was a team effort that has gotten them to where they are.

“When I returned the Alumni Association was really taking off. Bob Denman was here as vice-chancellor of development. He saw how important a strong alumni association would be for all types of revenue generation. He put together a great staff in the Alumni Association office. We have grown exponentially since 2003. They completed a 100 million dollar campaign and we’re getting ready to get into another capital campaign. It just shows that this institution, under some great administrations and the great leadership of Bob and the development office, have really put UALR on the map, so to speak.”

That return Riggin speaks of was from Atlanta, where he stepped down after 35 years with the Arthritis Foundation. His roles were many during his tenure there, including those of president and chief executive officer.

“Our plan was always to come back to Arkansas,” he says. “Arkansas is home.”

The son of a preacher, young Don and his family lived all over south Arkansas while he was growing up. He attended 12 schools in 11 years and they were living in DeWitt when he graduated from high school. From there he came to the capital city and Little Rock University.

In the 1950’s, tuition was 15 dollars a semester hour and he was working three jobs to pay for his education. “I realized that if I didn’t pass a course that it would take me 90 hours of work to pay for the next course,” he says. “But it was great. I had some wonderful professors, mentors and advisers here at Little Rock University.” He was voted president of the student body in 1961.

While in college he was a volunteer with the March of Dimes; that was part of his work at LRU, as the chairman of National Teams Against Polio. When he graduated the March of Dimes approached him about coming to work full time. Instead he became the director of education and youth at Asbury United Methodist Church.

In 1965, when the medical director of March of Dimes became CEO of the Arthritis Foundation, Riggin was hired and worked for the Foundation as executive director in Arkansas, a position he held for 20 years; the last seven of which were over seven southwest states and 15 chapters.

In 1990, when he became CEO, they were raising somewhere in the neighborhood of $56 million annually. When he retired in 2003 that number was $130 million a year.

On returning home he was recruited by the UALR Alumni Association.

“I came back to what was an entirely different campus than when I was here earlier.” That would have been 1994, when he was recognized with the Distinguished Alumni Award.

Riggin says that when they volunteered him to become president of the Alumni Association, he jumped at the chance.

“They had everything in place. They had a great professional staff; a group of people, I think, that make up the finest staff of any higher education organization in the U.S. We have a great development department. They are very visionary. So it was set to go when I came in.”

The challenge however was having enough money for students. “We said we were here to provide scholarships to people who need them. The problem was we just weren’t providing very many.”

“So we set out to grow the income, both through planned gifts and annual gifts; to grow the number as well as the quality of the scholarships. One thing that happened was that the staff and some of our great board members instituted the switch from paper applications to electronic. We were online, where it was easier for people to see what was available. But we still needed more money.”

He remembers his time at the Arthritis Foundation, when they would review the stacks of grant applications to decide who got funded and who didn’t.

“My thought was always, and still is, what if the answer to eradicating one of the types of arthritis lie in the very next proposal that we had not been able to fund, or the one after that?”

It’s the same question he asks himself and donators today regarding scholarship applicants.

“I think it is incumbent on the Alumni Association to figure out how we can grow the revenue stream, either through endowments or through annual giving, to fund all those scholarships for those students who need them, and who will use them properly.”

Two years ago the leadership of the Alumni Association and the staff took Riggin’s concern to heart and since that time they have seen good growth in members of the Association and double the number of lifetime members.

He says it comes from the alumni talking about the benefits they have received as a result of graduating from UALR.

“We have to pay it forward, and I can say in no uncertain terms, the education I got here helped me immensely in my career.

“We have to focus on the planned gifts and that is very easy to do. People will say, ‘But I don’t have those kind of assets.’ But they do. I have a life insurance policy that I bought to pay for my kid’s college if something happened to me. They don’t need it anymore, so I made UALR the beneficiary.”

“Another way you can contribute is through a gift annuity. There are any number of things.”

“If people could just sit in on some of these scholarship interviews. One I remember was a single mother who was a teacher. She was trying to get day care set up for her child, among all the other things she was dealing with. She even had to bring her child to the interview. There are so many people out there who can be anything they want to be with an education. We have to help them get there.”

“I will continue, even though I’m not on the board anymore, to let people know I’m passionate about UALR and about funding scholarships for these kids. It’s what we need to do.”

There are probably some folks in Atlanta who wouldn’t be surprised to hear their former boss is not yet satisfied.