The son of a single mother, Stephen Moret said he remembers picking up his scholarship check from Patrick F. Taylor Hall, never thinking about who had given their hard-earned money for it. As the new LSU Foundation president and CEO, it is his goal to cultivate a culture of donorship at LSU, a university he described as “late to the philanthropy game.”
“I came to LSU, and LSU changed my life. So now I’m back after 16 years, and it is great,” Moret said. “LSU had a transformational impact on my life, and I get excited about helping attract philanthropy that will allow others to have the kind of experience I had here.”
The 1995 alumnus took on his new role in May as leader of one of the top three philanthropic outreach groups for the university. He previously served as the Baton Rouge Area Chamber CEO and under Gov. Bobby Jindal as Louisiana Economic Development secretary.
Moret replaced G. Lee Griffin, who was hired as interim president in 2011, but stayed on at the request of the LSU Board of Supervisors until his retirement in 2015.
As head of the LSU Foundation, Moret is tasked with providing financial support for LSU by fostering private donations and managing investments and endowments — a role he has a new appreciation for upon his return to the university.
“If you were to ask me the question, ‘What is the biggest thing I missed as an undergrad?’ — it was that I had no idea how much of my experience had been enabled by donors,” Moret said.
The university is far outpaced by peer institutions, Moret said, ranking last in the SEC at 6 percent for percentage of alumni who donate. It also has less than half of the average SEC school’s endowment.
Over the next six months, Moret and the LSU Foundation will finish a blueprint for the future of philanthropic giving based on observations of several peer and aspirational institutions.
The plan will look at how to take the university’s current donor base into the future.
“What we’re working to do is to take us from where we are today and make LSU one of the top development programs in the country,” Moret said.
Moret said it will take more than a couple of years to see the results of a changing culture, but a symbolic step forward will take place next summer when the LSU Foundation building, which broke ground in March, is completed and staff members will move out of their offices scattered around campus and into their permanent home. “Really, we have a lot of people to learn from because we are so far behind,” Moret said. “But I do not believe it is because Alabama graduates love their university more than LSU graduates love ours.”
Instead, Moret said the roadblock comes from a lack of philanthropic culture at LSU, which is why he plans to target undergraduates in his fundraising efforts.
While it may be more difficult to change the habits of an alumnus who has never donated, it is easier to show undergraduates how their future contributions directly impact a college experience, Moret said.
“Just being part of a family, there is a certain expectation of contribution,” Moret said. “We want people to think about what it means to be a Tiger, to have love for this institution.”
Though Moret is no stranger to the stately oaks and broad magnolias, he likened his return to campus to coming home.
He said he remembers his first pregame warm-up as a trumpet player in Tiger Band and, having never seen the Tigers play before, wondering who would even show up.
He remembers passing legislation as Student Government president, establishing a “dead week” for stressed out students before finals.
Moret and his classmates marched to the capitol almost 20 years ago to protest what he called the “perennial challenge” of budget cuts to higher education.
These are the kinds of experiences Moret said he hopes to preserve for future students, while also providing them the opportunities they need to prosper.
“What will really unlock tremendous support at all levels is LSU articulating an exciting vision that we can get excited about that can be catalyzed by philanthropic support,”Moret said.

Gallery • 3 Photos

Mary Roland

LSU Foundation's President and CEO Stephen Moret stands beside the LSU lakes on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2015, on LSU's campus.