How Peter Iversen cultivates a community of support for LSTC
For Peter Iversen, there is a unifying theme across his experience in higher education, nonprofit philanthropy, and public service: It is all about people and relationships.
“My focus has been for a long time on serving others, and that’s a really important viewpoint for philanthropic work,” Iversen said.
He joined the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago in October 2022 as a philanthropic engagement officer. He works with the advancement team on a campaign to help reimagine, reinvent, reaffirm, and renew the seminary.
His work at LSTC draws on his early career experience with annual fund appeals for nonprofits in the Bloomington, Indiana, area. He then brought those skills into the realm of higher education fundraising, spending five years as associate director of development for the Indiana University School of Public Health. His passion for higher education led him to LSTC, where he was excited about the opportunity to support the seminary’s success.
Iversen has also served on the Monroe County Council since 2019 as one of seven members in the county’s fiscal body, working on topics from taxes to human resources. He serves constituents in that role, and he sees it as using a similar set of skills for his advancement role at LSTC.
“When we’re working with constituents, it’s about what that constituent needs. When it’s working with a donor, it’s all about what that donor needs,” he said. “So it’s fine-tuning those listening skills and empathy skills to be able to reach people where they’re at and meet them there.”
The LSTC advancement team is currently working on a campaign with multiple pillars that donors can support. The campaign encompasses scholarships for seminary students, support for LSTC faculty, interreligious centers for cooperation, a new leadership initiative focused on Black, Indigenous, and people of color leaders, and Project Starling, a program that aims to meet seminary students where they are through asynchronous learning.
The team is celebrating a recent $1.5 million gift to support asynchronous education. The gift will help ensure the seminary can provide distance learning for students who have been identified by their bishop as having a desire to lead a congregation.
“The asynchronous program allows that individual to receive the continuing education that they need to not only be a reliable and dependable shepherd of a flock, but also someone that can balance a church’s budget and have programming that brings people in,” Iversen said. “That’s going to lead to education for a countless number of students for decades into the future.”
Iversen chalks up the campaign’s success in part to the advancement team’s emphasis on showing donors how their contributions make a difference. The church calls it stewardship and not fundraising for a reason, Iversen noted: “We do view this as a relationship that is ongoing.”
The advancement team uses a variety of communications to keep those relationships strong, from print and digital magazines to thank-you notes and Christmas cards.
“We’re going to remain relevant because we are listening to local communities and responding in kind,” he said.
Iversen sees a bright future for LSTC, and the relationships being cultivated to support it.