Mica Strother got her start in political fundraising, but she realized along the way that what fuels her is a simply good cause.
“Fundraising is just a way to connect people with passions they already have, and allow them the opportunity to be part of that process,” Strother says. “I think my passion, whether it’s nonprofit fundraising or political fundraising, is that giving your dollars is a way [for] you to engage in that issue that you care about. Maybe you care about a candidate but you can’t work full time on the campaign. You can give your dollars to those people [who] are going to work full time, or if you care a lot about homelessness you may not be able to work full time to help the people that are homeless but you can give your dollars and your dollars can help get people off the street.”
Strother, senior director of development for the Razorback Foundation, regularly engages Razorback Foundation members and she is responsible for managing the organization’s campaign to raise $28 million for a 45,000-foot baseball performance center for student athletes, including expanded locker rooms and space for weight-lighting and training, player and pitching development, batting cages and more, at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
Razorback Foundation Executive Director Scott Varady says a foundation member recommended Strother for the job in 2016 when it was decided that a Central Arkansas office would be opened.
“She had a wealth of experience across the state, in all counties, dealing with folks in fundraising, and she had a very impressive fundraising background and just tremendous personality,” Varady says.
Since then, Varady says, she has come up with common-sense solutions to complicated situations and brought creative touches to foundation events, such as the Razorback Christmas ornaments she had designed as parting gifts for guests who attended the holiday party last year.
“She came up with a great benchmark for measuring something on how to approach an issue, showing her creativity to come up with suggesting a benchmark as opposed to saying, ‘This is just a complicated idea, don’t do it,’” he says.
CAMPING OUT FOR THE HOMELESS
Strother and her husband, Greg Hale, are the honorary chairmen of the 4th annual Sleep Out in the Rock, a fundraiser for Jericho Way Day Resource Center, set for Saturday, Oct. 12, in Murray Park.
Jericho Way, through DePaul USA, offers services, including shelter, housing referrals, case management services and access to restroom, laundry, phone, computer and Internet service, to homeless adults.
Sleep Out in the Rock will start out with music by the Going Jessies and a feast of hot dogs and hamburgers from 5:30-8 p.m., and those interested can take tents and sleeping bags and spend the rest of the night in the park.
“It’s not set up so you can experience homelessness because we all know the next day we’re going to go home and we’re going to sleep in our beds,” Strother says. “But it is a way that the community can stand in solidarity with people that are having to sleep outside every day because they don’t have secure housing, and it’s a way to raise money for Jericho Way, to feed these folks that come in every day and help them find jobs and find housing and better their lots in life.”
The fundraising goal is a modest $75,000, Strother says, up from last year’s goal of $50,000, and less than $500 will be spent on the event.
Strother met Mandy Davis about three years ago, right after Davis became executive director of Jericho Way.
“We just walked through kind of some of the basics of trying to [raise funds] for an organization. I was so impressed with the work she was doing,” Strother says. “Probably two to three people a week are moved toward getting away from homelessness, into more secure housing, probably two to three a day, I’d say, leave Jericho Way with referrals for medical attention or some kind of social service advice, so they’re leaving feeling empowered to free their situation.”
Davis was grateful for Strother’s support from the start.
Davis carbon copys Strother on emails when she asks for donations, and Strother follows up with a note about the organization.
“Some people who only gave $500 last year are giving $1,500 this year,” Davis says. “People really respect and admire her in this city. Her name and her reputation did that for our organization and we are in debt to her.”
DO UNTO OTHERS
Strother is happy to lend her talents for the cause.
“As a person of faith, you know that God tells you that, ‘What you do unto the least of these you do unto me,’ and so you want to find a way to help people that are homeless,” she says. “I often think I’m so lucky that I was born to the parents that I was born to, who wanted me to pursue an education and were going to support me during that and gave me the tools I needed to try to be successful in life. But just because somebody doesn’t get born with that and ends up on the street, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to help.”
Strother’s parents, Lane and Judy Strother, both went to law school when she and her two sisters were young, after getting master’s degrees and teaching for a while at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia.
“They were in their 30s and my dad started to go to law school,” she says. “He then decided that my mom would be great going to law school, so they sat the three of us down — we were probably 5, 7 and 10 at the time — and we took a vote on whether Mom should go to law school. Two voted that she should go and one voted that she shouldn’t, so she went.”
Her father started a practice in Mountain Home after he got his law degree, and her mother commuted to Fayetteville for her last year of law school.
“When she got out, she told my dad that she was going to open a practice and he could join her if he wanted to,” she says. “He left the practice he had been in and they started practicing together in Mountain Home.”
Strother’s older sister, Jodi, joined the firm, founded in 1981, in 1995.
“It’s a small town and so you practice kind of anything that comes through the door, but Dad has always specialized in wills, estates and probate. Mom has always specialized in domestic,” Strother says.
Her parents limited TV time for Mica and her sisters, giving them one hour of TV a day to watch a show that they all agreed on.
“I can remember watching years of Wonder Woman because that’s what the three of us could agree on,” Strother says.
CLOTHING ALLOWANCE
They treated the girls equally.
“As long as we were in school, we got a clothing allowance. From the time I was in the sixth grade, every August, my parents would say, ‘You have X amount of dollars to spend on clothes this year.’ We had a ledger book and everything we bought, from coats to socks to dresses, had to be recorded in the ledger book. If you ran out in January, you did not buy clothes for the rest of the year,” she says. “If you had money left at the end of July, the next year, they would pay you that balance. For the three of us, it allowed us not to have bickering between us about you’re spending more on this one or you bought her this and you didn’t buy me that.”
Strother, for the record, always spent every penny of her annual clothing allowance.
Her parents advised her to find college teachers she liked and major in what those teachers taught. All three girls became history majors, which was fine with their parents, who stipulated only that each complete a terminal degree.
“My oldest sister and I ended up with juris doctorates and my middle sister ended up with an M.D.,” Strother says.
Strother didn’t know what she wanted to do with her history degree when she completed the undergraduate program at OBU in 1994, but she knew she didn’t want to teach.
“There aren’t a lot of jobs out there hiring just history majors. So, my parents, again knowing I enjoyed politics — and it was an election year — said I should go volunteer on the campaign,” she says. “And that’s what I did. I went and volunteered on then-Gov. [Jim] Guy Tucker’s campaign, and I took it very seriously and volunteered every day.”
When Tucker was re-elected she was offered a position in the governor’s office, where she worked for two years while she contemplated her future.
“I loved being in law school,” says Strother, who started classes at the William H. Bowen School of Law in 1996. “It was kind of that feeling when you go from high school to college and suddenly you’re with people who are pursuing the same interest that you are, so you’ve narrowed your community a little bit as far as interests. There’s so much history in the law, and it teaches you a way to process and think about issues and challenges in a new way, so I did love law school.”
It was in law school that she met Missy McJunkins Duke, now a lawyer with Cross, Witherspoon & Galchus, P.C.
“One of our friends always says — and it’s true — that Mica always seems to have more hours in her day than anyone else,” Duke says. “She can accomplish more than most people can get accomplished in a day. She is a person that does good in big ways, like serving on boards and helping raise money for great nonprofits in Arkansas. But she also does good in individual lives. There are not many of her friends she has not taken a meal to.”
Duke’s nephew was diagnosed with cancer a couple of years ago, for example, and Strother prepared and delivered six or seven home-cooked meals for her sister’s family.
“She and my sister are acquaintances, but she did that because it was important to me. If she loves you, by extension she loves your family and if you’re concerned about something, she’s concerned about it, too,” Duke says. “She really is just a thoughtful, kind person who really does try to shine her light in all kinds of ways.”
POLITICAL FUNDRAISING
In 1999, after law school, Strother went to work as a political consultant for the Thompson Group, managing candidate message development and campaign strategies — and it was there that she got a taste for fundraising.
The Thompson Group was hired to run then Sen. Mike Beebe’s campaign for Arkansas attorney general. He won the election and asked Strother to work for him.
“I hired her to come on board and for me, she headed up the part of the attorney general’s office that had to do with education, outreach, crime victims’ reparation. There were a number of things in that arena, and she headed that up. I think that was actually her first supervisory job,” Beebe says.
Beebe recalls a personality conflict between Strother and a man who worked for her.
“There was a great big, huge man that was in that division, about 6-foot-7. He’s a great guy, incidentally. He was really good with kids, high school students, and junior high students, and part of the job was he had to go talk to schools, about Internet safety,” Beebe says. “So this little blonde lady comes in as the new supervisor and I think they had problems initially. She came to me one day talking about the problems. And I said, ‘But you’re the boss, you ought to be able to fix it.’ She took that to heart, and she fixed it, and they developed a great relationship thereafter.”
When Beebe ran for governor, she became finance director for his campaign.
The campaign, under her direction, raised more than $8 million in an 18-month period.
“Then obviously, after the campaign, I took her with me to the governor’s office, where she headed up boards and commissions appointments,” Beebe says.
Strother left the governor’s office again to serve as finance director for Beebe’s re-election campaign in 2010 and that time raised more than $5 million in a 10-month period.
“We set the record for the most money ever raised in a state or federal race in the state, which was a tribute to her,” he says.
Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott was a volunteer on Beebe’s campaign when Strother was finance director. Strother didn’t work on his campaign, but he counts her as a friend, and he sought her advice during the election period.
“She’s been someone that’s been able to build relationships and trust,” Scott says.
“People trust her because she always executes. She has this awesome gift and skill to build relationships and help others to identify their dollars and put their dollars to good use, whether it be for political fundraising, not-for-profit fundraising or business development within the business sector.”
MAKING THROW PILLOWS
Sarah Roberson, executive director of City Year, attends Second Baptist Church in downtown Little Rock with Strother, and Strother sits on City Year’s board of directors.
“She’s like the perfect human,” Roberson says. “She is beautiful. She is kind. And she can do anything. She’s a lawyer, she can cook, and she can raise money like nobody’s business, and she’s an amazing philanthropist. I tease her because she made all of the throw pillows in her house. I’m like, girl, you could win the Nobel Peace Prize, and I would still not be impressed as much as I might be impressed about those throw pillows.”
They met in the early 2000s when Strother served on the team that started City Year.
“She was pregnant with her son, Eli, then,” Roberson says. “I met her in Chicago — I wasn’t living in Little Rock yet.”
Strother accompanies Roberson to schools to talk with teachers and principals, she works on fundraisers, and they travel to conferences and meetings around the country.
“She’s 100% hands-on, with whatever she does. She is one of those people that you can ask for help and she just says yes and you know there’s no hidden agenda, there’s no motive,” Roberson says. “She deeply cares about kids — she cares about people.”
SELF PORTRAIT
Mica Strother
• DATE, PLACE OF BIRTH: Nov. 12, 1972, Little Rock.
• I WISH I COULD: Spend more time traveling with my son, Eli, and my husband, Greg.
• WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL I WANTED TO BE: As successful as my mother.
• MY MOST PRECIOUS CHILDHOOD MEMORY: Spending time on my grandparents' farm.
• I'M PROUDEST OF: Maintaining friendships through the years.
• THE BEST MEAL I CAN IMAGINE WOULD INCLUDE: My dad's filets, my mom's french fries and fresh veggies from my Granny and Papaw's (my mom's parents) garden and a side of the bread my Memaw and Granddad (my dad's parents) baked.
• I'M MOST COMFORTABLE: Spending time with family.
• TO RELAX I LIKE TO: Exercise or bake.
• THE BEST ADVICE I EVER GOT: Look at situations from other people's perspectives. My sisters and I couldn't complain about a person without my mother reminding us that things look different based on where you are standing.
• A BOOK I RECOMMEND TO OTHERS IS: Letters to a Young Doubter by William Sloane Coffin.
• A TV SHOW I LIKE TO WATCH: Stranger Things.
• I LISTEN TO THE PODCAST: NPR's Up First.
• ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP: Determined.
