On Saturday, the mess of students, alumni, employees and visitors gathered for Maryland Day may have seemed an unnecessary expense for a fiscally strapped university to bear. But to administrators, they represented part of a potential solution to the monetary problems that have plagued the university for years.
Administrators are looking to new potential donors to propel the university through the second half of its $1 billion Great Expectations campaign, the largest fundraiser it has ever attempted. Maryland Day provided a perfect combination of future and former students to help the university plead its case for donations, but it will take more than a cupcake-filled carnival for the university to catch up to its peer institutions’ fundraising rates.
All of the university’s peer institutions – the universities of Michigan, Illinois, North Carolina, California-Berkeley and California-Los Angeles – have already completed fundraising campaigns of well over a billion dollars and have been soliciting donations for decades. The university’s strategic plan rests the success of new initiatives on the administration’s ability to raise $1.2 billion in private donations over 10 years, and officials on the Strategic Planning Committee have said they hope by the end of that time to be able to consistently rake in nearly a quarter of a billion dollars annually. Because the university’s peer institutions have a much longer record of raising large quantities of money in relatively little time, administrators are taking cues from its peers.
One of the keys to catching up with our peers, according to university President Dan Mote and Vice President for University Relations Brodie Remington, is to build relationships with donors and a base of younger donors. Mote said Maryland Day is a good example of the university reinforcing ties between various fundraising sources, including alumni, the community and businesses in the state.
“It’s all a matter of building relationships with alumni and friends … building a better understanding among people about how much private support we need to operate a great university,” Mote said.
But building those relationships takes time, which the university doesn’t have. While other universities began massive fundraising efforts in the early 1980s, Mote said, this university’s efforts only gained steam in the late 1990s.
“We were very late to the game,” Mote said of the school’s fundraising efforts. “We’re more than a decade behind.”
UCLA finished a $3 billion campaign in 2005, and UNC raised $2.38 billion over eight and a half years, ending in 2007. The University of Michigan is in the middle of a $2.5 billion campaign, and the University of Illinois is attempting to raise $2.25 billion.
The lower goals of this university’s campaign reflect several things: what the university has done in the past, what it hopes to do in the future and the amount – about $310 million – the university was able to raise during the two-year quiet phase of the campaign.
Remington and Mote also said the university’s goals are lower than those at peer institutions because the university lacks medical and law schools. Medical centers in particular can draw half the donations in a campaign or more, he said.
Still, Great Expectations is one of only 26 current campaigns seeking to raise $1 billion or more for higher education and has already surpassed the $476 million the university raised during its last campaign.
Mote said the goals of the strategic plan were realistic.
“I see no reason why we shouldn’t be able to, given the wealth of our alumni, state and region,” he said.
Mote came from University of California, Berkeley in 1998 with a reputation for fundraising. As the school’s vice chancellor, he had successfully raised $1.4 billion during a capital campaign.
In addition, building a “culture” of support is important, Remington said, adding that colleges with highly successful fundraising habits like those in the Ivy League make it clear alumni are expected to give back.
“From the day students arrive as freshmen,” he said, “they’re told this is a lifelong relationship and you’re expected to give back.”
Fundraising success can create a “ripple effect,” Remington said. As the university improves, it “creates an aura of Maryland on the move.” The value of a degree from the university increases, making alumni wealthier and more likely to give back. The university then improves even more.
“We have room for improvement because we have such a short history of fundraising,” Remington said. “But we’re in the ball game.”
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