As vice president of development and alumni engagement, Matthew Colson serves as Farmingdale State College’s principal fundraiser and executive director for the Farmingdale College Foundation. Colson develops and leads a team that executes a comprehensive strategy and portfolio of programs, communications and events designed to engage the college’s greater campus community of more than 130,000 alumni, friends, parents, corporations and private foundations to support and advance Farmingdale’s mission. With more than 20 years of experience and a proven track record for building community and award-winning programs at Saint Joseph’s University, Stony Brook University and now Farmingdale, Colson joined the Farmingdale president’s cabinet in 2020. He has been instrumental in refining the college’s brand promise, increasing brand visibility and media impressions in the NY market, and growing corporate, government and community engagement with the establishment of private/public partnerships on campus, including securing land lease legislation and new building capital funding. He has built a high-performing, award-winning team that has transformed the institution to one that is now recognized as the highest fundraising operation in the technology sector of the State University of New York, while surpassing eight other comprehensive public colleges across the state in foundation revenue generation. Under Colson’s leadership and collaboration with college administration, Farmingdale has seen significant growth in brand recognition and profile, endowment, scholarship support, student emergency funds and unrestricted flexible-use dollars for the college, having also secured nine of the college’s 10 largest gifts and more than doubling the foundation’s endowment and active donor community. Colson serves on the board of directors for Long Island’s Rose Brucia Educational Foundation and as an associate board director for the Long Island Business Development Council.