Ben has spent over 20 years campaigning for some of the world’s leading private universities. He was the Assistant Vice President of Principal Gifts and International Fundraising at Northwestern University during a $6B capital campaign that ultimately closed four $100M gifts and one $500M gift. He has personally closed several eight-figure gifts and contributed to the planning of successful nine-figure solicitations. He has also closed seven-figure gifts across Europe, Asia, and South America. Much of this experience came from his time as Chief Advancement Officer at two leading business schools—the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Prior to these roles, he served as Development Director for Northwestern Engineering and spent four years at the Harvard Kennedy School. In 2018, he co-founded SIGAP (the Strategic Initiatives Group for Advancement Professionals), a nonprofit that convenes leading university fundraisers around transformational, interdisciplinary gifts. Porter’s widely used CASE handbook, The Principal Gift Checklist, was developed to quantify what drives $5M–$100M gifts. Originally grounded in data from four universities, he relaunched the study in 2026 with 26 leading public and private institutions and more than 6,300 data points. The research now incorporates insights on gift influencers, first-generation wealth creation, anonymity, planned giving, liquidity, timing, and closely held assets. A former folk and country singer, he is a graduate of Princeton University and lives in Evanston, Illinois.