The university is still more than $50 million short of its fundraising goal for this year, but officials still expect to meet their long-term goal of raising $1 billion by 2011.
Officials hope to raise $130 million last year as part of the Great Expectations fundraising campaign, but have only managed to collect 77.2 million so far. Officials remain optimistic, however, and Vice President for University Relations Brodie Remington said the university is trying a number of new strategies to encourage giving.
“There has been a slowdown this year in the level of giving, which is not surprising because of the recession. But we’re not doing badly, just not quite as well as we would like,” Remington said. “We are real close to being on track, and we still expect to reach or exceed our goal.”
Great Expectations was made public in 2006, and the university has collected approximately $613 million toward its goal. The campaign aims to increase the university’s endowment to make it less dependent on state funding and also to collect millions for scholarships, facilities and research.
Remington said the decrease in donations prompted a number of changes in how the campaign is run. They are promoting “planned gifts,” when a donor with assets such as stock or real estate turns them over to the university, which sets up a trust to manage them. The university pays back a portion of the trust’s income to the donor each year during his or her lifetime. The proposal is a win-win situation because the university has an asset that grows with time and the donor increases his or her income for life, Remington said. About 20 percent of gifts this year have been in the form of trusts and annuities, Remington added. They are also encouraging emergency scholarship donations for students in need, called Keep Me Maryland.
“Mainly, we’re getting on the road, visiting with alums and keeping up relationships so that when times get better, people can give,” said Remington, who was in Florida, where he said he had successfully collected a number of small gifts.
Remington and other officials hope the new strategies will be able to make up the gap created during the fiscal year. As of March 31, year-to-year giving had declined 20.4 percent.
The university is far from alone in seeing a steep fundraising decline. All but two of the University System of Maryland’s 13 institutions are still short of their fundraising goals for the year. Of the 12 universities across the nation currently in the middle of billion-dollar campaigns, all but three raised less from February 2008 to January 2009 than they did over the same time period the year before, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. For example, Cornell University, which aims to raise $4 billion, saw its annual fundraising total more than cut in half.
The Board of Regents Advancement Committee, which oversees fundraising efforts, met yesterday to discuss strategies, including ramping up online efforts, making sure presidents of the 13 institutions are committed to their respective campaigns and courting donors appropriately. Regent Mike Gill encouraged institutions to evaluate their strategies and cater to potential donors’ interests, whether it be excellence or athletics.
“This is an opportunity to take a deep breath and do a little thinking,” said Gill. “Instead of trying to play with a tough hand … ask for five new cards.”
The university has new recourse if the decline in fundraising continues due to an emergency piece of legislation passed by the General Assembly. Pamela Purcell, the general counsel for the fundraising arm of the University System of Maryland, said the new rules will allow charitable organizations – including the University System of Maryland and University of Maryland, College Park foundations – to spend endowment money, rather than just the interest gained from endowments. However, Remington said the university plans to avoid dipping into endowments because smaller endowments earn less interest.
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