Tom Maness originally came to VCU in 2018 as associate dean and chief development officer for the School of Medicine. He was appointed to his current role in January 2019 and has responsibility for philanthropic support across the health sciences campus including the colleges and schools of Dentistry, Health Professions, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy. This also includes the Massey Cancer Center as well as the hospitals, clinics and programs of VCU Health. 

He has more than 20 years of experience in the field of philanthropy mostly at academic medical centers. Prior to his time at VCU, he served as AVP for annual, major and planned giving at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where he had responsibility for all individual giving programs. He also has extensive experience in enhancing and expanding grateful patient and family programs through partnership with physicians, researchers and other health care providers. 

Prior to joining Children’s National, he served in the joint development office of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College in Manhattan. He served in various roles including major gifts officer, associate director of major gifts and manager of major gifts. His management duties included building and leading teams of gift officers in major and mid-level giving as well as overseeing numerous donor affinity groups. During this time, Tom participated in three comprehensive campaigns of $1 billion or more. 

He holds a master’s of public administration in public policy and nonprofit management from the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University. 

Michael Morelius came to VCU from St. Edward’s University, where he oversaw the completion of the successful $100 million Campaign for St. Edward’s. During his time there, he managed all major gifts and planned giving officers responsible for portfolios of donors with a minimum $25,000 gift capacity as well as the corporate and foundation relations office and annual giving program.

His role at VCU is to help increase the fundraising efforts of the Monroe Park Campus schools and colleges, VCU Athletics and the Institute for Contemporary Art.

From August 2011 to October 2015, Morelius was director of development for the College of Science for the Texas A&M Foundation. As team lead, he facilitated raising $62 million. He managed a portfolio of 170 households capable of making commitments of $100,000 or more and maintained an average of 21 donor and qualification visits per month.

Morelius was director of development at Rice University from October 2006 to July 2011. He began his fundraising career as a student caller at Texas A&M. Over the course of his career, he has directly helped to raise more than $115 million.

He is a graduate of Texas A&M, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1999. He has two children, Kristopher and Brynne Leigh.