Field of Dreams

Crisscrossing the state as volunteer co-chair of the TCF Bank Stadium fundraising effort introduced Nancy Lindahl, ’68 B.A., to a host of people she had never met before. Take a motorcycle gang, for example. Nancy was part of a U of M caravan visiting towns along Interstate 90 when she found herself in a motel overrun with leather-clad bikers on their way to the annual rally in Sturgis, S.D.

Nancy’s husband John, ’68 B.A., B.S., her fundraising co-chair and partner in marriage for 41 years, tried to keep up with his wife’s statewide tour while he was traveling on business. “One time I called her from Korea to ask how it was going, and she said, ‘Well, I’m the only woman in this motel, and I have no way to leave because I’m getting picked up in the morning,’” John recalls with a chuckle.

But even when the Lindahls get serious about the five years they spent rallying support for on-campus football, the focus remains on people. “We’ve met hundreds of people that we wouldn’t know otherwise, and we can call them all friends now,” Nancy notes.

“Everybody at all different gift levels has been integral to the whole project,” John adds. “It’s been very rewarding to raise $1,000 or to raise $1 million or $10 million.”

Rewarding yes, but certainly not easy. “This has been an every-single-day conversation between us,” points out Nancy. “There hasn’t been a day in the last five years when we haven’t talked about our list of people to contact.” The Lindahls’ hard work and leadership have led to nearly $90 million raised for TCF Bank Stadium, including significant gifts that they made to the project.

On top of the public success there has been personal gain. With Nancy giving her time generously to several nonprofit boards and John juggling the demands of managing Norwest Equity Partners, they often feel as if they’re living parallel lives. But the fundraising experience actually gave them more time with each other. “This is something that has really brought us together in one common effort,” he says. “And we worked pretty well together.”

Nancy agrees: “It’s something that we absolutely love doing together. John has been a door-opener and I’m the closer.” She also points out, however, that it took some practice to create that chemistry, such as when John would use tactics from the corporate world that Nancy deemed too upfront for fundraising.

Repeated kicks in the shin at donor meetings finally got the message across to John, who wryly states, “We’ve learned a lot from one another.”

But more importantly, they say, they’ve learned a lot about empowering others. “What we’ve really loved has been showing people how they can put their passion and their pocketbook together,” says Nancy. “The joy that they experienced from giving has really come back to us.”

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