CSUN’s Chief Fund-Raiser Leaving for Job in South

Cal State Northridge’s chief fund-raiser is leaving for a small community college in the South after less than two months working on a $10-million capital campaign and less than two years on the job, administrators said Friday.

Bill Outhouse will step down as vice president of university relations in June to become lead fund-raiser at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville, Ark. Officials have not named a replacement for Outhouse, 55, who said he submitted his resignation last week.

The two-year public college in Arkansas serves nearly 3,300 students, a fraction of the size of the 353-acre, 27,000-student CSUN campus.

“It’s just less bureaucracy. I thought for me now, smaller is better,” Outhouse said. “The job will be simpler. The expectations won’t be as great so anything I do will be a positive thing.”

At the Arkansas college, Outhouse said he will have a direct role in fund-raising. At CSUN, his job was mostly administrative.

Outhouse joined CSUN in 1998 at the invitation of former President Blenda Wilson after a decade as a fund-raiser for the University of Arkansas. CSUN raised nearly $14.5 million and expanded its connections to alumni during his stay, administrators said.

In February, CSUN announced a $10-million campaign to upgrade campus buildings that had to be repaired after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. But even as that effort was underway, Outhouse said he was thinking about leaving for the Arkansas college, from which his son graduated last year.

“I am pleased for him, that he has found an exciting new opportunity,” interim CSUN President Louanne Kennedy said in a statement issued Friday.

Collecting money from alumni has become increasingly important to CSUN and sister Cal State University campuses. They were forced to give themselves a crash course in fund-raising after state administrators slashed their budgets during the recession of the early 1990s.