Tom Sanders has been working in institutional advancement since 1987, when he became a grant writer for the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (now the Booth School of Business). He has served in a variety of capacities—publications manager, advancement writer, public relations officer, webmaster and web developer, developer of strategic programs, and grant writer—for Tusculum College, Holston United Methodist Home for Children, and, most recently, for the University of the South, where he has served for the better part of the last two decades.