During the past decade Bill graduated from the AFP Executive Leadership Institute, AFP Executive Management Institute and the AFP Faculty Training Academy. He has also made time to publish more than two hundred articles on fundraising and non-profit management topics. He wrote an award-winning fundraising textbook called Fundraising, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (and how to tell the difference) that is used in many of the forty classes he teaches. In 1992, Bill achieved the Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) designation. Bill has presented at numerous conferences and is on the faculty of the Arizona State University Center for Nonprofit Leadership and Management where he teaches a comprehensive course on fundraising methods and strategies. Enthusiastic, committed, unselfish, these words help describe Bill J. Harrison, CFRE, the 2005, AFP Greater Arizona Chapter Outstanding Fundraising Executive. |
For more than thirty years, Bill has helped charitable organizations raise philanthropic dollars. Bill began his fundraising career in 1973 when he helped a Missouri school for mentally challenged adults raise money for a new residential cottage. Since that time he has coordinated the fundraising efforts of the John C. Lincoln Hospital Foundation and the Lutheran Hospitals Foundation. More recently, Bill spent 12 years raising philanthropic dollars for Blood Systems in Scottsdale and helped to raise more than $12 million. In 2004, America’s Blood Centers in Washington, D.C. recognized him as a leader in supporting fundraising for blood centers across the United States. 
Bill served as the 2004 president of the Greater Arizona Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP). For its outstanding achievements in 2004, the Greater Arizona Chapter received the Ten Star Award at the AFP International Conference in Baltimore. For seven years, Bill has served as a mentor in the chapter’s Professional Mentoring Program, helping new fundraising professionals increase their knowledge of the development field. He has also established a relationship with the American Humanics Program at Arizona State University. This relationship will encourage university students to join the local AFP chapter and eventually form an AFP student chapter on the campus.