Fundraising at Public Regional Universities: Under the Radar, Below the Fold 3031454804, 9783031454806

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Fundraising at Public Regional Universities Under the Radar, Below the Fold William J. Broussard

Fundraising at Public Regional Universities

William J. Broussard

Fundraising at Public Regional Universities Under the Radar, Below the Fold

William J. Broussard University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Stevens Point, WI, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-45480-6    ISBN 978-3-031-45481-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45481-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Preface

“But for Grambling State University, I never would have had the opportunity to go to college, become an educator, a coach, or the man I am today.”—Wilfred “Jackie” Broussard, Sr.

In 1963, Wilfred “Jackie” Broussard enrolled at Grambling State University as a freshman on a basketball scholarship. In an era when Grambling Football was led by legendary football coach Eddie Robinson, who coached stars like Ernie Ladd (who went on to be inducted into the World Wrestling Federation Hall of Fame as “Big Cat” Ernie Ladd, one of professional wrestling’s most famous “heels”) and James “Shack” Harris (who became the first Black quarterback to lead a professional football team), this was quite the accomplishment simply to get this far. During this era, many of the best college basketball players in the United States were enrolled at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and since NCAA Division I universities like Louisiana State University would not integrate their basketball teams until 1971, this was by far the best option available to him (and to players like Willis Reed, who’d follow my father at Grambling, and become one of the NBA’s “50 Greatest Players of All-Time”). And as an adopted son of unwealthy parents and a C student, it was one of his only options. Sadly, the H.C. Ross High Ram basketball hero and AAU star would not have the stellar athletic career he hoped for due to an injury experienced in his sophomore year. But because of the education and support he received thereafter, he went on to become a hero to many in ways he never would have imagined. As a coach, educator, and school board administrator, he’d touch thousands of lives, and v

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after becoming the first in his family to graduate from college, he’d ensure his own children would have the same opportunity. At Grambling, he’d meet Elizabeth Malveaux, herself a brilliant student whose loving parents, a custodian and a housemaid, could never have afforded to send her to college if tuition weren’t low and without the help of scholarships, provided by local civic organizations and a wealthy family who saw promise in her. Together they’d set about a life of over 65 years of combined service to Louisiana public K-12 education (and one impressive enough that the Louisiana Association of Child Welfare and Attendance Professionals award was named after my father after his death1). In 1996, I graduated from high school eager to follow in my father’s footsteps as a college athlete. An undersized, but decorated high school athlete, and I received recruiting letters from elite, private colleges across the country and few from NCAA Division I and II institutions in my home state or nearby. Grambling, running a style of offense which employed offensive linemen 75–100 pounds heavier than I was, didn’t contact me. Being a two-time All-Louisiana, Blue Chip All-American, and a state finalist for the Wendy’s High School Heisman mattered little. Schools that seemed a million miles away (and whose educations nearly a million dollars away to my parents) continued to call. However, after paying for my sister and brother’s college educations (both from public regional universities—the University of Southwestern Louisiana [now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette] and Nicholls State University) on public school educators’ salaries, I knew my solution would have to be close to home, and preferably, come with a scholarship. My high school offensive line coach, Jeff Morris, who’d played at Southwest Oklahoma State University and been a graduate assistant for the football team at Northwestern State University (Louisiana), offered to introduce me to his college coach, who was at Northwestern State. I’d visited the campus several times for literary rallies and regional track and field meets, and the coach offered me a walk-on opportunity. More importantly, I learned that the state’s designated honors college, the Louisiana Scholars’ College, was on the campus. I was offered an academic scholarship and never looked back. I played on two conference championship teams there as a three-year starter, earned all-conference and all-American honors twice, was named to the school’s All-Century team, and was inducted into the National Football Foundation College Football Hall of 1

 See: “LACWAP Wilfred Broussard Award.” (2023). https://tinyurl.com/53thh29c

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Fame as a scholar-athlete in 1999. More importantly, I attended and graduated from a liberal arts college2 housed on a public regional university campus and studied under professors with terminal degrees from universities I’d never heard of (Laval, Oxford, Smith) who helped over 90% of their students get accepted to graduate schools of their choice. I earned enough in postgraduate fellowships and awards to pay for graduate school, enabling me to complete my master’s degree and Ph.D. debt free. And I studied, became friends with, and graduated with folks who’d go on to be neurobiology professors, medical researchers, accomplished attorneys, and elected politicians with graduate degrees from the likes of MIT, Ohio State University, Tulane University, and the University of Texas. In the two plus decades that have followed my first day as a student at Northwestern State, I have had the pleasure—and if I’m being truthful, more than occasional pain—of spending time working at five public regional university campuses in four states. My brother and sister, now both working in Louisiana K-12 public education (my brother, uncoincidentally, as a high school football head coach, like Daddy) and my parents and I combined have worked in public education for 118 years and counting. Education is the family business. My oldest nephew—now a junior student and football player at Mississippi Valley State University—has followed the family tradition of pursuing higher education at a public regional university. We’ve all had our lives transformed by these institutions, and all of them enabled us to pursue gratifying career work and avoid crippling student debt even though we do not come from significant, inter-­ generational wealth. And, as those institutions have historically done, we can now invest in the communities where we live and inspire student success especially among the most financially vulnerable students we serve as educators and those we are able to support financially as philanthropists. But for Grambling. But for McNeese State University and the University of Southwestern Louisiana (where my parents earned their master’s degrees). But for Northwestern State and the Louisiana Scholars’ College (where I earned mine). Without these institutions, earning college degrees may have been possible. However, they would have come with more significant costs and with a higher risk that we would not matriculate through graduation.

2  More on this in Chap. 5, “Advancement and Fundraising to Engage Public Regional Liberal Arts College Alumni and Donors.”

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This is not a book about the comprehensive history of public regional universities—as I am not a historian. Nor am I the kind of educational anthropologist that would do such an exploration justice. This is not a how-to guide for raising millions of dollars at a public regional university because there are folks far more accomplished than I who should be enlisted for such a project. This is a book about dreams, like that of my father and mother, and me, my brother and sister, and my nephew, and the sons and daughters of hard-working people across this country. People who only want an education to prepare themselves to be good, fully informed, and participating citizens and ensure they can provide for their families and avoid the alienation and exploitation of dead-end jobs and the hopelessness of not being able to provide a life for their families better than the one provided for them as children. With rising tuition costs and dwindling state and federal resources available for students, university development/advancement departments stand in unique and crucial positions in the fight to maintain their institutions’ historical missions and make those dreams come true. I dedicate this book to Wilfred Broussard, Sr. and Elizabeth Malveaux Broussard, my mother and father, my first role models, and the reason I have chosen the line of work and vocation that I have—as I see them in each student who needs their call for support to be answered and their need for an education to be provided. While I have always wanted to work in public higher education and have never truly sought any other career, there have certainly been times during which I have wondered—both existentially as well as personally— about the future of the industry and my choice of vocation, even though public education is my “family business.” While I answered the call to carry on the family tradition as an educator, my path has taken me far away from rural South Louisiana, and unlike the rest of my family, into American public higher education. During my 23+ year career, I’ve asked myself “What am I doing here?” several times. Often enough, as I have met people in my career travels from the Deep South to the Southwest, and from the Atlantic south to the upper Midwest, I have often been asked the question “So, what are you doing here?”

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My father,3 no doubt, was asked the same question even though his second job out of college, as the disciplinarian at the newly constructed Crowley High School, was a mere 10-minute drive from where he’d grown up. It had taken the City of Crowley 17 years to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling on Brown vs. the Board of Education, and as soon as wealthier, white families could construct and open a private Catholic high school so that their children need not attend school with Black children, they set about building a new, integrated high school. Many Black families were as unhappy about the integrated school as white ones were, as they feared that their children would be targeted for harassment by students and teachers and not be expected to work hard and excel at school due to racial bigotry. Further, they feared that any disciplinary repercussions would disproportionately lead to detentions, suspensions, and expulsions of Black students. Their compromise was to hire my father, who both knew and understood the cultural underpinnings of the Black students and knew many of their parents and community members (he was also 6′3″ and 225 lbs.). No sooner than he could put his first day behind him, a crisis emerged. Frantic white teachers ran into his office in a panic and begged him to come to the playground because they believed a riot was about to ensue. Before my father made it around the corner, he could hear students chanting, howling, deriding one another, and general rambunctiousness. As he made the corner and saw the students standing in a cipher of 20 or so with two students in the middle, he relaxed, chuckled to himself, and started returning to his office. As he explained to the teachers that “playing the dozens” does not predict an incipient riot, but rather, deep camaraderie among its participants, he 3  Nota bene: Throughout the book, I will also include anecdotes from my own experiences as a fundraising officer and executive at public regional universities. I include these to humanize work which can all too easily be reduced to mere science and practices which can be reduced to handbooks that fail to include all-important context, history, and the complications inherent to doing crucial work well with insignificant resources and support. As a research method, autoethnography allows the user to perform ethnographic research using his/her/their experiences as a research subject. Adams, Holman Jones, and Ellis (2014) add that autoethnography can use personal experience to describe and criticize cultural practices and experiences as one participates in them, recognizes the researcher’s relationships with the subjects of the research and the connection between those relationships and the production of knowledge. Whenever they appear, such as this extended apologia for autoethnographic research methods, they will be italicized, like so, so that the reader can distinguish between more traditional examination, cataloguing, and analysis and these punctuating, and I hope illuminating, stories.

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finally began understanding what his purpose was. He stood at the breach between those in power and the vulnerable, and to the greatest extent that he could, advocated for their rights, supported their struggles, and translated their humanity to people who all too often failed to regard it. I, too, was asked what I was doing on day one of my career, at the ripe age of 21 years and 363 days old as I taught my first college writing course at the University of Arizona among peers whose careers began before I was born (“Quien es?” I heard a student whisper as I walked to the front of the class). I was asked the same several years later when I began my first university fundraising position as an executive director of an athletic association at a public regional university in north-central Louisiana with a Ph.D. in Rhetoric at age 27; as an athletic director at Methodist-affiliated liberal arts college (I am not Methodist) which had recently decided to transition from NCAA Division I to Division III, only the second institution to do so in NCAA history; upon my first days working in a Historically Black University (aka HBCU) which I did not attend (nor did I attend any HBCU); in a brief stint out in North Carolina at a rural HBCU, where the state legislature nearly agreed upon closure of the institution in years before my arrival (and I’d left my previous employer looking for more stable work conditions); and most days during my tenure at a regional university in southern Minnesota where half the year is bitter winter and the other half I wheeze and cough due to the sky high pollen counts (and a good bit of that feels like bitter winter to me, too). I fancy myself a quick study and am generally adaptable to most environmental and cultural settings. However, I have managed to catch myself by massive surprise many times in my career by how deeply committed I am to the public good of higher education, and that I remain willing to go wherever this work takes me. I’ve drawn inspiration from the people I have encountered, the places where I have met them, and what I have learned along the way about the importance of higher education and the role it has played in transforming so many lives for the better. Like my father before me, the thing that has tied together every career stop I’ve ever made is a desire to help ensure people can realize their educational dreams. At a time and in a country where those dreams are more expensive and opportunities are more costly than they have ever been in history, one of the fundamental units of dream achievement is a scholarship. As the sticker cost of higher education scares many would-be students away and horror stories about massive student loan debt discourage the remainder, the work of university advancement professionals—those who engage alumni, donors, businesses, and other

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stakeholders to secure the resources necessary to support the carrying out of their university’s mission—must ensure that the opportunities for access and success that higher education leaders preach can become a reality. This sense of inspiration, appreciation, and joyfulness that I have experienced as I have worked for universities to raise money to support students, faculty, organizations, programs, and university missions, though, has been counter-balanced in recent years with larger questions about higher education’s sustainability as well as the definition of philanthropy— especially when it is considered a masquerade—as in the cases of thinly veiled transactional tax-dodging and reputation-laundering of oligarchs often criticized for lining up to give Harvard and Stanford their next $100 million. At this moment, there is no more central question about the future of higher education than those about our collective social, political, and economic responsibility to adequately funding public education. On my more cynical days, I ask myself “what I am doing here?” as an existential quandary, given as how the game seems to be intrinsically rigged against folks who raise money for public regional universities. Those making the kind of transformational gifts we only occasionally read about in the headlines of Inside Higher Education and The Chronicle of Philanthropy to public regional institutions are not likely to have attended such universities, and what’s more, such acts do not allow for the elite-capturing,4 reputation-laundering, national media fawning that so often is part and parcel to the act of large dollar giving to institutions of higher education with more recognizable names. Put simply, the media resources of, and those dedicated to covering the goings-on at public regional universities 4  As defined by Olufemi Taiwo in Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and everything else) (2022), elite capture is a process involving the elite seizure of power, wealth, resources and public narrative and discourse, as well as the manipulation of public sentiment, to serve their own personal and financial interests. The process allows for the creation of opportunities for carefully curated expressions of full-throated support for projects/causes which do little to benefit the masses personally or materially.  Early in my career, I was approached by a donor who wanted to give a substantial donation to build a plaza adjacent to an existing facility. The facility was relatively new and did not need a facelift, and the donation would only cover the cost of the construction. I declined the offer, as it would only create additional work for university staff and not yield any benefit for the current students, faculty, or staff. Essentially the donor would get a large tax write-off and fawning treatment from the media and alumni (not coincidentally as he planned a run for political office) and students would receive nothing. Years later, after I left the university and it accepted this donation, local television and newspaper media covered the donation, alumni heralded the donor as a hero, and no material support was rendered to anyone in need. This is elite capture.

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simply cannot reward wealthy donors and well-funded private foundations with the commensurate exposure and coverage that flagship and private liberal arts universities can generate, nor will traditional media generally offer it. For media consumers and donors alike, the size and ability of the organization matter, and if the school is too small or the organization’s reputation isn’t significant enough, donors will look for institutions with larger perceived reach.5 For those donors who engage in private philanthropy as a quid pro quo, to generate or maintain a certain reputation locally/regionally, or to seize a specific cultural or political zeitgeist, the return on investment in the form of media coverage simply isn’t there when they give to public regional universities, especially those in rural-­ serving areas. So, if public regional universities that have been defunded for decades and now increasingly rely upon student tuition and fees to keep the doors open, and the wealthiest private donors and foundations in many cases remain interested in a ‘flight to quality’ as higher education donors, then what are we really doing here? I mean this is not just as the awkward, fumbling musing of professionals taking leaps in their careers either by entering university advancement anew, or working somewhere far from home, or making careers out of the line of work I’ve also chosen. I mean, what does this work truly entail? Are there ways to engage in it justly and ethically while performing the work successfully, without sacrificing the institution’s mission in favor of the whipsawing whims of a small number of private donors? While imagining a different scenario in which the full funding of public education might make the field of university advancement and fundraising obsolete for some of us, I’m left to envision the industry-wide impact of such a move and think of how I’d navigate such a significant late-career move materially, even as I’d philosophically welcome the new reality. But the question is worth asking and carefully answering. What are we doing here? It’s an important question to ask people in the field because it reveals so much about them individually, and more, about the field of public regional university advancement. What, after all, are we doing here? Is there a just and ethical approach to university fundraising that addresses problems for the students with the most need that is both sustainable and data-driven and can it be done purposefully and reliably across the public 5  D’Alessandro, P. (2022). “Four reasons why donors don’t give.” Non-Profit Pro. https:// www.nonprofitpro.com/post/4-reasons-why-donors-dont-give/

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regional sector? Finally, are the answers generalizable enough across this subset of the higher education industry that such an exploration could be useful to many of us engaged in this work? Questions that need answers, dear reader. What follows is my most earnest attempt at a fully considered answer to these questions, and many more that arose as my research unfolded. My remarkable family story, as remarkable as it is to me and many who know me, is not unique. The increasing occurrence of this pathway to the American Dream has been made possible by many institutions, including public higher education. University advancement plays a significant role in ensuring those possibilities become reality. Education, after all, isn’t just the Broussards’ family business, but that of tens of thousands of families across the nation. Stevens Point, WI, USA

William J. Broussard

Acknowledgments

Over the past year, I have had the opportunity and pleasure to discuss elements I have addressed, researched, and explored in this book with dozens of wonderful colleagues across the country, in formal interviews, in-­person discussions, through collaboration, guest speaking opportunities, and online exchanges via social media. I am indebted to them for their generosity and insightfulness, and I am privileged to call them colleagues. These practitioners, scholars, and philanthropic professionals represent the following public regional universities, non-profit organizations, and professional affiliations. The following is not an endorsement of these institutions, but rather, a comprehensive list of the institutions represented by the individuals with whom I have discussed elements of my research and inquiry in the past 12 months: Alcorn State University; Alliance for Research on Rural Colleges; American Association of State Colleges and Universities; Aspen Leadership Group; Bemidji State University; Black Hills State University (SD); California State University, East Bay; CampusSonar; The Community Foundation of Central Wisconsin; The Community Foundation of North Central Wisconsin; Council for the Advancement of Support of Education; Ferris State University; Fort Valley State University; Grambling State University; Jackson State University; Kennesaw State University; Mankato Area Foundation; Metro State University (MN); Minnesota State University, Mankato; Minnesota State University, Moorhead; Minnesota State University System; Northern Kentucky University; Northwestern State University of Louisiana; Penn State University-Brandywine; Small Business Development Center of South Central Minnesota; Texas xv

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Southern University; University of Houston-Downtown; University of Louisiana at Lafayette; University of Maryland-Eastern Shore; University of North Carolina Wilmington; University of Toledo; University of the Virgin Islands; University of Wisconsin-Green Bay; University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point; University of Wisconsin System; Virginia State University; Western Oregon University; Winona State University.

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 “We’re  Number R1!”: The Public Regional University Quest for Research University Status and Its Impact on Fundraising 21 3 Capital Campaigns at Public Regional Universities 41 4 Athletic Fundraising at NCAA Public Regional Institutions 63 5 Advancement  and Fundraising to Engage Public Regional Liberal Arts College Alumni and Donors 81 6 Mission-Converged  Philanthropy: Raising Money for Emergency Student Needs 99 7 Major Gift Fundraising at Public HBCUs117

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CONTENTS

8 How  Much Does a Dollar Cost?: Annual Giving, Alumni Relations, Advancement Services in Lean Management Scenarios141 9 What’s  Next? Collaboration and Shared Resources Across the University Advancement Landscape161 Index179

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) defines public regional universities as “campuses rang(ing) in size from approximately 1,000 students to more than 45,000 […] found in the inner city, in suburbs, towns and cities, in remote rural America, and internationally” (aascu.org). They are institutions of access and opportunity, believing that the promise of access and success should be real for all. AASCU members are student focused and committed to programs and policies that place students at the heart of their institution. They are “stewards of place,” engaging faculty, staff, and students with the communities and regions they serve—helping to advance public education, economic development, and quality of life. AASCU represents the advocacy efforts of over 400 such institutions in the United States and its territories. Colloquially referred to as ‘state colleges’ and derisively known as ‘safety schools’ in popular parlance, scholars, journalists, and popular culture have characterized them as ‘last resort’ institutions rather than the first choice of many college students, and for many, they have served as the only available option for affordable and accessible higher education. Representing the educational homes for over 3.3 million students in 2022, AASCU institutions educate the “new majority” of students—first-­ generation, low-income, and/or students of color pursuing postsecondary

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. J. Broussard, Fundraising at Public Regional Universities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45481-3_1

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education.1 Put more deservedly, “these are the universities that train the nurses who take care of you when you go to the hospital, the schoolteachers that educate your children, and the small business leaders that create jobs in your hometown2. I knew this to be true before I even knew what a public regional university was formally, as I saw the degrees on the walls of all the teachers I admired and school administrators who helped me navigate K-12 as well as those on the walls in my own family room, as I come from a family of educators. Little dispute exists regarding the impact of public regional universities, though, other research outfits differ in their definitions of what constitutes these institutions and as a result, believe their impact to be even more significant. For example, the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges (ARRC) published a list in early 2023 recognizing 474 colleges with attributes which lead to their unheralded status. Those attributes include their membership in university systems whose flagships are recognizable while the regional campuses’ goings-on largely go unreported outside of a localized area and in smaller media markets (e.g., in my home state of Louisiana, everyone knows about the Louisiana State University campus in Baton Rouge; however, even in-state, many people do not know about their regional campuses in north Louisiana (LSU-Shreveport) and central Louisiana (LSU-Alexandria)). Other directionally descriptive markers (Western Oregon University, Southeast Missouri State University, Upper Iowa), regionally specific markers (Appalachian State University, Great Basin College), or city-specific names (Jackson State University in Jackson, MS; Winona State University in Winona, MN; Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, AL) often indicate regional college status. Most importantly, the markers of these institutions are who they serve. According to the ARRC, this includes over five million students representing nearly half of the students in the United States seeking bachelor’s degrees; over half of the Black students and nearly half of the Indigenous and Latino students seeking degrees; and nearly 40% of whom are Pell-eligible students.3  See: AASCU. (2023). https://aascu.org/strategic-plan/VisionandMission/  See: Cecilia Orphan’s (2023) “What makes a ‘good college’ – and why it matters,” an ode, in the form of a memoir, to regional public universities in which she explains how they change the lives of people like her, who grew up in poverty and went on to earn a Ph.D. and become a professor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwzPSuriQMQ&t=217s). 3  See: Seltzer, R. (2022). “Regional public universities educate nearly 5M students, according to new list.” https://www.highereddive.com/news/regional-public-universitieseducate-nearly-5m-students-new-list/639351/ 1 2

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Both AASCU and ARRC agree that but for public regional universities, a majority of low-income, first-generation, and students of color seeking college educations would not be able to do so. Federal, state, corporate, and philanthropic dollars achieve a substantially higher return on investment when applied by higher education administrators to support the educational and career development of students attending public universities, and most students nationally attend regional colleges and universities if they choose the publicly available option.4 As the most democratic institutions in the college/university sector, public regional universities serve more marginalized, first-generation students than any other category (e.g., private liberal arts, public, Carnegie “Research 1” designated) while employing lean management to carefully invest public dollars while generating significant outcomes which drive regional employment and economies.5 However, wealthy private donors and corporate/family foundations have historically and most significantly focused their efforts on providing private support to legacy institutions with billion-dollar endowments and massive annual state/federal investments and to institutions that demonstrate the least need and have the highest barriers for access and success for culturally and ethnically diverse students. Meanwhile, lower-income families pay higher and higher tuition as subsidies wane and philanthropic solutions have largely failed to meet these needs—the evidence of which is historically high student loan debt upon graduation and default on loan payback coinciding with historically low polling numbers related to individual perspectives on the value of a college degree.6 Higher education, ever on the precipice of crisis, is on the precipice of crisis. According to the ARRC, public regional universities serve most four-­ year college students and the widest range of students from diverse ethnic, 4  See: Spitalniak, L. (2022). “Public colleges offer highest chance of positive ROI to students, report finds.” https://www.highereddive.com/news/public-colleges-offer-highestchance-of-positive-roi-to-students-report-fi/618531/ 5  McClure, K. (2018). “Institutions of Opportunity: Using Presidents’ Narratives to Re-Tell the Story of Public Regional Universities.” Journal for the Study of Postsecondary and Tertiary Education. 6  A Third Way/New America poll from July, 2021 notes that nearly 2/3 of college students surveyed no longer believe the cost of college is worth it anymore; those numbers increase to 68% for Black college students, 71% for Latinx students, and 64% for current high school seniors (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/07/07/students-see-less-valuecollege-despite-positive-experiences).

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cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds when compared to private selective liberal arts institutions and research-one designated state flagships with National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I athletic departments. Because those flagship and private liberal arts institutions, with their higher-profile marketing and branding profiles and perceived status draw the lion’s share of media coverage, state subsidies, and federal research dollars, so, too do the seven-, eight-, and nine-figure gifts from the financial elite—celebrities, financiers, professional athletes, inheritors of multi-generational wealth—who have attended (along, often, with generations of their families) those institutions widely considered “elite” compared to public regionals. The media and culture-supported framing of these institutions as the most investment-worthy means that investments in their growth and sustainability is often characterized as ‘flight to quality’ as if there is no substantial quality to be found, in spades, at public regional universities (and, as if, their coterminous crises are not created by circumstances far beyond their control without sufficient investment of resources by state and local governments to confront them). Public regional fundraising officials lead leanly staffed departments to meet their university’s needs for privately enhanced support in challenging local, regional, and national contexts. Because of large, public and private liberal arts institutions’ outsized influence among their alumni and state and federal legislators and agencies, public regional universities are hit with the dual-edged challenge of receiving smaller subsidies from federal and state governments to support their operations, and fewer major gift-­ level investments7 from private donors and corporate grants. Officials at public regionals must draw from best practices shared by national organizations such as the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP); public regional university umbrella organizations such as AASCU and research coalitions like the ARRC; and collaborate with sympathetic and like-­ minded volunteers, faculty, and community organizations to amplify their efforts. Those efforts are counter-balanced by widely held negative assumptions about public regional universities and media coverage in popular higher education magazines whose coverage of them too often focus 7  While this amount differs at each institution, consistent benchmarks include the amount that would establish an endowed scholarship at the institution (a $1000 scholarship at an institution using a 4% yield on its endowment would require a $25,000 endowment), or a gift that constitutes a top 5% or 10% gift at the institution over a set period.

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on deficit model framing in the headlines, with the challenging data and contexts buried long past the nut graphs.8 Inasmuch as this project is about the challenges and innovation that are part and parcel of public regional university fundraising, this isn’t a book about philanthropic theory and philosophy. Philanthropy, a Greek term meaning “the love of people,” is a concept under much scrutiny in contemporary culture and politics, especially as the world’s wealthiest individuals draw praise and ire equally for their donations to charities. In so many ways, this is a new Gilded Age,9 with booming, concentrated wealth coupled with public displays of investment into notable causes such as addressing racial and class inequity, poverty, public health concerns, and education. As the Sages, Carnegies, and Rockefellers have been replaced by Gates, Scott, and Koch,10 one of the areas that have not benefited as notably (considering the populations they serve) are the institutions of higher education charged with educating the most diverse racial and socioeconomic populations. I intend for this exploration of the work of public regional university fundraisers to be thorough, though not always exhaustive, and neither necessarily taxonomic nor predictive regarding the future of the industry. The contexts in which professionals in this sector of higher education industry work are unique, and as such, no one person should ever assume they can offer a “How-To” or “Public Regional Fundraising for Dummies” style tome. By contrast, this book will share stories and highlight successful projects led by contemporary fundraising practitioners (and, when I believe it is instructive, and especially when I am involved personally, I will focus on mistakes and missed opportunities). This book 8  A November 9, 2022 investigation into financial concerns faced by New Jersey City University (“A Public Regional on the Edge”) leads with the university’s “grand vision [crumbling] in the wake of the pandemic,” a “$14 million budget deficit,” and questions of whether or not the university should remain open, and placed the blame on “ambitious” public regional universities. It follows with accusations of mismanagement by faculty that led to the president’s resignation. Only in the 9th and 10th paragraphs do we learn that institutions like NJCU enroll 40% of the nation’s students and a majority of low-income and firstgeneration students, and a lack of state support forced the university to make more aggressive revenue-generating decisions to make up for it (https://www.chronicle.com/ article/a-public-regional-on-the-edge). 9  Listen: “The New Gilded Age.” Throughline. https://www.npr.org/2022/04/26/ 1094794267/the-new-gilded-age 10  See “Major Gift Fundraising at HBCUs” for more detailed explanation of these philanthropists’ giving practices.

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will be useful to students studying non-profit organizational leadership, higher education scholars, early career fundraising professionals, and public regional executive-level administrators and aspirant executivelevel administrators. Its uniqueness will lie in its focus on the practitioners and institutions who produce the daily fundraising work and results, in contrast to much of the relevant research on public regional fundraising produced by journalists, higher education, and economics scholars who do not always have direct experience in university advancement and non-profit work. In academic journals as well as trade magazines (e.g., The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Inside Higher Education) the focus on challenging fundraising contexts and the projects which do not always solve those challenges often leaves readers to conclude that more effort or skill or innovation is the simple solution. Worse, their focus rarely lands on the impact of the dollars that are raised or the beneficiaries, but rather, on how the dollars raised and outcomes pale in comparison to better resourced higher education institutions. Another feature of the book that I believe will be useful is an inclusion of perspectives on HBCU fundraising, non-­NCAA Division-I athletics, and emergency needs fundraising at public regional universities. This will modernize the discussion of public regional fundraising work as well as bring discussions generally segregated and siloed within higher education into focus. I also suspect readers will likely find me to be a kind critic who at times cannot help but appreciate the work being done at these institutions by infinitely caring, compassionate, and hard-working people. It may interest the reader to know that I am not someone who has an especially sunny disposition, nor am I incapable or hesitant to offer pointed criticism when it is warranted. Flatly, I do not care to do that here. Pundits of all stripes attack public regional universities for every imaginable reason—they do too much and not enough; they are too expensive, but don’t generate enough revenue; they spend too much on athletics, but not enough to ever beat Big State U. If this ultimately reads like a love letter to public regionals, so be it. I am fond of them as a sector because of the role they have historically played, and the ones they’ll need to play moving forward to continue to build this country’s citizenry. So long as that mission depends upon adequate funding as subsidies continue to be winnowed, public regional advancement professionals will continue to serve on the front lines, and I want to focus my effort on their successes, innovation, and commitment to progress.

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University advancement officials at public regional universities rarely make the headlines. Six-figure gifts are enough to get on the university’s homepage for weeks, often; when athletic teams have surprisingly good seasons they often have to have to scurry to raise money to pay for championship rings; and vice presidents still walk downstairs or outside to collect $100 checks from long-time devoted donors (when they aren’t having meetings with alumni who don’t give, but who could tarnish the institution’s reputation, so they have to be treated like donors, anyway). The work of these officials at public regional universities remains underdiscussed and underexamined, and I hope that my focus on it reveals it as truly central to the project of public higher education in the United States in the early twenty-first century. But first, I want to explain the challenges that lay ahead of them.

The State School Philanthropy Blues Verse #1: The institutions that need the most resources depend heavily on the most financially vulnerable people AASCU recognizes approximately 400 member institutions and state university systems in the United States. These institutions are diverse concerning their mission, enrollment strategy, and geographical setting, but in a 2018 study, Kevin McClure11 defines public regional universities as having five historical missions which generally tie them together: 1. Increase opportunity for marginalized and underserved students; 2. Transform student lives through student success; 3. Lean management (a euphemism for lots of one-person departments and small staffs); 4. Teacher-scholars who emphasize instruction over research and student interaction/direction, and; 5. Serve and promote the local and regional economy.

11  McClure, K. R. (2018). Institutions of opportunity: Using presidents’ narratives to retell the story of public regional universities. Journal for the Study of Postsecondary and Tertiary Education, 3, 117–134. https://doi.org/10.28945/4167

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Scholars (Goldrick-Rab, 2016 and McMillan-Cottom, 201712) have noted how the dwindling investment in higher education over the past four decades (becoming more acute in the previous two decades because of three global economic recessions) has forced many to forego pursuit of college degrees or seek for-profit solutions, causing public regional universities to raise fees astronomically simply to keep their doors open. Those economic forces have led to dwindling enrollment at public regional universities, especially among the most financially vulnerable and underserved students (The National Center for Educational Statistics notes that HBCUs have seen a decline in enrollment nearly every year since 2000, reaching a nadir in 201913). That loss of enrollment has a spiraling effect since these are enrollment-driven institutions dependent upon tuition revenue to be able to operate successfully and serve students. When tuition revenue declines, cuts follow, services are reduced, and fewer students are retained, which causes more tuition and fee increases to remain solvent. Rising costs, declining services, and a new focus on high aptitude students from low-income and underserved backgrounds by private and large public research universities mean that many students who traditionally comprised public regional enrollments have found a new value proposition—through discounted tuition rates, more lucrative scholarship offers, and the lure of prestigious, “brand name” institutions and their perceived return on investment. Verse #2: The individuals with the most wealth wield enormous influence over the most financially desperate institutions that receive investment As state investment in higher education declines and the reliance upon private funding increases, more problems arise than philanthropic solutions can keep pace with. A trend among America’s wealthiest families engaged in philanthropy through corporate and family foundations is tied to what Anand Giridharadas refers to as “reputation laundering” in his groundbreaking 2020 expose entitled Winners Take All. The concept refers to how ultra-wealthy individuals use philanthropy to engender  See: Paying the Price and Lower Ed, respectively.  Linly, Z. (2020). “HBCUs in trouble as enrollments decline to second lowest number in 17 years.” The Root. https://www.theroot.com/hbcus-in-trouble-as-enrollments-declineto-second-lowes-1842470217 12 13

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compassion, build goodwill to cancel out ire that they would otherwise receive due to their business practices (which can often be disgustingly unethical, immoral, unlawful, or all of the above) and even soften prosecutions and judge’s sentences. Because institutions such as public regional universities cannot generate the press and prestige that wealthy families, corporations, and foundations often demand (or, to which they have become accustomed) in return for their investments, higher-profile institutions attract the 6-, 7- and 8- figure transformational investments we typically read about in higher education and philanthropic presses. This, of course, minimally impacts the lives of most underserved students, who disproportionately attend public regional universities and community colleges in droves. It perhaps should be noted as well that this criticism flatly does not apply to most alumni who make financial contributions and volunteer their time to support students, but merely those for whom organizations like university foundations are pawns in an elaborate public relations chess gambit. Adam Davidson of NPR’s Planet Money adds that elite institutions, including those in higher education, “sell a product to disgraced men: reputation recovery. They call it ‘the Halo effect.’”14 In doing so, they provide cover for nefarious activity, such as the destabilizing of the public sphere for private gain, ushering in the marginalization of fields like the humanities and arts, or at its worst, covering for universally disreputable behavior such as grooming impressionable young students or creating a litany of defenses rendering them otherwise unassailable in advance of potential or looming prosecution. In this way higher education works hand in hand with an all-too-often fawning business media sector to act as uncritical boosters of the business world (see NYT’s David Gellen’s The Man Who Broke Capitalism for such an excoriation of this role of the press). This is another explanation for why public regional universities are not engaged by such individuals—they largely do not have the media following and reputations to insulate from such activity nor do they provide targets rich enough for such investment, and some pundits argue that over-emphasis on obtaining their support can be damaging to the sector. A particularly disconcerting example in recent years involves the family foundation of one of the United States’ wealthiest individuals investing in Oklahoma University-Tulsa, a regional university located in the state’s 14  @adamdavidson (Adam Davidson). “Elite institutions--like some universities, museums, other nonprofits--sell a product to disgraced men.” Twitter, June 5, 2022.

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northeastern corner which houses the Oklahoma University College of Medicine’s clinical studies arm and a strong college of library sciences and informatics. In 2019, when news of aggressive cuts to the humanities at the University of Tulsa made national news15 because of faculty and alumni pushback, investigating reporters discovered a disturbing set of ­connections to one foundation that used its largesse to build influence in the local higher education landscape. When this foundation invested $50 million to fund the school of community medicine at Oklahoma University-Tulsa, university staff and local media heralded the decision.16 Further investigation revealed that the president at Oklahoma University-Tulsa at the time of the donation later became president at Tulsa University, where this foundation has also invested tens of millions of dollars (as well as hundreds of millions into other capital projects in Tulsa), and upon becoming president, his strategic plans focused on the exact priorities of the benefactor foundation—revealed to be an increasing focus on the teaching of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Further, the new president hired a provost whose husband was the Chief Executive Officer of the foundation in question and appointed as his university Chairman of the Board that foundation’s new Chief Executive Officer. A years-long project to minimize and remove the teaching of the arts at Tulsa’s universities to transform Tulsa University into a “STEM university” was not an organic progression agreed upon through long-term strategic planning and shared governance at the institution, but rather, as critics and faculty allege, a private sector executive’s influence, through his family foundation, carried out by his former employees inserted into university leadership positions. To tamp down criticism of the foundation and its namesake, through public philanthropy the foundation received media praise for their generosity, while driving an agenda that was neither public, democratic, or focused on the region’s educational and artistic needs as determined by its citizens. As desperate as the public regional sector is for private support due to reduced state and federal support, obtaining support in ways that pervert institutional missions and allow private corporations to dictate the contours of higher education is an equally undesirable solution to an admittedly difficult problem. 15  See: Howland, J. and Barron, S. (2019). “Inside the academic destruction of a university.” https://www.city-journal.org/academic-destruction-univ-tulsa 16  See: “University of Oklahoma Receives $50 Million From George Kaiser Family Foundation.” Philosophy News Digest. https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/ university-of-oklahoma-receives-50-million-from-george-kaiser-family-foundation

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Verse #3: Financial desperation leads to mission creep All of this gets to the heart of an ongoing discussion as to what makes a great university truly great. Pundits differ, and every university has an opinion (for evidence, check each one’s home webpage) on how good universities become great and maintain their status as such. Indiana University Emeritus Professor of English and American Studies Murray Sperber, in Beer and Circus (2000), decried the notion that universities who engage in the “arms race,” or the perpetual one-upmanship of expanding their athletic facilities, housing amenities, and investing in all manner of growth while gutting the academic enterprise is unsustainable in the long run and leads inevitably to demise. Of course, those efforts do manage to capture a great deal of imagination among prospective students, alumni, and supporters alike. The counterpoint to this argument is former Adidas executive Jeremy Darlow’s thesis in Brands Win Championships (2015), which takes the “Flutie Effect” argument to its foregone conclusion, namely, institutions who invest in the proliferation of their athletic brands most thoroughly will see returns in athletic performance, overall student recruitment and enrollment growth, and revenue—and those who do not, will perish. Regional universities across the country have taken this challenge head-on as many have sought opportunities to move to NCAA Division I, or move into more competitive conferences with better television contracts and more exposure in markets where the university recruits, or to elevate their football programs from NCAA Division II to Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), or, from FCS to the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). These moves have yielded excellent returns in some instances, woeful failures in others, and all the while, many alumni and faculty are left wondering if moving in the direction of aggressively seeking new market share and private revenues at all costs is ultimately healthy for the public regional sector. Regrettably, alumni and governing board members, along with donors, will herald (and seek/provide funding) such moves often in the place of exhibiting such enthusiastic advocacy for building new academic buildings or pursuing new degree programs. The academic affairs equivalent of the arms race discussion relates to the pursuit of Carnegie Research 1 (R1) or Research 2 (R2) status. Administrators, governing boards, and campus executives often covet the designation because of its potential to lead to better rankings in national surveys such as those performed by Forbes and U.S.  News and World Report. Faculty, however, are often ambivalent if not skeptical, noting that

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the elevated ranking has a material impact on their workloads and in their expectations as regional university professors.17 Nicholls State Professor of English Richmond Eustis, in an Inside Higher Education editorial, wrote about his beloved Nicholls State University, which serves a rural region of southeastern Louisiana several rural (and breathtakingly beautiful) highways down the road from the state’s capital of Baton Rouge and the state’s cultural and financial center in New Orleans. In “Taking ‘Regional’ and ‘Public’ Seriously,18” Eustis notes that regional universities should be measured as stewards of place primarily and evaluated by how well they serve their regions cultural, financial, and educational needs rather than how they fare in national rankings and on their ability to imitate fabricated or imagined versions of larger universities. Of course, universities that rely  upon state support and favorable public opinion to simply remain viable struggle to self-determine have increasingly sought revenue wherever it is available simply to offset subsidy reductions, and this often puts university executives at odds with those ideals. And surely, increased research activity and fundraising yield can have a monumental impact on the populations of students served by public regional universities. But those research requirements on top of the 4–4 (and often 5–5) teaching loads of public regional university professors create an untenable work situation for those faculty, who often sought opportunities at public regional universities because of their love for teaching, not their interest in or desire to perform or supervise research. While this argument continues to unfold, generation after generation of students seek and begin their academic careers at public regional universities, and because of their growing needs, the work of university fundraisers to support those students—all qualms about the sources of the support aside—continues apace, often hiding in plain sight or omitted nearly completely from the public record. An analysis of this work and all its contours, the successes and pitfalls, the heartwarming stories and the cautionary narratives requires extensive examination and coverage of those daily efforts on hundreds of unheralded campuses across the country. Even as their employers face existential threats to their continued 17  See: Orphan, Cecilia. [@CeciliaOrphan]. July 2, 2019. Does anyone know of any research showing that transitioning from R2 to R1 status will improve your institution’s standing. [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/CeciliaOrphan/status/1146228590767304705 18  See: Eustis, R. (2022). Taking ‘Regional’ and ‘Public’ Seriously. Inside Higher Ed. h t t p s : / / w w w. i n s i d e h i g h e r e d . c o m / b l o g s / j u s t - v i s i t i n g / g u e s t - p o s t - t a k i n g ‘regional’-and-‘public’-seriously

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existence and undergo identity crises that create desperate needs for new funding each passing year. While these are the challenges fundraisers face at public regional universities, narratives and meta-narratives about the institutional type circulate through traditional media and create a word-­ cloud of associated concepts with their present-day efforts in crisis and their future in peril. They are characterized as not nimble enough by some and not dedicated enough to their core mission by others. They are admonished because they don’t run more “like businesses” by businesspeople and legislators who don’t invest in them (how well do businesses with insufficient capital investment perform?). And the governing boards who appoint their leaders often evade scrutiny while the blame for poor performance lands on the institution itself. On the topic of fundraising, as if history started yesterday, public regional universities are told they simply need to generate more revenue as if 40 years of decreased investment and expensive state and federally mandated compliance haven’t created the crisis they currently face. A media ecosystem that fawns over celebrities and feeds a populace obsessed with cults of personality assists the castigation of public regional universities by focusing on the institutions they support, creating a reward system for supporting the highest-profile institutions (and neglecting those most in need). Moreover, institutions capable of generating significant media due to their high-profiles, portfolios of famous donors, and strong connections to power, appear more robustly engaged and successful at fundraising than smaller, lower-profile institutions.

What the Media Talk About When They Talk About Fundraising As I began drafting in the early stages of assembling this book, I regularly read national and trade magazines that covered higher education. To begin more carefully delineating key differences between public regional university advancement news coverage and fundraising in other higher education sectors (e.g., Carnegie R1-designated institutions, private institutions, U.S. News and World Report-designated “National” universities), I scanned the daily headlines to see which universities garnered headlines for significant private investments. Here are the kind of headlines I routinely read in those first few days:

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“Student loan relief: How one activist group is fighting college debt19” (debt eliminated for 500 students at Bennett College: private HBCU); “U. of Houston Medical School Lands $50 Million From Billionaire Tilman Fertitta20” (public: national university: R1 designation); “Public Universities Shouldn’t Feel Guilty About Accepting Megagifts From Wealthy Donors21” ($1.425 billion pledged to University of Oregon: public: state flagship: R1 designation); “U. of Louisville Receives $47 Million Gift to Launch New Downtown Campus22” (public: national university: R1 designation); “Institute pledges $1.5 billion to support scientists of color23” (Fund named after president emeritus H. Freeman Hraboski: University of Maryland-Baltimore County: public: national university: R1 designation); “Retired Blackstone Executive and Wife Give $100 Million to Underrepresented Students24” (establishes fund at Loyola University-­ Chicago: private: national university: R2 designation).

Months later, The Chronicle of Philanthropy released its annual analysis profiling the 50 largest charitable donors in the United States. Among the notable megadonor investments in higher education, both familiar names and newcomers to the list demonstrated an obvious trend—providing tens of millions of dollars of support to institutions whose endowments were 19  See: Quintana, C. (2022). “Student loan relief: How one activist group is fighting college debt.” USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2022/05/21/ student-loan-relief-how-one-activist-group-fighting-college-debt/9811104002/?gnt-cfr=1 20  See: DiMento, M. (2022). “U. of Houston Medical School lands $50 million from billionaire Tilman Fertitta.” The Chronicle of Philanthropy. https://www.philanthropy.com/ article/u-of-houston-medical-school-lands-50-million-from-billionaire-tilman-fertitta 21  See: Schill, Michael. (2022). “Public universities shouldn’t feel guilty about accepting megagifts from wealthy donors.” The Chronicle of Philanthropy. https://www.philanthropy.com/article/public-universities-shouldnt-feel-guilty-about-accepting-megagifts-from-wealthy-donors 22  See: Deppen, L. (2022). “U. of Louisville receives $47 million gift to launch new downtown campus.” Louisville Business First. https://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/ news/2022/05/25/uofl-recieves-47m-gift-to-launch-new-downtown-cam.html 23  See: Lumpkin, L. (2022). “UMBC’s Freeman Hrabowski is namesake of new $1.5 billion scholars program.” Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/26/freeman-hrabowski-scholars-howard-hughes-medical-institute/ 24  See: Di Mento, M. (2022). “Retired Blackstone Executive and Wife Give $100 Million for Scholarships to Underrepresented Students.” The Chronicle of Philanthropy. https:// www.philanthropy.com/article/retired-blackstone-executive-and-wife-give-100-millionfor-scholarships-for-underrepresented-students

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already in the hundreds of millions (and some in the billions) and that serve a disproportionately less ethnically diverse, from higher-income families, and whose families have had multiple generations attend and graduate college compared to public regional institutions. Among the notable donations to higher education among the Top 50 philanthropists: “Edward Avedisian, a retired Boston Pops clarinetist who amassed a fortune trading stocks on the side. Avedisian gave $100 million to Boston University ($37.7 billion endowment, as of 2021) before his death in December”; “David Frederick and his wife, Sophia Lynn, who made gifts totaling $40 million to the University of Pittsburgh ($5.68 billion endowment, as of 2021) and Oxford University in England”; “Mary Bastian and Emily Markham, the last members of a multigenerational Utah farming and ranching family, who donated 100 acres of land worth $41.3 million to Utah State University ($512 million endowment, as of 2021)”; “Gordon and Joyce Davis […] gave $44 million to Texas Tech University ($1.69 billion endowment, as of 2021),” and; “(Several universities) received individual donations of at least $10 million from Philanthropy 50 donors in 2022 (including) McPherson College ($130 million endowment, as of 2022), […] and Samford University ($297 million endowment, as of 2020)”25

The reader surely gets the gist. Aside from the rare outlier, and the flurry of sui generis gifts given by billionaire philanthropist Mackenzie Scott, many of which were eight-figure gifts at public HBCUs that more than doubled their total endowments, the lion’s share of eight-, nine-, and even ten-figure gifts made to institutions of higher education are given to private universities and flagship institutions with high recognizability and prestige. As public regional universities launch $20–$50 million capital campaigns with regularity, large public and prominent private universities 25  See: DiMento, M and Lindsay, D. (2023). “New names Join Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg on list of Charity’s 50 Biggest Donors.” Chronicle of Philanthropy. https://www.philanthropy.com/ article/new-names-join-bill-gates-michael-bloomberg-on-list-of-charitys-50-biggest-donors

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announce billion-dollar campaigns. While the 30 largest university endowments in the United States are all larger than $2 billion, nearly half of public regional university endowments are less than $100 million.26 And when universities like the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point receive a $10 million donation—the largest in its history—from a Fortune 650 company, to fund their business school, news coverage typically doesn’t go any further than regional news and television stations and the university’s social media pages.27 One is left to ponder the same question Malcolm Gladwell poses in the Revisionist History podcast entitled “My Little Hundred Million,” a riveting story about how Henry Rowan’s $100 million investment in what was previously known as Glassboro State College (and is now known as Rowan University). “In the early ’90s, Hank Rowan gave $100 million to a tiny public university in Glassboro, New Jersey: not Harvard, not Yale, not even to his alma mater, MIT […] why has it proven so difficult for other philanthropists to follow his lead?28”

Of course, many of the United States’ biggest philanthropists haven’t followed the lead of Henry Rowan, despite the undeniable impact of his generosity. Oprah Winfrey’s 2020 $12 million donation to her alma mater Tennessee State University seems quite generous, even considering her $2.5 billion-dollar net worth. However, it was less than her donation to Morehouse College, a private men’s college, which established a $25 million endowment because of her giving29 to the school several months after 26  Median value of public regional university endowments reported is $96.25 million, with 69/129 reported below $100 million based off 2021 NACUBO-TIAA Study of Endowments. https://www.nacubo.org/Research/2021/Public-NTSE-Tables 27  See: Meyerhoffer, K. (2022.) “UW-Stevens Point receives $10 million donation from Sentry Insurance.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/ education/2022/12/15/uw-stevens-point-receives-10-million-donation-from-sentryinsurance/69725834007/. A search for coverage of this gift in national philanthropy publications or any other non-in-state media revealed no returns. 28  Transcript of “My Little Hundred Million,” Revisionist History, 21 July 2016, https:// www.podgist.com/revisionist-history/my-little-hundred-million/index.html 29  Her $13 million donation in 2019 added to an endowment she established, which had grown to $13 million by 2019. Her donation to Tennessee State University was $12 million (see:https://andscape.com/videos/part-of-oprah-winfreys-12-million-donation-assiststennessee-state-university/).

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billionaire Robert Smith donated $34 million to pay off the student loan debt of every graduating student in spring 2019. Why give to a university with an endowment many times the size of Tennessee State University, her actual alma mater, which serves lower-income families on the whole than Morehouse? Kevin Hart and Michael Strahan had a well-­covered philanthropic tete-a-tete involving Texas Southern University and their “Ocean of Soul” Marching band. Strahan, a standout football player at Texas Southern University who was inducted into the National Football League (NFL) Hall of Fame in 2014 was publicly challenged to donate to his alma mater when comedian Kevin Hart discovered that their marching band was attempting to raise $150,000 to travel to Canton, OH, to play at Strahan’s installation. Hart put up the first $50,000, which Strahan, who’d earned nearly $77 million in his NFL career, then contributed the remainder of $100,000. This, of course, covered their cost of travel to and from Ohio, only. Who did this “donation” truly benefit? David Letterman has proudly waived the flag of his beloved Ball State University, mentioning it many times over the years as the host of “The Late Show.” However, with an estimated net worth north of $400 million, the most notable donations he has made to the institution are $5000 scholarships for journalism students and his Emmys so that they could be permanently displayed in the university’s archival collection. Ty Pennington, best known as the host of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” traces his humble beginnings to Kennesaw State University. While he is known as the charming and charitable host who makes homeowners’ dreams come true, he has not made the same dreams of his alma mater come to fruition, as there is no public record of him sharing his estimated $15 million net worth with the institution. By comparison, there has been a near constant stream over the decades of entrepreneurs, entertainers, political and business leaders lining up to help the most recent billion-dollar campaign succeed at Big Name Universities, despite their otherwise ample endowment values and revenue generation, while the neediest students and institutions’ solicitations go unanswered. With fewer and fewer students able to afford the cost of college, a significantly smaller number of individuals/family foundations/corporations willing to invest (and small staffs with dwindling resources to identify and solicit them), and nearly a generation of graduates facing generational debt from student loans unable to make large donations to their alma maters, public regional development and advancement must pivot in ways that yield to most meaningful investment in student success. Small

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endowments mean that yields only pay a fraction of the total cost of tuition and fees students are responsible for. And a high concentration of first-­ generation graduates working in fields such as teaching and nursing— staples of most public regionals—mean that alumni simply do not have the means to make large donations to cover such costs—exacerbated by the fact that these middle-income employees have massive student loan debts to repay. While public regionals still proclaim themselves as value proposition institutions—budgets are moral documents, and commitment without money is counterfeit. So, when they cannot guarantee the value they proclaim to be core to their missions, how can they refocus their efforts so that they do not abandon their historical missions? The historical indefatigability of the people who love and are employed by public regional institutions is waning, as is the energy of many workers in the era of “The Great Resignation.” I have met and talked with members of “legacy” families who have attended public regional institutions for multiple generations, and increasingly, with each new generation, the likelihood of those legacies continuing reduces. It isn’t a matter of disloyalty or disinterest, as their parents and grandparents; uncles and cousins; church elders and community members still love good old State U. But the Marxist adage that “consciousness doesn’t determine social being; social being determines consciousness” rings true here in myriad ways. The new value proposition means that graduating from the local regional university will still leave students saddled with tens of thousands in debt while the behemoth public R1 and private universities offer more in financial aid, more robust alumni networks, and more impressive amenities, facilities, and student experiences. As other gaps yawn in American society and the economy—for example, CEO pay vs. their employees; wealth of the 1% vs. the 99%; variations in life expectancy of citizens based on the zip code they are born and live within—the gap between public regional universities and their institutional peers does the same. Without large endowments or infusions of cash from wealthy alumni and supporters, we now face a moment when—counterintuitive as this seems—the most financially vulnerable individuals who are college ready face better socioeconomic prospects by attending more expensive universities. Meanwhile, financially vulnerable students without the high test scores and GPAs to go to those institutions are amassing student loan debt at true crisis levels receive less value from their education at many public regionals because they simply lack the resources to support those students properly.

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Just like Sisyphus, at least as far as Orwell’s analysis of the myth is concerned, public regional university advancement professionals must do this work with the absurdity of it all front and center in our minds: 1. If federal and state governments funded higher education properly, our work would not need to exist, but over the past four decades as these resources have been winnowed, university advancement efforts in public regional universities continue to expand; 2. Our work requires us to pursue funding from individuals, foundations, and companies who historically have preferred to provide more significant funding to higher education institutions who need it far less, so obtaining major gifts requires more resources to identify and cultivate them (which leanly resourced institutions do not have), and; 3. Since public regional university alumni disproportionately come from less wealthy families and carry more student debt, and will work in fields that do not pay lucratively such as education, social work, and nursing, public regional university sources of significant private revenue must come from more financially risky sources, and because they often focus intensely on a small number of funders with their own funding agendas, the investments can cause significant mission creep. While the central thesis of Adam Harris’ The State Must Provide (2021) is that public higher education is a state and federal government responsibility to provide for the good of the nation, he also points out the myriad ways that the State has failed to accomplish this responsibility, particularly at financially vulnerable and culturally indispensable institutions such as Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) and HBCUs. Those of us who continue to do the work of promoting and advancing public regional universities to generate the engagement and revenue necessary to continue to offer the critical educational resources of public education-faculty, staff, board members, and citizen advocates, have rolled the rock up the unforgiving hill for decades only to find out each morning that the rock is once again at the bottom. This book is an attempt to catalog the ways that public regional university advancement professionals have sought resources to develop solutions to this multifaceted crisis. Through analysis, interviews, stories, and reflection, I’ll share how institutions and professionals navigate this obstacle course and highlight their highs, lows, and ways through and forward. I am proud of the work we do—amazed, really—and I hope the reader will be, as well.

CHAPTER 2

“We’re Number R1!”: The Public Regional University Quest for Research University Status and Its Impact on Fundraising

A university spokesperson can generate interest, engagement, and real sex appeal for their university in several ways. A prominent commencement speaker likely to generate national attention; a returning celebrity alumnus making a large gift; groundbreaking on a state-of-the-art facility or introduction of a new major/school/college; hiring a rock-star new coach. Announcements regarding a new Carnegie Foundation university-research ranking isn’t likely to garner the same level of interest from alumni, though many would argue such a distinction is far more important for public regional universities regarding its impact among media, prospective students, and future faculty. The quality, variety, and synergy of research performed at regional universities have significant impacts on regional economies; private, corporate, and state/federal government investment; and on the quality of faculty that universities can recruit and retain. For those reasons and many more, many universities focus energy on improving their research status, and doing so stands to have an impact on how university fundraising staff approach alumni and potential donors. Regional universities fighting for market share against larger and more significantly resourced public flagship and private research universities among prospective students and competing to attract faculty can also benefit from promoting research activity, and several examples prove that the return on investment pays off in institutional reputation improvement and media engagement. However, given the teaching mission, commitment to student success and access, and leanness of resources and available faculty © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. J. Broussard, Fundraising at Public Regional Universities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45481-3_2

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(as well as support for research endeavors) some critics believe leaning into this process augurs mission creep for all but the most substantially resourced public regional universities. Nearly five decades ago, the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education introduced a methodology for ranking the research activity conducted at universities and colleges in the United States.1 Public regional universities have historically fallen into the Master’s Colleges and Universities and Baccalaureate Colleges categories, given their focus on undergraduate education, and historical missions to produce professionals in teaching and nursing and other needs tied to local workforce, for which advanced degrees are not as critical to entering and advancing to and through promotions and career changes. Because of the number of career options in education that occasionally require Master’s, Specialist’s (aka “Master’s +30”), and Doctorate of Education degrees, many public regional universities offer such opportunities, even though the majority of degrees awarded in any given year will be bachelor’s degrees. However, for some public regional universities, for myriad reasons including geographical uniqueness, or being situated in extra-rural or dense urban areas with diverse workforce credentialing needs, there is significantly more availability of advanced degree options. According to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, once an institution awards “at least 50 Master’s degrees” and “at least 20 Doctoral degrees” or a combination of 30 Doctoral and Professional practice degrees, and secures/expends at least $5 million on research activity, it can earn the second highest ranking that they recognize—a “High Research Activity” university. The designation is indeed a marker of institutional uniqueness, as in 2021, less than 12% of universities and colleges in the United States achieved “Very High Research Activity (aka ‘R1’),” “High Research Activity (aka ‘R2’),” or “Doctoral/Professional University” status.2 Among the 3940 colleges and universities the Carnegie Commission evaluated in 2021, they only rated 457 as R1 or R2, and of those, only 231 were public. In other words, R1 and R2 designation at public regional universities aren’t just signs of specific success in research activity, they are markers of uniquely competitive 1  See “Carnegie Classifications” for a description of Carnegie research categories: https:// carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu/classification_descriptions/basic.php 2  Carnegie Classification of Institution of Higher Education, 2021. Summary tables available here: https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fcarnegiecla s s i f i c a t i o n s . a c e n e t . e d u % 2 F d o w n l o a d s % 2 F C C I H E 2 0 2 1 - S u m m a r y Ta b l e s . xlsx&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK

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institutions for research dollars with potential for private-public partnerships and project-based learning opportunities that attract stronger students and faculty equally concerned with teaching and research. Such characteristics are music to advancement professionals’ ears, as they lend themselves well to fundraising projects up to and including capital campaigns and position the university to compete with large public and elite private universities for precious federal, state, and private company/foundation contracts to produce high-quality research. CASE’s Voluntary Support of Education (VSE) encourages institutions to account for research funding in their total attainment calculations. In the 2021 revisions to the VSE, research attainment is defined as: Funds that the donor restricts for scientific, technical, and humanistic investigation. This category includes philanthropic research grants for individual and/or project research as well as grants for institutes and research centers. It includes some payments processed through the Offices of Sponsored Programs and Research, and it can also include some grants received from private and public universities and nonprofit organizations. […] Much sponsored research is philanthropic and not contractual, so it falls under the heading of “Grants.3”

It would stand to reason, then, that institutions with high research activity designations would integrate that designation into their marketing and institutional branding as well as their institutional fundraising efforts and capital campaigns. To examine this thesis, I will investigate the positioning of high research activity in the institutional external relations efforts of public regional institutions with varied geographical and constituent attributes to determine how these institutions use the designation to promote outreach, engagement, and fundraising. Each section will include a brief institutional profile, their research designation and highlighted research programs, analysis of how they feature their research designation in online and promotional materials, and what impact the designation has had on their fundraising efforts according to university officials. More than just an identification of best practices, I hope to discover strategies and solutions for Carnegie-designated high research activity institutions and those which are aspirant that directly impact fundraising 3  See: “CASE Voluntary Support of Education Survey.” (2022). https://www.case.org/ system/files/media/inline/VSE%20Survey%20Guidance%20Document%20Updated%20 10112022.pdf

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activities on public regional university campuses. The following are brief institutional sketches of regional universities that have earned R1 or R2 status and the ways that those institutions have taken advantage of fundraising opportunities to bolster their research enterprises.

Jackson State University Location: Jackson, Mississippi Academic affiliations (if any): HBCU, Space Grant,4 Sea Grant5 Enrollment: 63466 Carnegie research activity classification7: Doctoral University—High research activity (R2) Total attainment (5-year average, 2016–2020, and high attainment mark)8: $7,464,671; $10,386,900 in 2019 Notable research fact: In 2017, Jackson State attained $41.4 million in federal, state, and private research contracts and spent $33.5 million on

4  One of 850 university, college, state agency, museum, and industry partners identified by NASA as a site for the promotion of space exploration (per NASA.gov). 5  One of approximately 100 educational institutions that “Encourag(e) and develop programs consisting of instruction, practical demonstrations, publications, and otherwise, by sea grant colleges and other suitable institutes, laboratories, and public and private agencies through marine advisory programs with the object of imparting useful information to person currently employed or interested in the various fields related to the development of marine resources, the scientific community, and the general public,” per the National Sea Grant College and Program Act of 1966. 6  All enrollment data in this chapter per IPEDS/NCES as of Fall 2020 total enrollment. 7  All Carnegie research activity data per 2019–2020 school year. 8  All attainment figures obtained from 990 data, per ProPublica NonProfit Explorer (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/) unless otherwise available through self-published university annual reports. To compare fundraising activity among institutions who do not always release fundraising data publicly, and because many universities do not participate in public reporting of their fundraising data in response to surveys such as the CASE Voluntary Support of Education (VSE) report, I am using 990 data obtained from Internal Revenue Service reporting. These reports, though they may include sources of revenue generated at institutions not tied directly to fundraising activity make cross-institutional comparisons challenging, but at least are useful for documenting revenue generation patterns and progress at individual institutions (though even those reports over long periods can have outlier years due to large one-time gifts or capital campaigns).

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research expenditures.9 By 2021, the university attained external research dollars of $96.4 million10 President/Chancellor and tenure: Thomas Hudson, J.D. (2020–202311) University Advancement executive and tenure: Gwendolyn Capers (2021) President Thomas Hudson, whose mother, brothers, and sisters went to Jackson State (as would he, later) thought of Jackson State as Mississippi’s comprehensive urban university and a pathway to a better existence long before he knew it was an HBCU. In the decade before he assumed the presidency, he worked in Equal Employment and Opportunity, as chief diversity officer, as chief operating officer, and helped navigate the institution through several changes in the presidency (four changes in four years from 2017 to 2021), staving off financial exigency and maintaining their accreditation before being named permanently as president in 2021. Because his undergraduate experience was not one often stereotypically associated with the HBCU experience—replete with the attendance of Battles of the Bands and road trips to rivalry football games, pledging into a Greek organization or competing and winning office in student government or a place on the Homecoming court, his points of pride when he describes Jackson State’s positioning in the higher education market sounds somewhat unique among HBCU presidents and chancellors. He credits Jackson State with preparing him for law school and the challenges that would lie ahead of him as he pursued a career in politics and private practice before returning to work at his alma mater. His appreciation for how his undergraduate experience prepared him for pursuit of an advanced degree that led him down his eventual career path translates into the commitment he has made to pursue Carnegie R1 status, making it the lone

9  Per Jackson State University Division of Research and Federal Relations annual report, 2016–17. 10  See: “The JSU 2020–2021 EAC Report Card.” http://www.jsumsnews.com/?p=53728 11  President Hudson resigned his position in 2023. In research I have conducted for HBCUDigest.com since 2015, I note that HBCU executives experience turnover at rates significantly higher than their MSI and PWI peers, with 20–30% of all HBCUs firing or asking for resignations annually. Jackson State University has now had six presidents or interim presidents since 2017.

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HBCU to achieve the status, despite the historical underfunding of these institutions nationwide.12 Some of the hurdles to more prodigious research output that President Hudson has identified are a lack of lab space, resources to support graduate students, and the expense of promoting faculty to full professorships and awarding course releases to supervise research. With a $60 million endowment and lower comparable enrollment to urban regional universities across the country, these resources will need to be attained from private donors and through federal, state, and private grant acquisition. He sees the move to R1 as crucial both in the efforts to recruit nationally for the best students seeking an HBCU undergraduate experience, but also as critical for the exposure of first-generation, low-income, “but for Jackson State …” students to be exposed to research to transform their lives and introduce them to futures they have not yet imagined through research.13 Despite these challenges, Jackson State thrives as a research university, and their research programs are a tip of their fundraising spear. This commitment results in Jackson State being ranked in the top 200 universities in the United States for research activity, in the same company of the much more substantially funded University of Mississippi, Mississippi State, and Southern Mississippi.14 Research grants account for a significant amount of fundraising at Jackson State. In 2016–17, private corporate and foundation grants accounted for $1.97 million at Jackson State, representing nearly 33% of total attainment. According to Assistant Vice President for research and economic development Almesha Campbell, Ph.D. and supporting data from Mississippi Institutions for Higher Learning by 2020–21, that amount increased to $5.1 million in non-government grants, a 36% share of their over $14 million in total attainment, a record high for the university since 2000.15 Their robust research programs include a technology transfer center, a center for innovation and entrepreneurship, sponsored 12  See: “Thomas Hudson, In the Margins.” Diverse Podcasts. https://www.diverseeducation.com/podcasts/podcast/15280905/meet-jackson-state-universitys-presidentthomas-k-hudson 13  See: “Thomas Hudson, In the Margins.” Diverse Podcasts. https://www.diverseeducation.com/podcasts/podcast/15280905/meet-jackson-state-universitys-presidentthomas-k-hudson 14  See: “The top American research universities.” https://mup.umass.edu/sites/default/ files/annual_report_2020.pdf 15  According to ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer 990 data, 2000–2021.

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research, and a federal relations department that engages federal agencies directly to lobby for support. Among their largest private and corporate sponsors, they count W.K.  Kellogg, Rand Corporation, and the Lilly Foundation as supporters, and they recognize their research partners and tout the university’s success in detailed annual reports.16,17 When considering Jackson State University’s prospects for fundraising growth in the coming years, many would be inclined to attribute the enthusiasm of campus officials and alumni to their high-profile ex-football coach, Deion Jackson (aka “Coach Prime”) whose recognizability as an NFL Hall of Fame football player and previous lack of affiliation with HBCUs garners national media coverage. And while their football team plays in a 60,000-seat stadium, semi-regularly on national television (both atypical for NCAA Division I FCS members) it is likely that the university’s prodigious research output will drive their fundraising gains more aggressively than their athletic exploits. The dividends of becoming the nation’s first R1 HBCU—even ahead of household names like Howard, Morehouse, and Spelman—will continue to payoff long after “Coach Prime” stalks the sidelines and attracts investments from companies and federal agencies who could care less if they win this year’s BoomBox Challenge vs. Southern University (though their alumni, I’m certain, would disagree with my assessment, and by the by, they did win 35–0!).

Kennesaw State University Location: Kennesaw, Georgia Academic affiliations (if any): Space grant Enrollment: 41,181 Carnegie research activity classification: Doctoral University—High research activity (R2) Total attainment (5-year average, 2016–2020, and high attainment mark): $50,854,325; $56,320,000 in 2020

16  See: “Jackson State University Research Annual Report.” https://www.jsums.edu/ research/annual-reports/ 17  Additional information in this section provided through phone interview with Almesha Campbell, Ph.D., Jackson State University, July 1, 2022.

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Notable research fact: From 2018 to 2020, Kennesaw State attained $24.4 million in external research funding and spent $42 million on research expenditures.18 President/Chancellor and tenure: Kathy Schwaig, Ph.D. (2022) University Advancement executive and tenure: Lance Burchett (2018) Kennesaw State University is one of the fastest growing universities in the United States, based on enrollment.19 Their research profile and fundraising successes are keeping pace with their explosive growth, and each play a key role in driving the university’s growth. President Kathy Schwaig was elevated to the role of president in 2022 after serving for two decades at the institution as a professor, chair, dean, and ultimately provost and chief operating officer. Her journey through the professoriate and administration over this pivotal time in the university’s trajectory qualifies her singularly to be the top executive, as she has not only witnessed the university’s burgeoning investment in research, but also has played key roles in advancing this plank of the university mission. Her first landmark successes as the Dean of Kennesaw State’s Coles College of Business include multiple national Top-25 rankings among public universities (#3  in the U.S. for Global Executive MBA, CEO Magazine; #23  in the U.S. and #1 in Georgia for online MBA, Fortune Magazine).20 Providing research opportunities for students, supporting faculty, and featuring a doctoral program in business administration expressly to produce future faculty are cornerstones of the college’s success. The focus on research extends from the President’s Office, through university development, into the branding of the institution. The institution’s tagline, “Find Your Wings,” not only addresses the mascot (the “Owls”) but also is a metaphor for students learning who they are, what they want to become, and obtaining the tools to make their dreams happen. Following along with the suggestion of McClure (2018)21 that public regional universities aim to transform lives through student success, it is  Per Kennesaw State University Office of Research. https://ir.kennesaw.edu/  See: Mann, J. (2022). “Kennesaw State, Georgia Southern among the fastest-growing colleges in US.” Atlanta Business Chronicle. https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/ news/2022/06/30/fastest-growing-colleges-universities.html?ana=RSS&s=article_search 20   See: “Kennesaw State University: Rankings.” https://www.kennesaw.edu/about/ rankings.php 21  McClure, K. R. (2018). “Institutions of opportunity: Using presidents’ narratives to retell the story of public regional universities.” Journal for the Study of Postsecondary and Tertiary Education, 3, 117–134. 18 19

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apparent that their goal is to help students who have never imagined that they could be capable researchers, learn to do so, and explore educational and career options that feature research (p. 117). The “Find Your Wings” campaign, winner of a gold medal at the 36th annual Educational Advertising Awards, features students engaging in research in every:30 spot. As institutional leadership debuted the brand campaign in 2019, they articulated how it would highlight research as a key component of the university’s mission as a “student-centered, research-driven” R2 institution.22 In “Roadmap to R2 Success,23” featured on the Office of the President website at Kennesaw State, two of the primary objectives stated are “enhance undergraduate educational experiences” and “promote interdisciplinary research with relevance” and key initiatives necessary to accomplish these objectives are to increase external funding for scholarships and identify potential collaboration opportunities with external stakeholders. Both of those initiatives require successful engagement of university advancement to identify and attain donations to increase scholarship awards as well as to act as a tip of the spear with constituent engagement to identify private-public partnerships mutually beneficial to those companies and the institution. Vice President of University Advancement Lance Burchett notes that “student scholarship spending for 2021 is $3.3 million compared to $1.7 million in 2018,” and that the university’s endowment has doubled—to just over $100 million—in only two years’ time.24 The achievement of R2 status at the institution and the whopping success of their fundraising efforts may cause one to wonder which element is the chicken, and which is the egg? More important than that quandary is the realization that no matter which element comes first, pronounced fundraising commitments and well-articulated fundraising objectives tied to those commitments have proven synergistic at Kennesaw State to research and fundraising goals, and most importantly, to their students, faculty, staff, and the communities their research benefits. With increased revenues and research expenditures come more diverse opportunities for research engagement, and increased need for funding 22  See: “KSU Unveils New Brand Strategy.” https://news.kennesaw.edu/stories/2019/ brand-unveiling-story.php 23   See: “The Roadmap to R2 Success.” https://planning.kennesaw.edu/docs/ r2-roadmap.pdf 24  See: “Fundraising Success Supports Rapid Growth at Kennesaw State University.” https://news.kennesaw.edu/stories/2021/ksu-fundraising-success-supports-growth.php

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and resources to train and supervise research activity. First-year and sophomore students have opportunities to participate in guided research supervised by faculty and earn stipends to do so, as well as funding to work on projects over the summer25 and support to attend national research conferences and complete unsupervised creative or research projects and present at conferences or submit for publication.26 As the university grows its research profile, they have increasingly invested in faculty development, offering summer grant writing training programs whose participants have gone on to write grants funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH).27 Kennesaw State has also successfully engaged private companies for research investment, such as Birla Carbon (a $16B company headquartered in Marietta, Georgia, and the world’s leading manufacturer of carbon black additives) which contributed $275,000 for student scholarships.28 Securing major gifts for research has also played a prominent role in Kennesaw State’s most recent capital campaign. In their first-ever comprehensive capital campaign, launched in 2007 and culminating in 2011, the university secured $75 million. Major gifts for research included the university’s largest ever gift for scholarships to establish a graduate fellows program and provide support for master’s and doctoral students; a $1.5 million gift to fund the Center for Sustainable Journalism; and a 56-acre farm, valued at over $1 million, to establish the KSU Harmony Hill Organic Farm & Apiary. Kennesaw State University Foundation Chair Trenton Turk has noted that their fundraising success has two principal effects: “provid(ing) a world-class education and produc(ing) groundbreaking research.29” A decade later, their most recent annual fundraising totals exceed $55 million, nearly quadrupling fundraising attainment over less than a decade ago. Kennesaw State’s decision to elevate the institution’s reputation by focusing on becoming a research hub in northeastern Georgia has dramatically impacted both their institution’s standing and their ability to secure major investments to support students.  See: “Funding for Faculty.” https://research.kennesaw.edu/our/funding/faculty.php   See: “Funding for Students.” https://research.kennesaw.edu/our/funding/students.php 27  Investigator Magazine. https://mydigimag.rrd.com/publication/?m=59834&i=70441 7&p=14&ver=html5. Pages 12–14. 28  Investigator Magazine. https://mydigimag.rrd.com/publication/?m=59834&i=70441 7&p=14&ver=html5. Pages 24–25. 29  See: “Fundraising Success Supports Rapid Growth at Kennessaw State University.” https://news.kennesaw.edu/stories/2021/ksu-fundraising-success-supports-growth.php 25 26

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University of Louisiana at Lafayette Location: Lafayette, Louisiana Enrollment: 16,450 Academic affiliations (if any): Southern Universities Research Association30; Space grant Carnegie research activity classification: Doctoral University—Very high research activity (R1) Total attainment (5-year average, 2016–2020, and high attainment mark): $19,012,059; $26,241,801 (2018) Notable research fact: The University of Louisiana at Lafayette Research Park is a 143-acre facility that hosts the National Wetlands Research Center, Estuarine Habitats, and Coastal Fisheries Center, Governor’s Office of Homeland Security; Region IV, Lafayette Economic Development Authority, and a Hilton Garden Inn hotel staffed and managed by the ULL Hospitality Management program. President/Chancellor and tenure: Joseph Savoie, Ed.D. (2008) University Advancement executive and tenure: John Blohm (2015) Someone who may be completely unfamiliar with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (if for no other reason than their popular mascot, the “Ragin’ Cajun,” which is  distinct in a landscape of college mascots replete with lions, tigers, and bears) can learn much about the institution and the region it serves by reviewing the university’s research mission. Located deep in a south Louisiana region called Acadiana,31 University of Louisiana at Lafayette engages in research that tells the story of the region, its people, and their most pressing concerns and deeply held aspirations. A recent announcement detailing a strategic initiative being led by the university explains how a partnership with Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital and the Catholic Diocese of Lafayette resulted in the acquisition of ~6 acres of land from the Diocese. Including medical office buildings and facilities formerly owned by Our Lady of Lourdes that will now house a significant expansion of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, the acquisition will enhance their ability to perform research and train future medical 30  SURA is a 63-member organization of southern universities affiliated with particle accelerator research in nuclear physics at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia. 31  So named after French-Catholic settlers from Acadia called Acadians, who settled in south Louisiana after their exile from an area now known as Nova Scotia, Canada, explaining the university’s primary logo, a fleur de lis.

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practitioners while relocating the Diocese to a more accessible location to the university’s Catholic students, the region’s predominant religious affiliation32.  Led by President Joe Savoie (pronounced SAHV-wah, for the non-Cajun readers), Louisiana native, ULL alumnus, and only the sixth president in the university’s 122-year history, researchers at the university commit deeply to the area’s cultural, health-related, economic, and ecological needs and concerns. The university has gone to considerable lengths to promote its R1 research activity status and to explain what that means to the university, community, and to fundraising opportunities. In a December 2021 press release, staff noted that the status sets the university apart as only 3% of universities in the United States carry such a designation.33 At a March 2022 celebration, the public was invited to attend an on-campus gathering where students and faculty presented their research and university administrators as well as elected officials discussed the significance of the designation, held only by two other universities in the state, Louisiana State University and Tulane University. This changes the conversation about who the University of Louisiana at Lafayette considers peer institutions, with whom they compete for faculty and students, and with whom they’ll compete for research support. It also determines who they will likely outcompete for resources, as only three other public regional universities in the state possess a Carnegie research designation status, and they are all R2-designated (Southern University, Louisiana Tech University, and University of New Orleans). Even more impressively, University of Louisiana at Lafayette placed in the top ten of all universities in the United States “for research funded through collaboration with business and industry.34” That means that there are Ivy League and Big Ten universities that are behind them in this category. Perhaps the most impressive marker of how the university and the advancement division commit to research at the institution can be measured not just by what has been done, but why what is said most consistently about the need for private resources to highlight the remarkable 32  See: “A celebration of strategic growth at UL Lafayette.” https://m.youtube.com/ watch?v=Ebk6TNn-BmM 33  See: “UL Lafayette achieves Carnegie’s prestigious R1 designation.” https://louisiana. edu/news-events/news/20211217/ul-lafayette-achieves-carnegie%E2%80%99s-prestigious-r1designation 34  See: Bier, C. (2023). “Impact & influence: Why R1 matters.” La Louisiane. https:// express.adobe.com/page/oReCMf9WB2GDa/

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research performed every day by students and faculty. At their 2022 “Eminent Faculty” awards ceremony, where exceptional faculty are recognized for their success in the classroom, community, and research areas, Vice President for University Advancement John Blohm, referencing the university’s R1 status, noted “To understand how the University achieved this top-tier designation, look no further than the quality of this year’s Eminent Faculty honorees. They are indicative of the extraordinary scholars, educators, and community servants you’ll find in every discipline here.35” The university is indeed working “Together” with all constituents to ensure it retains its status as a champion of research among public regional universities. University advancement features the attainment of support for the university’s research commitments prominently, and the university proudly proclaims its rarefied status as a regional university with an R1 designation. In their current ten-year, $500 million capital campaign, “Together: The Campaign for University of Louisiana at Lafayette,” “research and discovery” is one of the three featured planks of the campaign, which also includes student success and teaching and community service. In the first six years of the campaign, the university has secured over $300 million, and in the process, they have secured gifts to construct and renovate a sales research and financial services lab, an energy systems laboratory, an aerospace electronics research laboratory, and an interdisciplinary research laboratory. They have also endowed four chairs, 34 professorships, and created 122 endowed scholarships.36 Most impressively, the university secured its largest donation in history, a $20 million gift from LHC Group, a home health and hospice care company, to fund scholarships and the construction of a new health sciences building. It will also not only train future health practitioners but provide continuing education opportunities for their current employees.37 Unlike many R1 institutions with NCAA Division 1 athletic programs, the largest donations that the institution has acquired have been to support scholarships and research, not athletic 35  See: “UL honors five with eminent faculty award.” https://www.katc.com/news/lafayette-parish/ul-lafayette-honors-five-with-eminent-faculty-awards 36  See: “$500  M: University announces largest fundraising campaign in its history.” https://louisiana.edu/news-events/news/20211109/500m-university-announces-largestfundraising-campaign-its-history 37  See: Stickney, K. (2021). “LHC Group donates $20 million to UL College of Nursing; largest gift in school history.” The Acadiana Advocate. https://www.theadvocate.com/acadiana/news/article_4fd082cc-8d75-11eb-9ffa-afbaf374057a.html.

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facility construction or to maintain what higher education scholars and pundits refer to as the college athletics arms race. The focus and commitment, given the pace of their fundraising growth, is paying off for the institution.

California State University, East Bay Location: Hayward, California Enrollment: 16,253 Academic affiliations (if any): (none) Carnegie research activity classification: Doctoral University—High research activity (R2) Total attainment (5-year average, 2016–2020, and high attainment mark): $13,230,406; $15,586,573 (2016) Notable research fact: Cal State East Bay’s Center for Student Research offers tuition assistance, travel grants, and supply grants to undergraduate students who participate in guided research projects. President/Chancellor and tenure: Cathy Sandeen, Ph.D. (2021) University Advancement executive and tenure: Evelyn Buchanan (2022) California State University, East Bay serves an incredibly diverse student body in the Oakland/Bay Area, as is indicated by their MSI status (federally recognized as an Asian-American/Native American/Pacific Islander and Hispanic Serving Institution).38 It is one of the most ethnically diverse campuses in America to possess R2 status, making it a unique leader among public regional universities even in the California State University System, the second largest and most diverse student body among American university systems. While ratings services consider the University of California System more “prestigious” and CSU campuses such as Fresno State, San Diego State, and Long Beach State have gained prominence and visibility due to the success of their NCAA Division I athletic programs, California State, East Bay quietly accomplishes considerable research production at a university where 64% of its undergraduate students and nearly 40% of its graduate students are first-generation students.39 38  The Higher Education Act of 1965 recognizes a campus’ minority-serving status if at least 50% of students are eligible for federal financial aid and a specific percentage of students identify as ethnic minorities (at least 10% for AAPI status, at least 25% for HIS status). 39  See: “Facts about Cal State East Bay.” https://www.csueastbay.edu/about/facts.html

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The university faced several challenges that are part and parcel of regional universities engaging in capital campaigns in addition to hurdles that were institutionally specific. Associate Vice President for Development and Campaign Director Holly Stanco (now Associate Vice President for Advancement and Campaigns at the University of Nevada-Reno) joined the advancement division in 2018. According to Stanco, at this point, the university was nearly eight years into its campaign, during which time, it had eight different university advancement executives leading the division (four full-time, four in interim capacities). Adding to the challenge, university leadership raised the campaign’s goal from $40 million to $60 million to coincide with the university’s 60th anniversary in 2020, which would require more than $30 million in new commitments in four years (the campaign’s first eight years yielded less than $30 million). As they pursued these aggressive fundraising targets, California State University-­ East Bay faced the same challenges that many regional universities face with limits of regionality—limited prospective donors who primarily live in the region and recognize the university’s importance that have not been courted into the giving communities of higher-profile universities also prevalent in the region (in this case, stalwarts like Stanford and the University of California-Berkeley). They’d also need to buy in from leaders across the university along with some good fortune in retaining their newly trained fundraising staff against an extremely competitive Bay Area market for higher education and non-profit professionals. Introducing new fundraisers into major gift donor cycles which can last from 18 to 36 months can lead to miscommunication, inefficiency, and loss of prospective donor engagement if advancement leadership is forced to repeat the process exceedingly, and that was the case at this point in the campaign. The university’s sterling research reputation aside, their first comprehensive capital campaign’s success came down to university-wide commitment to data- and metric-driven donor prospect development, visionary leadership from the university advancement office and academic affairs, and a bit of good luck. The research opportunities at the university did not sell or promote themselves, as many alums not directly engaged with the institution were unlikely to know about their goals and objectives. The provost’s leadership was indispensable, as he made it a priority for deans and directors across the academic affairs spectrum to support the campaign. Their support came in the form of inviting development officers to department meetings and encouraging deans to participate in the research/ qualification/cultivation/solicitation/ stewardship process typical of

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divisions using MOVES Management.40 Development officers also presented at faculty meetings to update them on fundraising progress and faculty feedback informed discussions with donor prospects. Finally, the commitment to completing the campaign took over so completely that the division did not lose any fundraisers during the final years of the campaign, despite its increasingly visible success and the competitive Bay Area market for successful non-profit professionals.41 The university’s first comprehensive capital campaign, “Rising in the East,” highlighted research opportunities and promise in what became a $70 million+ campaign. Their success enabled the construction of several new facilities on the campus, including a $22.5 million Applied Sciences Center and the university’s new CORE Center, which “will house the Student Center for Academic Achievement, library services and the Hub for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.42” The Applied Sciences Center, set to open in 2024, will be a 20,000 square foot facility that will feature research laboratories dedicated to a “Green Biome Institute, dedicated to the study and conservation of California’s endangered plants,” student-­ faculty research spaces, an Innovation Center for project-based learning and capstone projects in the sciences, and flexible learning facilities.43 Providing state of the art research facilities for their diverse student body translated into a national ranking in the U.S. News and World Report Social Mobility Index (#34  in 2022), which measures institutional success at enrolling and graduating students on Pell Grants, faculty resources, and academic reputation according to peer surveys.44 Fundraising success allows California State, East Bay to continuing branding itself as an institution not only of opportunity for Bay Area residents looking for affordable college opportunities, but truly an institution of great promise for 40  A system widely incorporated by non-profit professionals to research, identify, cultivate, solicit, and steward the donors who support their organizations to create repeatable processes so that those gifts can be repeated and increased over the donor’s lifespan as the university deepens and enhances its relationship with those donors.  MOVES Management is discussed in more detail in the chapter “How Much Does a Dollar Cost?” Annual Giving, Alumni Relations, Advancement Services in Lean Management Scenarios.  41  Additional information in this section provided through phone interview with Holly Stanco, CFRE, University of Nevada-Reno, August 24th, 2022. 42  See: “Rising in the East.” https://www.ebtoday.com/stories/rising-in-the-east-0 43  See: “Applied Sciences Center.” https://www.csueastbay.edu/csci/applied-sciencescenter/index.html 44  See: “How U.S. News calculated the 2022 Best College Rankings.” https://premium. usnews.com/best-colleges/california-state-university-east-bay-1138

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those who want to work in science and technology either in the promising Silicon Valley tech sector, or as teachers of future STEM students.

University of Toledo Location: Toledo, Ohio Enrollment: 17,941 Academic affiliations (if any): Space grant Carnegie research activity classification: Doctoral University—High research activity (R2) Notable research fact: The University of Toledo’s Research and Sponsored Programs area supports research in areas as diverse as Human Trafficking, Disability and Society, Hypertension and Precision Medicine, Legacy Cities, and Cancer, Immune Therapy and Precision Molecular Therapy. Total attainment (5-year average, 2016–2020, and high attainment mark): $28.46 million; $50.6 million (2018)45 President/Chancellor and tenure: Gregory Postel, M.D. (2021) University Advancement executive and tenure: Floyd Akins (2021) The University of Toledo’s “Fueling Tomorrow” branding campaign video closes with the following line: “Inclusive collaboration, scholarly research, and hands-on experiences are how we make an impact.46” In doing so, the university proclaims through its latest campaign that research will be a primary driver for how the institution both connects with and leads the City of Toledo, Ohio’s fourth largest city. One of 13 institutions in the state with either R1 or R2 rankings, focusing on research is a requirement for the city to keep up with its statewide competition, as all of the major cities in the state have high research activity institutions (and Dayton, half its size, boasts two in University of Dayton and Wright State University). The university has an impressive research profile of its own, with a technology transfer office set up to assist faculty and students whose research is patent-worthy and potentially ready for market. They’ve also invested millions of dollars in research from areas as diverse as the health of the Great Lakes to curing ailments such as rheumatoid arthritis. With 45  See: “University of Toledo Foundation annual report.” https://www.utfoundation. org/financials/annual-report/pdfs/UTF2021-annual-report.pdf 46  See: “Fueling Tomorrows.” https://www.utoledo.edu/offices/marketing/our-work/ fueling-tomorrows.html

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an NCAA Division I athletics program to elevate brand recognition and a medical school to attract faculty and students to the growing medical corridor in northwest Ohio, the university has unique opportunities to promote research and attract investment, which their strategic branding and fundraising plans reflect. Improving and strengthening institutions’ research reputations can be expensive projects, as those with the most sterling reputations and highest visibility tend to have the largest budgets to promote their efforts and garner the most desirable and highest-profile opportunities to do so. The University of Toledo’s 2017–2022 strategic plan is remarkable for its simplicity, avoidance of jargon or elevated consultant-speak, and for featuring research activity and high academic achievement and output in each of their five goals attached to improving the university’s reputation and alumni and community engagement.47 While fundraising plays a primary role in achieving their goals, efficient use of resources and attainable targets suggest that they will be able to meet their campaign goals and continue to grow their institutional profile responsibly. Their “Fueling Tomorrow” campaign videos feature how investing in faculty and student researchers produce results that benefit the university and the region.48 And their efforts had quite the impact on Toledo-based Welltower, Inc. an NYSE-traded health real estate company located in Toledo. In 2017, the company donated its downtown headquarters, representing several office buildings and over 100 acres of land, to the institution. The $30 million gift is the largest in the university’s history, and company officials noted that they chose the University of Toledo to receive it because of their importance to the region and then President Sharon Gaber noted that the donation would provide a “unique opportunity to explore potential uses for this space that would best serve the University and the community, and contribute to our goal to be one of the top public, national, research universities.49” The University of Toledo enjoyed considerable fundraising success in support of research initiatives in recent years, in areas such as water quality, solar power, and biomedical engineering and infectious disease. Research 47  See: “The University of Toledo’s Path to Excellence.” https://www.utoledo.edu/strategicplan/pdfs/Strategic%20Plan%202017.pdf 48  See: “Fueling Tomorrows:30 spot.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iqo09qwNiTY 49  See: “Welltower announces transformational gift to the university.” http://media.utoledo.edu/2017/09/20/welltower-announces-transformational-gift-to-the-universityof-toledo/

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commitments represent approximately 6% of the university’s endowment, or just under $25 million, and in 2021, the university attained $65 million for research output, representing a 70% increase in just the past five years. Of note is their Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization, a $50 million facility funded through partnerships with the Ohio Department of Development, Bowling Green State University and Ohio State University, and private partners such as SSOE, Inc. (a Toledo-based, internationally ranked architecture and engineering firm) and the Edison Materials Technology Center in Dayton, Ohio. The university emphasized photovoltaics because “because Ohio has a long history of producing successful companies along the entire value chain of PV technology (PV module fabrication, glass and polymer manufacturing, building integration), a field of high economic growth and high employment generation.50” In recent years, the university has also attained $1 million+ gifts for research in areas such as treating pancreatic cancer51 and business and innovation, with the installation of a trading room equipped with high-tech Bloomberg terminals, which students use to access real-­time information from the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, and Chicago Board of Trade.52 As the university celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2022–2023, it continues to position itself to invite significant investment in their efforts to support faculty and students engaged in research activity. As of 2021, only six AASCU member regional universities enjoyed R1 status, and approximately five dozen more boast R2 status. While students and faculty on all campuses perform research, these institutions distinguish themselves by committing to graduate research, and in doing so, provide excellent opportunities for students to move into careers in medical, technological, and academic fields with the same credentials as students who graduate from large public or elite private institutions, often with considerable savings. Having the opportunity to enter these fields is part and parcel of the public regional university promise to transform lives through student success and increase opportunity for the marginalized in society. And through timely and effective fundraising at institutions like those I examine in this chapter, the opportunities promise to become more plentiful in the coming years. 50  See: “Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization.” https:// www.utoledo.edu/research/pvic/about.html 51  See: “$1 Million Gift from couple to expand UT Research into pancreatic cancer.” https://news.utoledo.edu/index.php/10_15_2018/1-million-gift-from-couple-to-expand-utresearch-into-pancreatic-cancer 52   See: “College of Business named for investor alumnus.” http://media.utoledo. edu/2020/12/14/college-of-business-named-for-investor-alumnus/

CHAPTER 3

Capital Campaigns at Public Regional Universities

In many ways, the early twentieth century feels like it is the era of the never-ending campaign in higher education, particularly at large, public flagship and small, private liberal arts institutions. Anyone who has attended such an institution recognizes the steady reception of messaging—mail, email, and social media—always striking the familiar tones of growth and expansion, repeating the new campaign in variations on the theme in all university-produced materials, and always and in all ways building something, anything, everything anew. New programs to fund, new endowments to establish, new populations to serve, and each of them needing new infusions of cash coupled with increased support from alumni. The impact of perpetual campaigns with skyrocketing targets now in decades-long and billion-dollar formats1 has transformed the American presidency/chancellorship and how boards and system offices recruit them. Fundraising experience or previous success has gone from a “nice-­ to-­have” for an executive candidate to a prerequisite career requirement, even at public regional universities. Murray State University president Robert Jackson, who previously served as President of the Murray State Foundation and President of the Murray State University Alumni 1  After Harvard and Stanford traded off record-breaking campaigns in the first two decades of the twentieth century, crossing into the billions as early as 2006 and exceeding $7 billion as recently announced as 2016, Stanford has abandoned the practice of publicly announcing dollar goals for their campaigns, see: https://stanforddaily.com/2020/11/12/uniquelystanford-fundraising-approach-will-emphasize-impact-eschew-public-dollar-goals/

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. J. Broussard, Fundraising at Public Regional Universities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45481-3_3

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Association Board of Governors, noted in 2013 that though most university presidents do not have formal fundraising experience, aggressive decreases in state subsidies over the past 30 years have necessitated that they engage in the activity as newly expanded responsibilities and expectations are appended to the presidency.2 The most observable and impactful way that presidents appear to be engaging in fundraising activity is through launching and successfully completing major fundraising campaigns, especially of the capital campaign variety. According to the American Council on Education 2017 survey of presidents,3 the two issues that now dominate the president’s time are financial stability and fundraising. Evidence of this increasing focus appears in the job descriptions of a plurality of Vice President of Advancement/Development job postings,4 where experience designing, successfully executing, or serving in a leadership capacity during capital campaigns became a prerequisite for lead advancement executive consideration (or, at the very least, a preferred qualification used to reduce applicant pool size). Survey data reinforces the prevalence of capital campaigns, as well: in a survey conducted by The Sharpe Group of higher education leaders, 60% of survey respondents indicated that their institution is in a stage of capital campaign mode, and nearly half of the respondents indicated campaign goals of $100 million or more.5 Capital campaigns at public regional universities in the twenty-first century have had one thing in common: they have hardly anything in common. The carefully cultivated strategies of capital campaigns at large, public research and private liberal arts appear designed to capture not only significantly large donations totaling in the billions, but also media coverage of the new directions in which those gifts allow the university to move. Their campaign chairs are often prominently known mavens of business, entertainers, and fixtures in their communities who may number by the 2  Jackson, Robert L. (2013) “The prioritization of and time spent on fundraising duties by public comprehensive university presidents,” International Journal of Leadership and Change: Vol. 1: Iss. 1, Article 9. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/ijlc/vol1/iss1/9 3  See: “Innovative leadership insights from the ACPS 2017.” (2017). American Council on Higher Education. https://www.acenet.edu/Documents/Innovative-Leadership-Insightsfrom-the-ACPS-2017.pdf 4  From October 2022-April 2023, 62.5% of positions posted to HigherEdJobs.com required capital campaign direction or experience as at least a preferred qualification, and several listed it as a minimum qualification for consideration (28 out of 44). 5  See: “Sharpe Group Survey  – Leaders in Higher Education Executive Summary.” October 10, 2022.

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dozen and each individually contribute more than some public regional campaigns aspire to in toto. Universities in these categories have entered a period of perpetual campaigns, underscoring the need for private funding for those institutions to introduce new colleges, fields of study, new facilities, and recruit faculty, staff, and often most expensively, coaches’ salaries. And the motivations for embarking upon these campaigns include reasons as vastly different as competitive interest against rival institutions and the personal ambitions (and egos) of board members, alumni, and executive administrators. By contrast, public regional campaigns will tend to number in the tens of millions, identify chairs who are long-time supporters and distinguished alumni with local prominence and focus on meat and potatoes needs such as scholarships and endowment growth, and occasionally smaller facility construction or renovations, along with new academic program development. Tennessee Tech University launched their capital campaign, “Tech Tomorrow,” in 2014, aspiring to secure $60 million in new funding to support scholarships and endowed faculty positions in a six-year campaign spanning from 2016 to 2021. In 2019, they exceeded the campaign goal, securing a whopping $60.5 million in only three years, including over $18 million for scholarships, student assistance funds, and diversity scholarship initiatives.6 Minnesota State University-Moorhead concluded their seven-­ year, $59 million campaign in 2021, focusing heavily on scholarships, investing in academic programs, and built a new alumni center.7 California State University, Los Angeles’ $100 million campaign culminated in 2021, focusing new resources on developing “high-quality undergraduate and graduate programs and investment in faculty who are uniquely committed to educating a diverse student body […] graduate civic-minded students equipped for and committed to engagement, service, and the public good […] and nurture a welcoming and inclusive campus where students, faculty, and staff thrive and community is honored and cultivated.8” Their campaign chairs and featured donors on the campaign landing page are all alumni, faculty, and staff who attended California State Los Angeles because of its proximity to their hometowns and remain in the area to this 6  See: “Tech Tomorrow campaign tops $60 million goal.” https://www.tntech.edu/ news/releases/19-20/fundrasing-wrap.php 7  See: Schroeer, J. (2021). “MSUM raises $59 million for scholarships, academic programs, alumni center.” Valley News Live. https://www.valleynewslive.com/2021/08/18/ msum-raises-59-million-scholarships-academic-programs-alumni-center/ 8  See: “The Campaign for LA.” https://campaign.calstatela.edu/

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day, helping move the university forward through their financial support and their daily work. And finally, Florida Gulf Coast University, which gained national prominence in 2013 as their “Dunk City” men’s basketball program made its improbable run to the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, embarked on a $100 million campaign in 2014. They eclipsed the mark in 2017, announcing a haul of over $127 million after three consecutive record-breaking years, enhancing the university’s prospects for academic excellence, athletics, scholarships, student success, and community and regional impact.9 Most impressively, they grew the value of their endowment by over 33%, improving their future ability to support students and the academic mission. As impressive and record-breaking as these campaigns have been at these institutions, their core elements reflect the reality on the ground at these institutions and the resources available to their advancement units. The jury is still out on the future of the capital campaign, even as it is increasingly likely that alumni, foundation board members, and other constituents will pressure presidents—especially those newly on the job—to embark on bigger and bigger campaign projects. The cottage industry of capital campaign consultants, it should come as no surprise, are bullish on the future of capital campaign activity. Bearing the namesake of founder Thomas Gerber, a pioneer in the field of advancement and long-time fundraising executive at Northwestern University, over the years fundraising consultancy Gonser Gerber has helped universities raise hundreds of billions of dollars while continuing to provide clarity to university officials and fundraisers on the purpose of university advancement through their work at the Gonser Gerber Institute.10 Among their services, they offer continuing education through a robust newsletter, and regular production of webinars promoting the idea that campaigns help clarify and focus the purpose of the institution among internal and external constituencies and promote the avoidance of mission creep. Conversely, some industry leaders believe the era of perpetual campaigning has damaged the concept, and other factors suggest that campaigns may not be the best solution for many universities moving forward. Blackbaud, a leading advancement software company, advanced this thesis

9  See: “Inside Higher Ed Capital Campaigns: Florida Gulf Coast University.” https:// www.insidehighered.com/capital-campaigns/2018/05/09/florida-gulf-coast-university 10  See: “Gonser Gerber Institute.” https://www.gonsergerber.com/services/institute/

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in a 2018 white paper entitled “Why Capital Campaigns are Broken,11” in which they identify several factors contributing to widescale donor fatigue. Aside from the obvious notion that perpetual campaigns lead to donors feeling persistently coaxed into larger and larger gifts, experts at Blackbaud cite several other factors, including the size of ever-increasing campaign goals creating untenable solutions for donor bases; demographic shifts, including the rapidly increasing average age of regular donors and the shrinking base of younger alumni donors to replace them; and a forced neglect of smaller dollar donors to focus energy on major and transformational giving which has led to growing feelings of underappreciation among supporters. Public regional university fundraising staffs have more acute concerns about these topics, given their relatively lower number of major gift donors and prospects compared to private liberal arts and public research universities as well as their lack of resources for donor engagement and stewardship. Further, the premium placed on six-, seven-, and eight-figure commitments actively discourages small dollar and first-time donors who are likely to believe their giving will not impact their alma mater’s success. This is a real-time and long-term threat to donor pipelines for universities with thin donor bases. Based on these parameters, the public regional university capital campaign must successfully address the following questions to achieve long-­ term positive results for their institutions: 1. Does the campaign launch after thorough analysis of the donor base to ensure that the projects can be funded without overextension of major gift prospects or without underinvesting in small gift donors and acquiring new donors? 2. Can the university staff up and increase resources (add fundraisers, advancement support, and storytelling capacity) sufficient to successfully complete the campaign? 3. Does the university need to rebrand or re-establish its core mission and is the campaign the best way to accomplish that goal, or, can a fundraising campaign advance such a project? Capital campaigns which blend planning and investment with careful consideration of the rhetorical situatedness of such a pronounced 11  See: “Why capital campaigns are broken.” why-capital-campaigns-are-broken.pdf (cms. blackbaudcdn.net).

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fundraising effort (who is/are the audience/public/market segments? Is your purpose clear? What strategies will be employed and how will their success be evaluated?) are especially challenging given the lean management and resources available to public regional university advancement operations, and even under the best of circumstances, while require some good fortune to succeed. Whether or not public regional universities follow the trend of more significantly resourced institutions and abandon the dollar target for campaigns in favor of the mission-based model remains to be seen. For now, when university leaders embark on these campaigns— for the myriad reasons that drive their institutions to do so—they are truly fascinating subjects for cultural, historical, and rhetorical research, and should be examined closely to determine what can be replicated and generalized for the benefit of peer institutions. The campaigns of the institutions on which I focus in this chapter seize upon important institutional opportunities, move their strategic plans forward, and focus on the university’s core mission to enormously successful ends.

Tennessee Tech University Location: Cookeville, Tennessee Enrollment: 9840 Most recent capital campaign (years/amount): “Tech Tomorrow12” Five years, 2016–2021/$60 million Total attainment (5-year average, 2016–2020, and high attainment mark): $11,169,144; $17,246,441 (2017) Number of front-line fundraisers employed13: 5 President/Chancellor and tenure: Phil Oldham (2012) University Advancement executive and tenure: Kevin Braswell (2015) The state of Tennessee Tech today explains fully why its university leaders and alumni brought their excitement to “Tech Tomorrow,” their successful five-year, $60 million campaign which culminated in 2021. One of the nation’s top 100 public institutions for social mobility and one of the top 150 public universities14 (ahead of several universities with which  See: “Tennessee Tech Tomorrow.” https://www.tntech.edu/univadv/tomorrow/  Number includes major gift officers and/or centrally or college assigned development officers. Does not include Vice Presidents/Vice Chancellors/Executive Directors, Advancement Services, or Annual Giving staff. 14  See: “Tennessee Tech University: Rankings.” https://premium.usnews.com/best-colleges/tennessee-tech-3523/overall-rankings 12 13

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readers are likely to have far more familiarity, such as the University of Hawaii, Nevada-Las Vegas, and Boise State University), Tennessee Tech even ranks ahead of the University of Tennessee with regard to educational value, according to Money Magazine’s “Best College for your Money” list.15 The “Tech Tomorrow Strategic Plan,” approved by university trustees in 2018, boldly joins aspirations of national prominence and high achievement as a STEM-focused comprehensive university with a deep and abiding commitment to educating and preparing students from and those aspiring to work in rural communities—a core commitment of many public regional universities in the United States.16 Tennessee Tech’s president Phil Oldham sees their unique position in American higher education as a tremendous asset, and the Tech Tomorrow campaign bet on that uniqueness and came up aces. In their most recent strategic plan, he notes that their combination of low tuition and STEM focus can radically impact increasing the number of graduates who will enter the burgeoning tech industry in cybersecurity, finance, big data, robotics, and automation. Adhering to the public regional university tenet of serving and promoting the local and regional economy,17 Tennessee Tech responds to the growth of Nashville as a new American hub for technology, as it has outpaced growth in tech jobs in other major metropolitan areas by 32%.18 Rather than creating or appending STEM-focused programming to attract students from low-income, first-generation, rural, and Black/Latinx/Indigenous/AAPI communities, Tennessee Tech takes advantage of its STEM focus and existing infrastructure to promote educational opportunities and ample strategic partnerships to provide high-­ impact learning opportunities that prepare their students for future careers. However, rather than narrowing the focus for growth to a handful of programs, the plan incorporates increases for production of future educators (especially in mathematics and sciences), entrepreneurs, and businesspeople with a focus on the Upper Cumberland service region. And faculty leaders from areas as diverse as education, business, engineering, and the  See: “Tennessee Tech Rankings.” https://www.tntech.edu/about/rankings.php  See: “Tech Tomorrow.” https://www.tntech.edu/strategic/ 17  McClure, K. R. (2018). “Institutions of opportunity: Using presidents’ narratives to retell the story of public regional universities.” Journal for the Study of Postsecondary and Tertiary Education, 3, 117–134. 18  See: “Report: Nashville tech leads the way, industry continues to smash records.” https://www.wkrn.com/special-reports/nashville-forward/report-nashville-tech-leadsthe-way-industry-continues-to-smash-records/ 15 16

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arts led work groups to ensure that buy-in came from across the campus community.19 The unprecedented success of university fundraising in response to this strategic plan is evidence that its time had come, and that the university’s strategy resonates widely. Surpassing its $60 million goal two years ahead of schedule, the university set fundraising records for three consecutive years and added 3600 new donors while providing $18 million in additional scholarship dollars and most impressively, $8.25 million secured for a new engineering building. With in-state tuition at just above $10,000 and a net price below $20,000, this will make a powerful and lasting impact on many students’ academic careers. New opportunities for partnership with alumni business owners and job shadowing with alumni are now broadening the impact of the campaign beyond direct fundraising efforts and will contribute to retention success and career placement after graduation, auguring well for the future of their alumni giving and support base.20 Kevin Braswell, Vice President of University Advancement, noted that meeting the campaign’s goal years ahead of schedule means that alumni and donors were ready to support the campaign and that they believe in the institution and its mission. At the completion of the campaign, he stated “Through their (the donors) support, they have helped us to reach our goal ahead of schedule. We are already seeing the fruit of some of the notable impact gifts of the campaign.21” One wonders if the campaign target could have been even higher. In the first year immediately following the original target date for the Tech Tomorrow campaign’s conclusion, donors provided $22 million in support, including $4.34 million secured toward their new engineering building, a new record for annual attainment at the institution, and an increase of their alumni giving rate to 6%, half a point above median for public regional universities. The success of their “Tech Tomorrow” strategy and giving campaign has inspired other forms of external investment, as well. President Phil Oldham notes that their “Rural Reimagined” grand challenge has resulted in over $4 million in grants for the university’s work 19   See: “A New Day for Tech Tomorrow.” https://blogs.tntech.edu/president/ a-new-day-for-tech-tomorrow/ 20  See “Grand Challenge,” which features the university’s regional, state, and national partners, including chambers of commerce, small business development, and the United States Economic Development Administration and Small Business Administration (https:// ouweb.tntech.edu/grand-challenge/). 21  See: “Tech Tomorrow campaign tops $60 million goal.” https://www.tntech.edu/ news/releases/19-20/fundrasing-wrap.php

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with partners in 44 counties across Tennessee and an additional $1 million commitment from the Governor’s Office to support their continued work at the university of supporting rural communities.22 As for return on investment, the university announced ambitious 2025 goals for recruitment, retention, enrollment, and graduation success, and halfway through that timeline, they have already accomplished or are more than halfway toward accomplishing three of the six goals.23 In just over six years, Tennessee Tech University has gone from imagining Tech Tomorrow to realizing it, and when all is said and done, the response of their alumni and supporters to the call of their capital campaign will have played an indispensable role in ensuring their vision manifests.

Minnesota State University, Moorhead Location: Moorhead, Minnesota Enrollment: 4088 Most recent capital campaign (years/amount): “Vision 202024” Six years, 2014–2020/$50 million ($59 million secured) Total attainment (5-year average, 2016–2020, and high attainment mark): $6,134,155; $9,280,000 (2016)25 (per annual reporting) Number of front-line fundraisers employed: 5 President/Chancellor and tenure: Anne Blackhurst (2014–2023) University Advancement executive and tenure: Gary Haugo (2016) The State of Minnesota is a study of contrasts. The 12th largest state in the United States by area/land mass has over 65% of its population concentrated in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area (which, if combined, would be one of the 15 largest cities in the United States). As a result of this concentration of population in metropolitan areas and much of the state legislature’s focus dedicated to the University of Minnesota System (and its flagship campus, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities), “out-state” populations and institutions must compete against one another 22  See: “Tech Tomorrow: What have we done, part 1.” https://blogs.tntech.edu/president/tech-tomorrow-what-have-we-done-part-1/ 23   See: “Tech Tomorrow  - 2025 Goals.” https://www.tntech.edu/strategic/2025goals.php 24  See: “MSUM Exceeds $50M Campaign Goal.” https://news.mnstate.edu/2021/08/ msu-moorhead-exceeds-50m-comprehensive-campaign-goal/ 25  See: “MSUM Foundation Financial Information.” https://mnstate.edu/foundation/ reports/

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and “The Cities” for resources. West Central Minnesota competes not only with that reality, but also with nearby major metropolitan areas in North Dakota (including Fargo and Grand Forks) for resources and market share.26 More relevant to Minnesota State University, Moorhead is that it is competing against two nearby flagship institutions for resources, students, and investment (The University of North Dakota, in Grand Forks and North Dakota State University, in Fargo) across the border as well as its regional university colleagues in the Minnesota State University System (Southwest Minnesota State; Minnesota State University, Mankato; Winona State University; Metro State University; St. Cloud State University; and Bemidji State University) and those in the University of Minnesota System (with campuses in Duluth; Crookston; Rochester; and Morris, MN). The interstate recruiting challenge difficulty increases because of the reciprocity agreement, in effect since 1975, between Minnesota and North Dakota which allows tuition rates substantially lower than the published non-resident rates for legal citizens of both states to attend out of state institutions. In other words, a student from Moorhead can enroll at the University of North Dakota (a Carnegie R1-designated institution with NCAA Division I athletics in the same metropolitan area) at the same tuition rate as they would pay to enroll at Minnesota State University, Moorhead. As a result of these mounting pressures, the university has suffered a multi-year enrollment decline (from 4497 full-time students in 2016 to 3378 full-time students in 2022, per institutional reporting27). The university launched its “Vision 2020” capital campaign in 2014 against this backdrop, and as a result, the university has unprecedented resources to provide student scholarships, academic support, and connect alumni, community members and students through new facility construction. The crowning achievement of the campaign, a new $6 million Alumni Center funded 100% by private donations, will provide those new opportunities for connection and inspire future students to become alumni who will support the university’s efforts. Their fundraising success was unprecedented, with over 25 gifts exceeding $500,000 during the 26  Moorhead, Minnesota is in the U.S. Census Fargo, ND-Moorhead, MN Metropolitan Statistical Area, with approximately 250,000 residents (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Fargo,_North_Dakota). 27  See: “Institutional Annual Reports at MSU Moorhead.” https://www.mnstate.edu/ about/institutional-effectiveness/institutional-reports/

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campaign. Near the end of the campaign in 2019–2020, Minnesota State University, Moorhead secured over $19 million in donations, its best single year of fundraising ever. The major gifts kicked off in 2015 with a $5 million donation from Hebron Brick (ND) CEO and Minnesota State University, Moorhead alumni Rodney and Carolyn Paseka to support their college of business. The donation, the largest in university history, helped the university achieve two primary campaign goals—providing student scholarships and growing the university’s endowment. The university renamed its college of business after the Paseka family upon receipt of the donation, and the university’s 2024 goal of growing its endowment to $50 million has made 71% progress.28 As with many first-ever campaigns, major gift giving can be contagious. Donor and alumni perceptions transform each time they learn about new significant investments being made. By every measure, their campaign has been a rousing success with immediate payoffs as well as positive progress which will become apparent as new projects continue to be supported on campus. In 2018, alumnus Larry Dahlsad left the university its largest estate gift ever, providing more than $5 million in support to college of business students29; In 2020, alumnus, attorney, and Minnesota State University System trustee George Soule invested $500,000 to support indigenous students at the university30; Alumnus and housing entrepreneur Thomas Peter von Bahr left his $4.3 million estate to the institution to support arts and humanities scholarships in 2021.31 A decade earlier, any of these gifts individually would have represented the most significant gifts in the history of the institution, and because of their campaign efforts, donors have fairly regularly made such substantial investments at the institution. Significant obstacles lie ahead of Minnesota State University, Moorhead despite their fundraising success—but those new dollars will help the 28  See: “As MSUM funds new scholarships, business center gets new name.” https:// msumadvocate.com/2015/03/02/as-msum-funds-new-scholarships-business-c enter-gets-new-name/ 29   See: “2019 Impact Report.” https://www.mnstate.edu/globalassets/foundation/ foundation-annual-report-2019.pdf/ (6–7). 30  See: “2020 Impact Report.” https://www.mnstate.edu/globalassets/foundation/foundation-annual-report-2020.pdf/ (page 26). 31  See: Amundson, B. (2021). “MSUM receives gift of $4.3 million to College of Arts and Humanities.” Inforum. https://www.inforum.com/news/msum-receives-gift-of-4-3-million-to-college-of-arts-and-humanities

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university remain nimble in the face of said challenges. A Minnesota Office of Higher Education report shows that 45,000 fewer students are enrolled at Minnesota colleges and universities, and that the total number of students has dipped nearly 90,000 from its highwater mark in 2010.32 In 2013, the university struggled with massive budget shortfalls which forced them to cut programs,33 announced cuts to programs and faculty and staff positions in 2020,34 and in 2021, enrollment dipped to a two-decade nadir, despite graduate enrollment improving significantly.35 As the university moves forward under new leadership (President Anne Blackhurst is retiring in 2023, set to be followed by Timothy Downs, who previously led Northern State University), Minnesota State University, Moorhead will move into their next phase with more resources and momentum than any other previous president has enjoyed.

California State University, Los Angeles Location: Los Angeles, California Enrollment: 27,513 Most recent capital campaign (years/amount): announced in 2018, number of years indeterminate. $75 million (exceeded $101 million) Total attainment (5-year average, 2016–2020, and high attainment mark): $8,746,847; $13,241,735 (2016) Number of front-line fundraisers employed: 3 President/Chancellor and tenure: William Covino (2013) University Advancement executive and tenure: Robert Avalos (2019) In the second largest city in the United States (3.9 million in the 2020 census), and in the same city that contains three of the Top 25 universities in the country according to U.S.  News and World Report (California 32   See: “Student Enrollment Data.” http://www.ohe.state.mn.us/sPages/student_ enroll_data.cfm 33  See: Friedrich, A. (2013). “MSU-Moorhead to cut programs — but says Slate criticism is off.” Minnesota Public Radio News. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2013/11/27/ msu-moorhead-to-cut-programs-but-says-slate-criticism-is-off 34  See: Olson, D. (2020). “Minnesota State University Moorhead to cut 10 majors, over 60 jobs.” West Central Tribune. https://www.wctrib.com/news/minnesota-state-university-moorhead-to-cut-10-majors-over-60-jobs 35  See: Tran, T. (2018). “Minnesota college’s undergrad enrollment keeps dropping, but there’s a silver lining.” Duluth News Tribune. https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/ minnesota-colleges-undergrad-enrollment-keeps-dropping-but-theres-a-silver-lining

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Institute of Technology—aka “CalTech;” University of California, Los Angeles; and the University of Southern California), one might expect a specific set of challenges and opportunities for an institution like California State University, Los Angeles. On the one hand, without the infusion of research dollars, prominence, and NCAA Division I athletics programs of their Angeleno peer institutions, one expects the university would struggle to compete for market share and to brand the institution properly. Conversely, in one of the most expensive cities regarding cost of living in the United States with competing institutions that are selective and have comparably higher price tags, California State University, Los Angeles has provided a low-cost college education to a diverse population of students for the past 75 years. A top five performer in social mobility and a top 25 public regional university in the West,36 the university also boasts federal designations as an MSI, Hispanic serving institution, and Native American and Pacific Islander serving institution. With its record of elevating low-­ income, first-generation, and ethnic minority students into the middle class through highly ranked programs in business and engineering, and a long list of prominent alumni in the arts, politics, and legal professions, the timing was perfect for a major capital campaign lining up with the university’s 75th anniversary. Officials announced the public phase of the “Campaign for LA” in 2018 with a goal of $75 million, culminating in 2022, the 75th anniversary. In the end (and impressively, ahead of schedule), they raised $101,251,508 toward their strategic campaign pillars. Those pillars include: academic distinction; engagement, service, and the public good; student success; and creating a welcoming and inclusive campus. Highlights included a $1.5 million donation from the Ahmanson Foundation to support the university’s State Playhouse as part of over $3 million in commitments to support the arts at California State University, Los Angeles37; a $7 million gift from Patricia and William Chin to establish the Chin Family Institute for Nursing38; a $1 million investment from Wells Fargo to

36  See: “Rankings: California State University, Los Angeles.” https://premium.usnews. com/best-colleges/california-state-university-los-angeles-1140/overall-rankings 37  See: Cristy, A.A. (2017). “The Ahmanson Foundation Provides $1.5 M Gift to Cal State LA’s State Playhouse.” Broadway World. https://www.broadwayworld.com/los-angeles/ article/The-Ahmanson-Foundation-Provides-15M-Gift-to-State-Playhouse-20170322 38  See: “Cal State LA receives $7 million gift to name School of Nursing.” https://www. calstatela.edu/univ/ppa/publicat/cal-state-la-receives-7-million-gift-name-school-nursing

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support student entrepreneurship39; and a $10 million donation from Mary Levin Cutler to establish the Levin School of the Arts, resulting in the largest private donation in the history of the institution.40 The university notes that the $101 million+ was given by a mere 16,050 donors, which represents a high average donation (over $6000 per donor) and reflects the university’s relatively low alumni giving rate (1.5%) and the campaign’s focus on transformative giving. Referring to this success as a “defining moment in the history of the university,” President William Covino, who is retiring in 2023, knows from personal experience the value of investing in first-generation college students like himself, as he went on to obtain his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees from California institutions of higher education (including an advanced degree from California State University, Northridge). President Covino’s experience serves as an incredible example of what a public regional university education enables: the opportunity to pursue academic, personal, and cultural interests and achieve considerable professional success. Fundraising success during the campaign significantly impacts the university’s ability to provide scholarships and emergency support for its diverse student population. In addition to the Cal Grants and State University Grants available to all students in the State of California, the university funds over 400 scholarship opportunities available to California State University, Los Angeles students.41 Additionally, the Cal State LA Food Pantry provides groceries to low-income students, and through the Dean of Students Office, students are eligible for Emergency Assistance and Housing funds (up to $500/student) and assistance with applications for the CalFresh program, through which students can obtain additional resources for fresh fruits, vegetables, and groceries.42 What lies ahead for California State University, Los Angeles will be enabled by their university’s leadership and faculty, its supporters, and by the strong ethos its students and aspirant young alumni generate. The 39  See: “A Bold Step Forward 2020–2021 Donor Support.” https://www.calstate.edu/ impact-of-the-csu/student-success/philanthropic-suppor t/Documents/DonorSupport-2020-21.pdf 40  See: “Cal State LA to establish the Mary Levin School of the Arts with transformative gift.” https://news.calstatela.edu/2022/03/23/cal-state-la-transformative-gift-mary-levinschool-arts/ 41  See: “Grants: Cal State LA.” https://www.calstatela.edu/financialaid/grants 42  More on fundraising for emergency student needs in Chapter Five, “Mission-converged philanthropy: Raising money for emergency student needs.”

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combination of strong state support for students and substantial fundraising infusions provides a firm foundation for the university’s current and future endeavors.

Florida Gulf Coast University Location: Fort Myers, FL Enrollment: 15,909 Most recent capital campaign (years/amount): 3  years, 2014–2016/$100 million (exceeded $127 million) Total attainment (5-year average, 2016–2020, and high attainment mark): $21,587,441; $26,514,654 (2017) Number of front-line fundraisers employed: 7 President/Chancellor and tenure: Mike Martin (2017) University Advancement executive and tenure: Katherine “Kitty” Green (2019) Fans of NCAA college basketball, and in particular, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, will likely remember Florida Gulf Coast University’s rise to national prominence during their unprecedented run to the Sweet 16 in 2013. When they accomplished this feat, they became the first number 15 seed to advance to the Sweet 16 in the tournament, and their electrifying performance permanently earned the basketball program the nickname “Dunk City.43” One of the youngest public regional universities in the United States (established in 1991), the university already has 40,000+ alumni and serves nearly 16,000 students, and its growth reached exponential levels in the wake of the prominence their athletic success afforded them. Striking while the iron was hottest, university officials launched their first capital campaign in 2014, aiming to raise $100 million and ultimately securing $127 million. While many of the most significant donations allowed for growing their athletic program and improving their facilities—donors contributed more than $5.5 million to renovate their academic resource center, sports medicine and strength and conditioning centers, and establish naming rights to their basketball arena hospitality suite and administrative offices44—major gift donors stepped 43  See: “Dunk City: The year that changed everything for FGCU.” https://eaglenews. org/26341/sports/the-year-that-changed-everything-dunk-city-fgcu 44  See: “Capital Campaign - FGCU Athletics.” https://fgcuathletics.com/sports/2014/ 10/26/capitalcampaign.aspx

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up to commit to scholarships, programmatic investments, and capital improvements across the university. Naples-based advertising executive and philanthropist Myra Junco Daniels contributed $3 million to WGCU to expand their programming capacity via public radio, representing the largest private donation in the university’s history. Now, the building that houses the television and radio studios is named the Myra Janco Daniels Public Media Center. Donors like her helped grow the university’s endowment by 25% between 2013 and 2016.45 The success of their first capital campaign continues to help the university grow long after their men’s basketball team’s Cinderella run ended in 2013. Twenty-four private donors, companies, and foundations contributed $1 million or more to the campaign, supporting areas as diverse as growing the university footprint from 760 acres to 800 acres; current use and endowed scholarships; and enhancing the Early Literacy and Learning program as they provide pre-K to area at-risk youth. Since then, their enrollment has grown by nearly 20% according to institutional reporting, and while they have significantly more support to offer to deserving students, their foundation is only able to award scholarships to roughly 1/3 of new applicants. In addition to supporting students pursuing their educational goals, the institution significantly expanded its comprehensive university status and its impact on the communities and region that it serves in southwestern Florida, particularly by expanding participation in and production of fine arts. Local residents Maurizio and Laura Nisita pledged $1 million to support music scholarships and a university concert series. Their donation supports not only the teaching of music, but also enables the university to host first-class musical performers for the university and surrounding communities to appreciate. Additionally, long-time supporter Martin Wasmer made a six-figure pledge to establish the Wasmer Art Gallery and support Florida Gulf Coast University’s visual arts program.46 Hall of Fame basketball coach Dean Smith once quipped that for better or for worse, athletics is the “front porch” to the university. In Florida Gulf Coast University’s instance, that front porch shown to the world in 2013 now leads to an equally impressive estate.47 45  See: “FGCU exceeds goal for capital campaign.” https://fgcu360.com/2017/11/03/ fundraising-fgcu-exceeds-goal-capital-campaign/ 46  See: Florida Gulf Coast University Stewardship and Campaign Report. https://www. fgcu.edu/advancement/files/fgcu-stewardship-brochure-2018-ada.pdf 47  See: “Athletics and Academics On the Same Team.” General Alumni Association 1970–1074. https://alumni.unc.edu/news/athletics-and-academics-on-the-same-team/

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Under the direction of a new vice president for advancement, the university is launching its second comprehensive campaign—with a $75 million target—as part of their 25th anniversary celebration (though established in 1991, classes were not held on the new campus until 1997). Able to demonstrate significant growth in capacity and status since the first campaign’s conclusion, alumni and supporters will likely be enthusiastic about return on investment from major gifts in the past decade. They can feel encouraged by programs such as their Daveler and Kauanui School of Entrepreneurship, which ranks among the top schools of its kind nationwide, their School of Nursing, which now ranks as the top in the state of Florida, and their Water School that focuses on climate change, natural resources, and ecosystem health with resources for research and study unique to their region. Additionally, their athletic program, which provided the momentum for their first campaign, has captured dozens of conference championships and made numerous NCAA postseason appearances in their 14 years of NCAA Division I competition.48 A new recreation and wellness center on campus, expanded to 47,000 square feet to accommodate the university’s increasing enrollment opened in 2020, became a possibility through support from the FGCU Foundation and two substantial private donations through an anonymous estate gift and a five-year, $1.5 million pledge from the Mary E.  Dooner Foundation.49 Consistent and strategic growth in the areas of academics (diversity and excellence of programs), intercollegiate athletics, and student life and campus culture over the past decade have transformed Florida Gulf Coast University into a powerhouse public regional university in southwestern Florida. Transformative investments during those years because of a successfully executed capital campaign provide excellent momentum for future growth and service delivery to students pursuing their educational goals and support thriving regional communities.

48  See: “FGCU launches comprehensive campaign to ensure continued excellence.” https://fgcu360.com/2022/04/11/fgcu-launches-comprehensive-campaign-to-ensurecontinued-excellence/ 49   See: “Student fitness facility finally front and center.” https://fgcu360.com/ 2018/10/31/student-fitness-facility-finally-front-center/

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University of Central Arkansas Location: Conway, AR Enrollment: 11,487 Most recent capital campaign (years/amount): “UCA Now: Impact Arkansas and Beyond50” 8 years, $100 million. $84.5 million secured as of March 2022. Total attainment (5-year average, 2016–2020, and high attainment mark): $13,338,114; $30,564,552 (2020) Number of front-line fundraisers employed: 7 President/Chancellor and tenure: Davis Houston (2017) University Advancement executive and tenure: Mary Bane Lackie (2018) Technically a suburb in the Little Rock/North Little Rock metropolitan area 30 minutes away from the city center, Conway, Arkansas offers several nearby metropolitan experiences to students recruited from major hubs (Oklahoma City to the west; Memphis to the East) and a mid-sized city experience for students recruited from the state’s rural areas. For a city of its size, Conway offers public regional, religious affiliated, and elite, liberal arts post-secondary education opportunities at University of Central Arkansas, Central Baptist College, and Hendrix College. Boasting alumni as diverse as National Basketball Association Hall of Fame inductee and six-time World Champion Scottie Pippen; three-term Governor Orval Faubus (who infamously protested the integration of Little Rock Public Schools after a landmark Supreme Court unanimous decision ruled school segregation unconstitutional), as well as RuPaul’s Drag Show (Reggie Gavin, aka “Symone,” Season 13) and American Idol (Kris Allen, Season 8) champions, the University of Central Arkansas has demonstrated an outsized impact on the state of Arkansas befitting its centralized location. A Top 200 public university as recognized by U.S.  News and World Report51 with an NCAA Division I athletic program that generates tens of millions of dollars in regional economic impact, the University of Central Arkansas has a strong reputation as a public regional university ideally fit to serve and shape the workforce of its region. With major hubs for corporations such as Kimberly Clark, Wal-Mart, Southwest Energy Corporation, DXC Technology, and the corporate headquarters of Acxiom 50   See: “UCA launches $100 million fundraising campaign.” https://uca.edu/ alumni/2021/04/13/uca-launches-100-million-fundraising-campaign/ 51  See: “University of Central Arkansas: Rankings.” https://premium.usnews.com/bestcolleges/university-of-central-arkansas-1092/overall-rankings

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(formerly Demographics, Inc.), a database marketing firm with over $600 million in revenues in 2021,52 the university has an excellent mix of prominent alumni, small business, and corporate partners. Their growing reputational strength suggests that long-term, large-scale fundraising projects led by the institution have strong odds of successful completion. In 2021, University of Central Arkansas officials announced the public phase of their largest fundraising effort to date—an eight-year, $100 million campaign called “UCA Now: Impact Arkansas and Beyond.” As prominent private and public R1 designated institutions with massive endowments are re-thinking the need for publicly announced long-­ term fundraising campaigns with staggering dollar goals, decisions such as nine-figure capital campaigns, athletic conference realignments, and massive public-private partnerships have become the vogue among regional universities seeking media market share and opportunities to redefine their viability in the early twenty-first century. University of Central Arkansas President Houston Davis indicated his formal and implied goals for the campaign in a 2021 release, and they include not only institutional growth in capacity to serve students, but also transforming the regional and national profile of the institution. The campaign goals strike similar notes to those announced at public regional universities. For example, the university seeks investment in growing the university’s endowment “to remove financial barriers to student success,” and to enhance the university’s role as a regional leader in the arts and as a developer of “new social, cultural and economic opportunities for the region.” Additionally, President Davis and university officials have announced that the campaign focus will extend to developing the institution’s reputation as a “leader in health care education and wellness” and to a focus on developing the university’s most excellent academic programs and community partnerships. President Davis also points out that the $100 million threshold is important as a marker of prestige among peer institutions, noting: “This $100 million campaign again raises the bar for our university and places UCA in special company relative to peers […] Breaking through the ceiling of $100 million announces that our students, faculty, staff and alumni belong in this select company in American public education.53” 52  See: “Acxiom Revenue: Annual, historic, and financials.” https://www.zippia.com/ acxiom-careers-166/revenue/ 53   See: “UCA launches $100 million fundraising campaign.” https://uca.edu/ alumni/2021/04/13/uca-launches-100-million-fundraising-campaign/

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University of Central Arkansas’ announcement of this campaign reveals a primary, if not apparent, justification for entering capital campaign mode: capital campaigns create opportunities to signal boost university strategic initiatives and pivots; and/or highlight branding/rebranding efforts likely to inspire private giving. According to DonorSearch, a donor intelligence consulting firm, successful campaigns rely upon “clear, compelling cases for support […] (with) capital campaign (goals) clearly laid out (with) an obvious delineation between private fundraising and public appeals.54” In their own state, they must compete with public regional universities that have staked out their own corners of the higher education market: Henderson State University, a COPLAC55 member, is the public liberal arts option; Arkansas-Pine Bluff offers the public HBCU experience; Arkansas Tech is the state’s polytechnic university; Arkansas State features NCAA Division I/Football Subdivision athletics; Arkansas-Little Rock is an R2 designated research institution; Arkansas Fort-Smith is a top-15 public regional in the South (per U.S. News and World Report), and Arkansas-Monticello offers the only Forestry program in a state with a rich timber industry. In response to this, the university’s strategic plan highlights “Institutional Distinctiveness” as one of its four pillars to be emphasized in their planning and identifies the uniqueness of their campus’ beauty and location (combination of rurally adjacent natural resources, inclusion in the state’s largest metropolitan area) and its ability to uniquely contribute to the regional economy and arts as central to their identity.56 Projects like the $45 million Windgate Center for Performing Arts— enabled by a $20 million donation from the Windgate Foundation—will position the university to contribute uniquely to the regional arts scene and the creative economy all the while featuring a facility that is a benchmark for the entire higher education industry in Arkansas.57 These are but a handful of the transformative gifts made by private donors to public regional universities during recent capital campaigns that 54  See: “Capital campaigns: Understanding the basics.” https://www.donorsearch.net/ capital-campaigns-guide/ 55  More discussion on COPLAC in Chap. 5: “Advancement and Fundraising to Engage Public Regional Liberal Arts College Alumni and Donors.” 56   See: “University of Central Arkansas strategic plan.” https://uca.edu/about/ files/2021/06/uca_strategicplan_20210527.pdf. (5). 57  See: “UCA News – UCA receives $20 million for fine and performing arts center from Windgate Foundation.” https://uca.edu/news/uca-receives-20-million-for-fine-and-performing-arts-center-from-windgate-foundation/

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check off all the boxes because they advance the university’s strategic goals, engage donors with significant wealth in meaningful ways, and enable storytelling that demonstrates the impact on beneficiaries in real time. Such are the factors most likely to inspire future donors to imagine how they can use philanthropy to transform the communities and institutions they care about most deeply.

CHAPTER 4

Athletic Fundraising at NCAA Public Regional Institutions

The NCAA governs intercollegiate athletic competition at 1066 member institutions in the United States and Canada; 357 of those members compete at the NCAA Division I level, defined as “the highest level of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned […] in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athletic powers, with large budgets, more elaborate facilities and more athletic scholarships than Divisions II and III as well as many smaller schools committed to the highest level of intercollegiate competition.1” 306 full and provisional members compete at the NCAA Division II level, which previously was known as the “College” division of the NCAA until 1973, when some members decided to offer athletic scholarships and compete against other members who followed suit. Those who did became Division II, while the members that decided not to offer scholarships eventually comprised Division III. Beyond these core definitions (which include governance for membership and guidance, for example, on how many scholarships can be offered or when championships will take place), the characteristics become more generalized than specific regarding institutional type, location, budgets, quality of facilities, coaches and administrators’ salaries, etc. This makes it more difficult to generalize about what it means to work at a Division I, II, or III institution as a fundraiser. However, generally, one 1  See: Crowley, Joseph N. (2006). In The Arena: The NCAA’s First Century. NCAA Publications.

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will see newer and larger athletic facilities (with a premium placed on constantly updating amenities, and increasing seating), larger salaries for coaches and administrators and more exposure for athletic teams, and increased importance among alumni and supporters leading to more significant revenues in Division I than Division II; Division II than Division III. Predictably, NCAA Division I programs generally raise more private revenue, through television contracts and corporate sponsorships, than Division II and Division III programs. Of course, this is not universally true, as a Division II program with a track record of competitive success in a major metropolitan area or a Division III program featuring athletics in its capital campaign can surely bring in more private revenue than a low-­ major Division I program with low alumni participation, a small alumni base, and a rural geographical location with fewer ties to workforce. Additionally, regional and cultural differences and university histories can make the role that university athletic programs play far more unique than category-defining characteristics such as Divisional membership will dictate, though I certainly cannot argue that Divisional membership is completely unimportant, or, that athletics cannot have a singular impact on an institution’s brand and potential to raise money more than any other observable factor, for better or for worse. Because of the difficulty one would experience when attempting to make analytical comparisons across ungeneralizable data, storytelling offers a fascinating analytical approach to making such comparisons. A popular example of this is ESPN’s national coverage of football rivalry games. Usually taking place in November, these games are longstanding rivalries that engage alumni bases significantly and often bring large crowds, attention, and media coverage. Fans of college football probably know about the more popular rivalry games, such as the “World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party” (University of Florida vs. University of Georgia); “Bedlam” (The University of Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State University); and the annual Army vs. Navy game. While they generate less media attention, HBCU classic games (e.g., the Bayou Classic’s Grambling vs. Southern; the Magic City Classic’s Alabama A&M vs. Alabama State, both of which draw crowds north of 60,000 people) also generate significant attendance and revenue for the institutions that participate and the cities that host them. Most folks, however, have never heard of the “Biggest Little Game in America” featuring Amherst vs. Williams, the longest rivalry in Division III football (136 meetings since 1884) or the “Tommie-­ Johnnie” game between St. Thomas and St. John (MN) which drew

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crowds large enough that the game needed to be played at the home of the Minnesota Vikings. To say that Division I FBS features big-time football with fierce rivalries that draw enormous crowds and generate massive revenues would ignore the fact that these features exist outside of Division I FBS, and, that it is not true of every Division I FBS program, either. However, having worked at institutions that featured NCAA Division I programs (with FBS and FCS football), Division II, and Division III athletics as a fundraiser, I believe it useful to compare the experiences and stories to see where those differences might emerge. In this chapter, I will share three autoethnographic vignettes from my experiences as a higher education executive working to advance intercollegiate athletics at three public regional universities over the course of roughly a decade. In doing so I’ll examine how those institutions interpreted the role of athletics on their campuses given their membership categories, alumni expectations, and nostalgia for competitive success, and particularly how that impacted fundraising efforts on those campuses as they navigated their own precarious financial circumstances. During this time, I served as a low-major2 Division I assistant/associate athletic director and executive director of a Division I athletic association (2007–2011), a Division I HBCU athletic director in a metropolitan area (2012–2015), and as a director of corporate and foundation relations (2017–2018) directly involved with the development of an athletic fundraising program at a rural, Division II HBCU. The institutions share some commonalities—all are in the South (two are in Louisiana, the other in North Carolina); two have athletic programs that compete at the NCAA Division I level, the other in NCAA Division II. All three institutions suffered from nearly destabilizing budget reductions during the years I worked there— one from a declaration of financial exigency as a result of years of declining enrollment; one from having its budget cut eleven times in seven years, including devastating mid-year cuts, due to reduced subsidies from the state legislature; and one whose enrollment had plummeted nearly 60% 2  An admittedly malleable and difficult to define term referring to the relative state of lessvisible, lower-revenue generating intercollegiate programs compared to the more easily defined “high-major” programs, which are those represented by highly visible revenue-generating conferences like the SEC, Big Ten, and Atlantic Coast Conferences. Common features include the dependence upon “money” games against better-resourced opponents, difficulty attracting opponents for home games, and low-seeding in national tournaments despite staggeringly successful seasons (e.g., going 25-5 in basketball and earning a #15 seed in the NCAA Tournament because of low strength of schedule).

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from its highs a decade previous, leading the state legislature to formally discuss campus closure in the years immediately before my arrival. Two of the institutions serve rural areas, the other is in a large, metropolitan area and a state capitol. Two of the institutions are HBCUs, and the other a predominately white institution (PWI). All three institutions practiced lean/flat management either by necessity, fiat, or administrative ethos, and as a result, many important functions struggled mightily with high turnover in critical positions, burnout, and in attention due to lack of time and resources. Two of the institutions featured a level of university supervisory board involvement that I characterize as meddlesome—to the point of involvement in personnel decisions and day-to-day activities on campus, while the other featured a level of involvement I would characterize as disinterested to the point of virtual non-involvement. All three of the institutions featured a strain of fanaticism that many would attribute to professional athletics programs or university programs in the Power Five Conferences—The Atlantic Coast, The Pacific 12, the Big Ten, the Big 12, and the Southeastern Conference. While the athletic competitions at these institutions were largely untelevised and the exploits of the college athletes remained mostly not regarded nationally, the irrational behavior typical of fanatic engagement prevailed. And as is the case in those other higher-profile institutions, fanaticism can impact leadership and day-to-day decisions on university campuses in startling, unethical, and even illegal ways. While million-dollar donors, sadly, display their power in vulgar ways at Power Five institutions, readers will likely be shocked to find out how meddlesome alumni supporters of athletics can be at public regional institutions—even those who compete away from the brightest lights and cameras that focus on college sport in the United States. For pennies on the dollar.

Part I At public regional university athletic departments, lean management is often the singular defining feature which dominates the day-to-day work of athletic fundraisers. The leanness applies widely—from the number of dedicated staff who can focus on external relations efforts; to the resources available for donor research, prospecting, cultivation, and stewardship; and even to the capacity to accept and reasonably meet deliverables on restricted gift-giving. At my first athletic fundraising appointment, I was a sole employee (no executive assistant or student workers until I created an

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internship program with our journalism department, where I also served as an assistant professor) dedicated to athletic fundraising. My task was to secure $250k annually in unrestricted cash donations and manage a donor recognition program with over 200 $1000+ annual donors; book restricted cash and gifts-in-kind to support programming and event fundraisers and coordinate a half-dozen fundraising events annually; VIP ticket sales and hosting for football suite sales (300 seats in three different suites) and basketball VIP seating (approximately 200 seats); and of course, “other duties as assigned.” This required the attendance of approximately 100 sporting events and approximately 300 workdays annually with over 100 of them on the road to visit donors. In the span of four years, total attainment grew from less than $1 million to over $2 million for the athletic association (which I led as Executive Director), and we attained the institution’s first million-dollar gift, of which $500k+ was dedicated to the athletic program; and donor growth increased over 30%. Of course, such growth cannot be sustained by a sole employee, which can lead to burnout and high turnover. To wit, I share the following reflection: After my academic and football-playing career ended in May, 2000, I moved to the Southwest to enroll in graduate school at a public R1 university with an NCAA Division I athletic program in the PAC-10. There, I’d study rhetoric, composition, and the teaching of the English language as a M.A./ Ph.D. student and teach first-year composition courses as a graduate assistant (at the ripe age of 21  years and 360  days old). A faculty member in the English Department who knew I was a former college athlete introduced me to their head football coach who eventually asked me if there was any way I’d be interested in engaging with his players. Several introductions and conversations with athletic administrators later, I found myself working in the university study hall under the auspices of their academic support center, tutoring students in English and literature. After three and a half years working in academic support at a Power Five athletic department, I learned about the churn and burn ethos at the core of the operation. Revenue generating programs such as football and basketball must generate tens of millions of dollars annually while the majority Black male athletes who populate those teams were not directly compensated and the university failed to retain them over 50% of the time. I did not want to support such an institution, but remained interested in a career in college athletics, so I began seeking opportunities at smaller athletic programs with better track records of retention and graduation success. I returned to my alma mater as an assistant athletic director for external relations and executive

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director of the athletic association, 2007 believing firmly in the possibility that college athletics programs could succeed competitively, its athletes succeed academically, and that the enterprise could make significant contributions to the revenue and reputational health of its host institution and community. I returned to my alma mater with deeply held criticisms of the financial and human resources prevalent at Power Five institutions to ensure the profitability of their athletic enterprises. I traded them for aspirations of working in low-major college athletics, believing it to be a panacea for the toxicity I observed and encountered as I engaged in student-athlete advocacy.3 I found this to be the case almost immediately—I regularly interacted with coaches whose public rhetoric regarding academic and personal development matched the retention and graduation success numbers of the athletes they coached and mentored. Fans and supporters cared about competitive success, but the outcry after unsuccessful seasons paled in comparison to what I experienced in “big-­ time college athletics” and coaches were given many more seasons to obtain success than they would’ve been given in many other Division I settings. Donors and supporters could purchase season tickets or participate in fundraising events and interact with coaches and athletes for a fraction of the cost of doing so at, for example, Louisiana State University, and athletics played a specific role at the institution and largely remained inside those lanes, never demanding outsized resource commitments for new facility construction or coaches’ salaries that were five to ten times larger than that of the university president. However, as many engaged in fundraising efforts at public regional universities can attest to, the resources available to engage in donor development and solicitation pale in comparison while the needs are often more acute and the straits far more dire. Upon my arrival, there was no donor/alumni database for regular communications, social media was not yet an exploitable medium, and athletic department websites largely provided box scores and upcoming event information. I did not have a formal budget for cultivation or travel, so much of my donor development work required ambushing alumni events or hitching rides with our athletic teams as they traveled the region and 3  In my doctoral dissertation, “One Foot In: Student-Athlete Advocacy and Social Movement Rhetoric in the Margins of American College Athletics,” I define student-athlete advocacy as “any means by which an individual or group of individuals engages in traditional social movement rhetoric/agitation (see Bowers and Ochs, 1993) to air grievances and call for reforms on behalf of student-athletes that ensure their intellectual and social as well as their athletic development” (23).

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taking meetings with donors and alumni at ball games. For major prospect identification, since there was no wealth screening software or reliable past donor data, I relied heavily on rumor, gossip, supposition, and as I became more sophisticated, public records available on the internet and in county clerks’ offices (especially useful for determining acreage ownership in parts of the state where a rumored natural gas pocket had been discovered which we’d eventually learn is the largest in North America, making generationally land-poor individuals across the state millionaires overnight). Finally, without giving programs established for planned gifts or capital projects and without formal procedures or documentation for gift acceptance or charitable gift agreements, much of the daily work even when we successfully solicited donations required some building of the aircraft as we flew it. I shared a fear I had with the athletic director I reported to—we may see a day when we can no longer afford to take more donations. Absurd as that sounds, in the end it proved accurate. Challenges aside, I made the most of the opportunity, and put a lot of miles on my personal vehicle, and tagged along on team buses and alumni relations office caravans, affording me opportunities to meet and cultivate prospects and thank donors between Dallas, Houston, Little Rock, AR, New Orleans, Memphis, and Jackson, MS. Along with our marketing and ticket staff members, we engaged in aggressive cultivation in nearer metropolitan markets and established a constant presence at local and regional civic clubs and non-­ profit fundraisers and chamber of commerce mixers. During my first year on staff, athletic association revenues exceeded $1 million for the first time in its history, and within three years, it would exceed $2 million. A $1.07 million gift I secured in 2010—the first in the institution’s 125-year+ history—helped bring the largest capital campaign in institutional history to a close. We completed capital projects all with private funding (an $800k outdoor athletic facility fencing project, a $300k alumni pavilion in the football tailgating area, a $250k renovation of the football coaches’ offices) and our fundraising and branding efforts were featured in national magazines (Athletic Administration and Athletic Management). Everything, at least on paper, was going gangbusters. That is, at least, until the center could hold no longer. As our fans grew accustomed to the Division I experience we provided (with a substantially below-median Division I athletic budget, and without a strategy to drive increased donor support or raise ticket prices) the only resource remaining that could fill the breach was people working overtime without overtime pay.

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The end for this tenure of my fundraising career came about predictably. All the aspects that make public regional universities unique also make them uniquely challenging. Twenty-somethings can only work 70–80 hours a week for so long with entry-level salaries, no opportunities for bonuses for excellent work, and few opportunities for advancement given the small number of executive administration positions on their campuses (also, many of them have concerns that necessitate higher pay as they start families and begin taking care of aging parents). One top marketing assistant left to start his own business, and a six-month vacancy ensued (hard to get excited for 70–80 hour/ week work at $55k). We struggled to find applicants, plus, rounds of budget cuts due to shrinking state subsidies constantly threatened to have the position’s funding pulled. Student workers and graduate assistants graduated and moved on, as they are supposed to. Our fundraising successes allowed coaches to put forward stronger teams, win championships, and earn bonuses while fundraising and marketing staff had no such options. I was told that the only way I could receive a raise was to take on more work, and so I did— my 33% pay raise and promotion to Associate Athletics Director also required me to be an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Public Relations, taking on teaching a 2X2 course load and student organization supervision. We reached the point where we couldn’t accept more donations when the work of doing so became unmanageable. We’d increased the number of donors by 25% in four years and the number of $1000+ donors to the athletic association doubled, along with the number of endowed scholarship providers. However, as we faced more and more cuts to our budget, the size of the staff to identify, cultivate, solicit, and steward those donors and their investments remained flat. There we were. Unable to take donations because we lacked the people and the resources to bring them in or be good stewards to the donors we successfully connected with. Within 18  months of my departure to take a Director of Athletics position, everyone of the staff I supervised left, as well. Burnt out, too young to retire, starting over anew, repeating every three to five years until we leave the profession or move up to move out. Anyone who can do this work well under these circumstances can do it for more money and less stress down the street at better-resourced universities. Anyone who can’t, will not raise enough money to meet the institution’s needs. The hardest truth to swallow was that everybody knew this, and rather than try to figure out a way to improve things, simply counted down the days until the new guy figured it out. 1592 days later, I was on the move again.

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Part II As a Director of Athletics and executive administrator4 at a Division I HBCU who oversaw fundraising efforts for an insufficiently resourced department (and, to date, at the only four-year university in the United States with an NCAA Division I athletic department, but no university advancement or fundraising staff, because these functions were centralized at a university system office), I learned many important lessons about HBCU fundraising culture. No easy solutions exist: alumni excoriate athletic directors who raise ticket prices for pricing out their fans; fans who attend games bristle when athletic directors halt comped entrance to events and free parking; fellow administrators reduce subsidies and support to the point that the only option is to raise ticket prices. Additionally, many citizens in the local community, whether their affiliation with the institution was as alumnus or as beneficiary of the public services it provided them, simply could not afford to participate if the tickets weren’t free or discounted. Very few people held positions that could be rationally discussed. I once was accosted by a local preacher (who’d solicited donations on four separate instances in a 90-minute service) who told me our tickets ought to be free, and shouted at me when my reply was “so should church.” The most important lesson I learned during my time working at HBCUs was this: HBCUs have plenty of fans. What they need are more supporters. The material and philosophical difference between one and the other represents one of the most crucial problems facing HBCU administrators in the twenty-first century. A concept that many athletic administrators in understaffed departments must learn quickly is the difference between ardent supporters and mere fans. The difference between individuals who back the university’s efforts because its growth and success mean something special to them and individuals who only show up to bandwagon/front-run must be ascertained and the former prioritized over the latter. When floods of requests pour in in the best of times and the flood of discontent and complaints replace them in the worst of times (or when, more perplexingly, they commingle) the only sure way to prioritize energy, focus, and resources is to make these judgments efficiently (and hope that your 4  From 2012 to 2015, I served as Director of Athletics at an NCAA Division I HBCU, and from 2015 to 2017, as Assistant to the Chancellor/President for Institutional Advancement there.

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decisions are backed by those to whom you report). The following are some key takeaways from my time working in public regional university athletic fundraising:5 In non-profit fundraising, we spend a great deal of time identifying, cultivating, and soliciting donations, often over unintimidating, nondescript lunch and coffee meetings, at tailgating parties, and fish fries. Everyone enjoys friends regaling us with stories of championships won and narrowly lost, great athletes and coaches, filled stands, brimming with pride, and rich traditions passed from generation to generation. One hopes, eventually, that the conversation will turn from reminiscing about yesteryear to visions for the future. As a career institutional advancement officer, no sweeter words can be uttered by a prospective donor than “How can I help y’all?” An important element of discussion with donor prospects is the notion of what individuals and groups believe they can do to help (which often indicates both capacity and ability to give). When discussions pivot toward this topic in HBCU circles, many are inclined to share the ways that they already “support” our institutions as a hedge against future asks. Some of the more common claims include 1) “I’ve never missed a football game—including road games!”; 2) “I pay my booster club dues annually!”; 3) “I pay my university alumni dues annually!”; 4) “I already organize fundraisers (crawfish boils, fish fries, and raffles)!”

While all of these are important determinants of who has affinity and capacity to become strong supporters of our institutions, they are not always indicators of financial support that ends up benefiting our institutions. It’s important to note that passion such as this can easily be converted from fanaticism to considerable financial support, but this process requires collaboration and education, and that is the responsibility of institutional advancement officers to provide. Moral support and financial support are not one and the same. Never missing a road game means that individuals are purchasing tickets from other institutions, buying their fuel and tailgating supplies from companies that may or may not support their institution, and spending dollars 5  Excerpted from “Beyond Fish Plates and Tailgates: Steering HBCU Fundraising from Fanaticism to Support.” Presented at the HBCU Media Summit, Jackson State University, Jackson, MS, July, 2013.

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supporting businesses in other towns/cities (AND THEIR RIVAL UNIVERSITIES). For example, supporting the great cultural hallmark “The Bayou Classic” means that one weekend every year, Grambling and Southern fans pump over $30 million into the city of New Orleans, and yet bring fewer than 4% of those dollars back to their foundations and institutions. Fans come to New Orleans and attend the parties (and pre- and after- and after-after-parties), and none of that revenue supports the institution. Supporters, meanwhile, buy tickets and attend the event, AND buy tickets to home games because the institution receives that support directly. Fans obtain free tickets from board members, corporate sponsors, or university officials and do not support the university financially. Each fan that attends an athletic event without paying for a ticket costs money—more security, parking attendants, ushers, and staff are required for hospitality without revenues to offset. Supporters, meanwhile, pay for their tickets, to park, and to tailgate, where applicable. See the difference? Paying dues is important, but it’s also important to examine what support those dues manifest. If most of the dues paid by your booster club pay for bus trips to road games and supplies for hospitality at home games, that’s a social club. Ensure that at least a portion of those dues is donated to the institution for support, or perhaps recommend this to your club. Encourage members to support businesses that back your institution, or volunteer to support university activities (like feeding student-athletes, coaches and staff occasionally) that reduce its expenses. Alumni dues are often expended on providing hospitality to visiting alumni and their families at various events, but if little remains for institutional support, the process enables fans to have a better experience, but does not support the institution financially. Supporters, meanwhile, pay dues, attend alumni events, and recruit fellow alumni to join them and pay their dues, too, as well as develop ways to increase their chapters’ financial support. Organized fundraisers are an important part of the alumni chapter/ booster club experience, giving members and their families time to meet, network, grow, and share enthusiasm, and share meals, beverages, and stories. Yet, they are often time-consuming, net marginal revenues, and do not provide meaningful institutional support (exceptions exist, but they are not the rule). While fans host day parties, tailgates, and cookouts to celebrate their alma mater and rock their school colors, supporters ensure those parties have enough private support to generate net revenues to party with a purpose. They only wear school apparel if they’re on licensed products and they buy their

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party supplies from fellow alumni and supporters who in turn increase their support for the institution. A fan purchases a season ticket (or bums tickets from friends, or, only attends homecoming or the annual big rivalry game) only to give it up when the team hits a losing streak. A supporter buys those tickets each year regardless of outcome, buys extra to encourage members of the community to attend and/or encourages church, community members, and business colleagues to participate. Several HBCUs rank perennially as national Top 20 institutions in attendance for FCS football,6 and yet, football gate, tailgating, and parking revenues barely cancel out coaches’ salaries, scholarships, and football gameday and operating expenses. A supporter gives without expectation of return, out of a spirit of philanthropy, to grow revenues, the brand, and the institution. A fan participates for self-gratifying purposes—to brag about wins, commiserate over losses, to beam with pride over their alma mater’s successes and benefit from its growing brand and their association with it. A fan asks, “How can my affiliation with this organization benefit me?” A supporter asks, “How can my affiliation(s) benefit the organization?” They leverage support from their fellow alumni and business connections. Supporters donate to the annual, general scholarship, or endowed scholarship fund so that students may benefit. It is critical that HBCU administrators and fundraisers, and alumni and supporters of these institutions reflect on the important relationship between fanaticism and support, and work to develop the latter. Our institutions do not lack enthusiastic alumni. What we lack are institutional representatives who educate potential supporters about the support that is needed and how fans can support their alma mater’s efforts. What passes as philanthropy at HBCUs is often wholly replaced by transactional exchanges at every level. The university’s board members, expected to volunteer for their service, simply extract payment annually in free tickets to sporting events, hotel suites, and full liquor cabinets when representing the university on the road. Booster clubs work hard to replace the revenue that is extracted by board members and not provided by the institution. They step in and raise the money so seniors can get letterwinner’s jackets. Or raise money so the football coaches can continue recruiting and hosting recruits. They 6  See 2015 NCAA Football Championship Subdivision attendance statistics. http://fs. ncaa.org/Docs/stats/football_records/Attendance/2015.pdf

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make sure that the men’s and women’s basketball teams can have an end of the year banquet with awards. Truly remarkable, right? However, if we tally up the costs, it turns out that if we simply cut out all of the giveaways, we’d generate enough revenue to not need the booster clubs’ donations to balance our budgets after all. (5 months later) I stood at midfield at NRG Stadium in the middle of a moment as cinematic as I’d ever played a role in manufacturing; 40,000 fans had just watched us beat our rival in overtime at the conference championship game, avenging an earlier loss that season in front of an oversold home crowd. It was the first conference championship in over a decade at the institution, and we’d come a long way in the past 15 months with a new head coach. The revenue deficit I inherited had been erased with home attendance exceeding 20,000 per game (Top 5  in DI FCS) and solid attendance at our season-­ ending classic game provided a much-needed boost. I’d been hired expressly to hire good coaches to return the program to its winning ways, raise revenues to eliminate deficits, and ensure compliance … and without any university support due to its exigency (bankruptcy) proceedings, we’d managed to accomplish all these goals. I didn’t know it at the time, but 18 months later I’d leave college athletics for good. Turns out in athletics, fans, executive administrators, and governing boards expect growing revenues and win counts to increase without interruption, despite the human and physical impossibility of doing so. If we lost, we should have won; if we won, we should have won differently; if we dominated, we were bullies; and no matter what, everything we did was too expensive/not expensive enough, too exclusive/not exclusive enough. I wasn’t from there, I didn’t go to school there. Doing well by doing right by the college athletes who fielded those teams and the coaches and staff who supported them was never good enough. And that’s why I’m not smiling, as I look back, in any of those championship presentation pictures that so many people have hanging up on their walls to this day.

Part III In “Higher ed is a land of dead-end jobs,” UNC-Wilmington professor of education Kevin McClure notes that a significant number of higher education administrators, particularly those in entry-level and middle management positions operate in a career wasteland, a professional purgatory. Executive administrators parked in their positions for decades and flat

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management inspired organizational charts (largely due to decades of declining state investment) lead to high turnover in these positions when their inhabitants find that they have no career advancement opportunities within the organization (leading to a phenomenon often labeled “move out to move up”). Additionally, a lack of onboarding and professional development due to overworked supervisors with depressed expectations that individuals will remain with the organization long enough to have earned such investment leads to further churn and burn. A final concern makes dead end jobs an increasing concern in the public regional university landscape—the threat that looming cuts will lead to eliminated positions, which is an especially terrifying prospect for at-will employees forced to vacate their position by month’s end after moving across the country to areas where they have no family or social safety net.7 After moving out to move up for a third time in seven years—twice for career advancement and once to avoid budget cutbacks that would eliminate positions that would make my managerial work an impossibility—I found myself in yet another crisis employment scenario that would force me to pack up and move again within one year of my arrival. So, I’d decided to leave college athletics once again. Once again, it decided that it was not done with me. Small colleges and universities often require administrators to take on multiple roles in their organizational structure to reduce costs. In the 16 years I’ve worked in public regional higher education, I’ve seen this phenomenon in many unpredictable forms at low-resourced institutions—a Wide Receivers coach moonlighting as an Assistant Sports Information Director; an Admissions/Recruiting Counselor coaching Cheerleading; a facilities administrator taking over parking/traffic duties. Reminds me of the furniture stores back in Louisiana that sold hot plates and cut hair around the back. On the one hand, it can increase the job security for these human Swiss army knives. On the other, I often find that their capacity to perform the duties of one role, be it because of preference, aptitude, or both means that we don’t get 100% and 100% or even 50% and 50% for efficiency and production across multiple roles. We leave work undone, we miss deadlines, and inevitably, overlapping assignments require us to be in two places at once and disaster ensues.

7  See: McClure, K. (2022). “Higher ed is a land of dead-end jobs.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/higher-ed-is-a-land-of-dead-end-jobs

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When university officials approached me, as a director of corporate and foundation relations for a small college, to assist with fundraising efforts for its athletic department, all I could feel was a repeating sense of doom. There’s no pathway to successfully executing this ask on a small college campus. Here are several imaginable scenarios for “success” and the underlying complications which produce inevitable failure: 1. At first, I successfully assist the athletic department standing up its fundraising infrastructure and as a result am asked to add those responsibilities to my quotidian duties without increased pay or promotion and burn out or become frustrated and seek employment elsewhere. Or; 2. I successfully assist the athletic department standing up its fundraising infrastructure and reduce the athletic director’s ability to advocate for more resources and staffing to achieve their plans. Or, I successfully assist the athletic department standing up its fundraising infrastructure, and in the process harm the athletic director’s reputation as an effective administrator. Or, executive administrators, coaches, and alumni begin asking why the athletic director doesn’t make fundraising a priority (n.b. after the athletic director at this institution was unceremoniously fired, four months after my arrival, I was approached by several university board members about my interest in becoming interim athletic director, which I aggressively declined). Or; 3. Either at first, or in the future, if my athletic fundraising efforts are not successful, I can be terminated for failing at a job that is not in my contract or job description. If I ever complain about the increased strain, or my inability to complete two jobs, I will be labeled as disgruntled, cynical, and as someone who isn’t a team player, and burn out or become frustrated and seek employment elsewhere. Seriously, the worst role-player simulation imaginable. I didn’t imagine in December that by February, all three scenarios would materialize. Given my history working in athletic fundraising and a strong working relationship with the Director of Athletics, I had no issues with assisting in the design of an annual giving solicitation plan and a new football season ticket/ tailgating package to promote in conjunction with the hiring of a new football coach as we rolled out the marketing plan for the fall football season. The plans came together easily as the vice chancellor, director of athletics, director of compliance, and I imagined what was possible and determined what was

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doable with the limited budget and time each of us could contribute to the project. We created a flyer and used information from our limited donor and alumni database and season ticket sales data to solicit approximately 1000 alumni, corporations, and local small business owners, yielding initial responses of gifts being mailed in, opportunities for discovery visits, and a couple of excited local business partners who’d been waiting for such a program to be developed. Within weeks, I was on the road meeting with corporate and foundation-related inquirers, including a regional hospital who would later become a major sponsor at the university (including a corporate sponsorship and gift-in-kind support of athletic trainers and team doctors and athletic supplies). Then, it happened, as I expected it would. The chancellor had been replaced over the fall break by an interim chancellor sent with the primary objective of reducing staff sizes and trimming budgets. Among the first targets,  an already financially fragile athletic program only sponsoring the NCAA minimum number of sports and not maximizing the number of scholarships available to keep costs minimized. Hardly any fat to trim existed as they competed in a conference restricting their travel to four neighboring states with over half of their conference members in-state. However, because of the university’s lack of investment in athletics and growing but insufficient alumni engagement efforts, crowds at home events dwindled and revenues followed suit. An executive administrator arrived and relieved the Director of Athletics of duty, fully confident that other coaches could assume his duties and that revenue generation would continue apace with the plan they implemented in the Fall. Of course, none of this was true, and the mission went from creep to full sprint as officials from institutional advancement absorbed more responsibility for the athletics’ mission and more officials in athletics now had to spend more time and energy with responsibilities outside of their job descriptions. Even as a temporary solution, this is tenuous, but I have observed throughout my career a tendency to make temporarily overwhelming work assignments permanent as they either prove the initial thesis correct, or those individuals vacate the positions and create more cost savings, which is another desired outcome. Perhaps I’d have been more hopeful if this were the first, second, or third time it had happened to me in my career. In a dispute with an executive at a previous institution who’d saddled me with a $900,000 deficit upon my arrival and given me only four months to resolve it (in a budget of only $6.7 million, late enough in the year that all the major revenue-generating sports had already concluded their seasons) I once smarted off that I had a terrific

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idea to save the university millions of dollars overnight. “Get rid of Athletics,” I deadpanned. “Every damn scholarship. Every coach. Every team. Blow the whole goddamned thing up. I’ll make sure to forward all the calls your way.” Of course, that solution would never be enacted so swiftly, but rather, spread out over decades, breaking the camel’s back one straw at a time. The same case now  existed at my current employer—there were no “millions” to be saved through cuts to athletics, but whatever cuts resulted would surely appease someone, somewhere. . Within six months, the vice chancellor and I left the university for other positions with more reasonable expectations and within 18 months, everyone involved with this fundraising assignment would be gone. Unreasonable expectations, a lack of long-term vision, and burnout, all of which I feared from the onset, spelled out the same doom I experienced at under-resourced institutions across the country. Each time it happens, another talented and capable individual decides to pursue another career option outside of higher education and the brain drain presses on, while another hopeful and naïve person assumes the vacated roles, only to be dealt the same losing hand at a table where your bluff always gets called. Whenever I am asked if I enjoyed working in college athletics, I always tell people my favorite aspect of it is that you’ve got 40-hour work weeks. And then you come in Thursday morning. If it looks like there’s a lot of turnover in athletic fundraising, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. Next time you’re tempted to ask some 32-year-old from Idaho who’s worked in California, Texas, Ohio, and Kentucky “what brings you to insert rural town, insert state name?” Whatever the answer they give, know this. They’re there for the job.

CHAPTER 5

Advancement and Fundraising to Engage Public Regional Liberal Arts College Alumni and Donors

The collective fantasy any individual conjures regarding their idea of a college campus will likely be heavily informed by depictions of the collegiate setting in popular culture. A pastoral and bucolic setting, with ivy-lined buildings, long malls replete with frisbee-tossing, acoustic guitar playing co-eds, and bespectacled professors in houndstooth jackets with elbow patches, pipes, and peripatetic lectures punctuating the otherwise calm air. Every twentieth  century movie, situational comedy, or drama depicting college life draws from these commonplaces of private liberal arts college settings. In reality, most college campuses simply do not look like this. Uniformly outfitted classrooms deeply set within buildings at urban campuses stand virtually indistinguishable from their surrounds, save for branded wayfinder signage that dots the landscape. Increasingly, public regional university campuses have far fewer students lounging on the mall between campus or engaging in friendly intramural activities because accelerated college costs mean that those students are now either commuting to reduce fees or working between and after classes and on the weekends to make enough money to afford tuition. There is no typical student, of course, but increasingly, students are not 18–21 years old, do not live in residential halls on the campus, and attend classes virtually and asynchronously in addition to their traditionally located classes. Still, our collective consciousnesses turn, despite many of our lived experiences, to the idea of the liberal arts college when we imagine the setting—as a look © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. J. Broussard, Fundraising at Public Regional Universities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45481-3_5

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at the current home webpages or admissions recruiting materials of many public regional universities still suggest. The liberal arts curriculum, designed to broadly and richly educate students to prepare them for responsible citizenship as well as for the professions, remains one of the oldest curricular traditions preserved in Western culture (stemming from the trivium and quadrivium, or, the seven liberal arts of classic antiquity, the concept is over two millennia old). Seemingly anathema in a higher education industry so heavily predicated on the efficiency with which credentialed graduates can enter the workforce, the liberal arts promote deep consideration and reflection on literature, history, math, and sciences, and instill a deep appreciation for philosophical and scientific inquiry. While the liberal arts are generally associated with “elite” private institutions across the country, and thus, a much more expensive price tag, there are a handful of public liberal arts colleges and universities in the United States that offer the educational option to students from lower-income families. The liberal arts may seem less useful to first-generation students and those from meager socioeconomic means with regard to guaranteeing plentiful job opportunities upon graduation. However, given the preparation that a liberal arts educated student receives in advance of graduate and professional school exams (e.g., MCAT, GRE, LSAT), for these students, an affordable public liberal arts education can be the gateway to dreams of becoming surgeons, judges, professors, and entrepreneurs. Public liberal arts colleges and universities operate across the United States, blending the educational priorities of the liberal arts with the historical missions of public regional universities to provide access and opportunity to a wide array of students seeking college degrees. Public regional liberal arts universities provide excellent education and training for their students, and yet, these institutions increasingly face renewed calls to demonstrate their relevance, even among their own alumni; 29 public colleges and universities in 27 states and one Canadian province make up the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC).1 The consortium exists to represent the shared mission of their institutions as well as promote the value of liberal arts and residential college life more broadly; 21 of their member institutions are also AASCU members, making them public regional liberal arts institutions. They are primarily found in small towns and rural areas in every region of the United States, and several are also recognized as official liberal arts institutions of their 1

 “Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges.” https://coplac.org/

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respective states. They offer a truly unique educational opportunity and tend to be highly regarded institutions by their peers as well as by national rankings services, and unlike small private liberal arts universities with low enrollments and small endowments, which have increasingly struggled and suspended operations at an accelerated pace in the past decade,2 state funding allows for greater budget stability. The great strengths of public regional liberal arts colleges and universities create a paradoxical challenge to their continued relevance. This is especially the case as they continue to demonstrate value in ways that are less explicitly tied to workforce or regional concerns (consider that some of these colleges are state-designated liberal arts colleges, meaning they serve a population far more geographically diverse than their public regional peers) even as they provide valuable educational opportunities to first-generation and low-income families. Also, given their capacity to produce alumni well-prepared to continue to graduate studies at R1 institutions, advancement and alumni relations staff have to compete against alumni masters and doctoral university affinities as well—and state flagship and large private institutions’ resources for alumni engagement dwarf public regional budgets. As they uplift individuals and set them on paths that would otherwise cost them tens of thousands of dollars more to afford, it is possible that in doing so they may lose their relevance to their alumni altogether. In the area of alumni engagement, public regional liberal arts institutions face an acute challenge. CASE defines alumni engagement as “activities that are valued by alumni, build enduring and mutually beneficial relationships, inspire loyalty and financial support, strengthen the institution’s reputation and involve alumni in meaningful activities to advance the institution’s mission.3” They segment alumni engagement into four distinct categories, including philanthropy, volunteerism, experiences, and communications. Advancement units measure engagement in each of these categories, and in order to grow engagement, they must invest time and resources into soliciting financial support meaningful to alumni, providing rewarding volunteer opportunities that connect alumni and enhance 2  See: Lederman, D. (2021). “The number of colleges continues to shrink.” Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/08/02/number-colleges-shrinks-againincluding-publics-and-private-nonprofits 3  Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). (2019). “Voluntary support of education research brief. Trends in alumni giving.” Washington, D.C.

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the institution’s purpose, providing meaningful experiences (e.g., guided tours; travel to athletic events) that inspire alumni, celebrate student achievements, highlight excellent faculty, and strengthen the school’s reputation and provide informative communication that supports the school’s mission, and elucidates strategic goals and inspires a desire to explore solutions collaboratively. Especially for public regional liberal arts graduates who go on to obtain degrees at larger universities, the resources dedicated to alumni engagement simply do not compare. The dedication and earnestness of the alumni programs aside, R1/state flagship/private research universities often engage their alumni with opportunities that are more robust, present, numerous, and personally/financially/culturally rewarding than their liberal arts peers. So how can advancement personnel at public regional liberal arts institutions compete in such a scenario? Given their focus on first-generation and lower-income students, how can they compete with the comparably higher-income students from legacy families typical of private liberal arts colleges? In the next section, I will examine alumni and donor engagement efforts of five public liberal arts colleges to discover how they approach this complex situation and create affinity and interest among their supporters.

Truman State University Location: Kirksville, Missouri Enrollment: 4389 Academic affiliations (if any): COPLAC Total attainment (5-year average, 2016–2020, and high attainment mark): $6,594,371; $10,154,800 (2020) Notable college fact: In 1986, then known as Northeast Missouri State University, the university was named the official liberal arts college for the state. In 1996, the university permanently became known as Truman State University. President/Chancellor and tenure: Susan Thomas (2016-interim president; 2017-promoted to president) University Advancement executive and tenure: Ernie Hughes (2018) Perhaps the ideal among public regional liberal arts colleges, Truman State University has all of the accolades necessary to assert its place atop its institutional peers. Perennially ranked among the top regional universities in the country (and for several years straight as the #1 public regional

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university in the Midwest according to U.S.  News and World Report4), Truman State University is also an exceptional value for students seeking a liberal arts degree, ranked as a Top 20 public college value in the nation by Money Magazine.5 Boasting alumni such as General John “Black Jack” Pershing, heavyweight boxing champion Ken Norton, and The Office star Jenna Fischer, Truman State University has no shortage of star power which can be accessed to promote future opportunities to prospective students and stoke pride among its alumni. Their plan for engaging alumni is quite robust, as they employ a traditional combination of alumni events hosted on campus and a regional chapter strategy connecting alumni from Arizona to Chicago to Washington, D.C., as well as through publications, social media, and a dues-required alumni association. University officials have conducted successful fundraising activity that has yielded growth in their giving base as well as their largest individual gifts in its history. Truman State University’s most recent capital campaign, “Pursue the Future,” culminated in 2018, with the university exceeding its target of $40 million by nearly $3 million, including over $20 million for scholarships and significant facility upgrades to their football stadium and the university’s “Sesquicentennial Plaza.”6 Alumni Dan and Jan Shepherd, owners of their own successful agricultural business, pledged $7 million to the campaign, comprising the largest single funding commitment in the university’s rich history; and yet, the average gift given to the university was only $323. Even more impressively, fundraising success continued after the capital campaign’s conclusion, with total donations exceeding $10 million in 2020. With the success of the capital campaign and continued growth, the Truman State University Foundation awarded over $1 million in scholarships from its endowment to 363 recipients. Much of what makes Truman State University alumni extremely proud and encourages prospective students to attend may also speak to a larger challenge the university faces to engage alumni and spur giving. Front and

4  Ranked the #6 regional university in the Midwest in 2022, Truman State trails only Butler University, Bradley University, John Carroll University, Calvin University, and Xavier University, all private institutions. See: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/ regional-universities-midwest 5  See: “Find your best value college.” Money Magazine. https://tinyurl.com/3xrtjtvt 6  See: “Pursue the Future Campaign.” https://campaign.truman.edu/

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center on Truman State University’s website7 is an impressive list of employers who have recruited Truman graduates as well as graduate schools that recruit them. Employers such as Boeing, Deloitte, and Monsanto compete for their graduates’ interest, and from Stanford University to Columbia University, prestigious selective institutions admit their graduates into various programs. However, even though 50% of their students graduate debt-free and subsequently find excellent opportunities for employment and extending their academic and professionalization through graduate school, the #1 public regional university in the Midwest reports an annual giving rate of 5.2%, barely in the top third for regional universities in the Midwest (56/167 ranked schools8), and only nominally above the public university average for the United States. These data suggest that the low-income and first-generation individuals best served by a public liberal arts education graduate and obtain great jobs and opportunities for continuing studies, but while fondness for Truman State University exists in their hearts and minds, this does not translate to substantial alumni donor participation in appreciation for the preparation and opportunities received. The likely explanation is that alumni who are first-­ generation from low-income families are pressed to support their families financially in ways that students from middle- and high-income families are not. The university isn’t giving up without a fight. Truman State’s Alumni Association announced a three-prong strategic plan in 2022 focusing on connecting alumni to each other, to the university, and connecting people outside the Truman family through alumni recruitment.9 Their alumni chapter structure allows for alumni to gather and create social and professional connections with the university at the center but based on their own affinities. Through the alumni office, staff will reach out to various departments across the campus to ensure that when they bring alumni back or when they venture out to meet them, they will have resources and support to do so. Finally, the alumni office promotes recruitment of new students to the university by alumni as a significant means of engagement and alumni contribution. If these engagement measures succeed, many more 7  See: “Truman Degrees Matter.” https://www.truman.edu/about/facts-about-truman/ outcomes/ 8  See: “Truman State University: Rankings.” https://premium.usnews.com/best-colleges/truman-state-2495/overall-rankings 9  See: “Alumni Association Develops Strategic Plan.” https://trumanreview.truman.edu/ files/2022/08/TrumanReviewSummer2022.pdf

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alumni will build strong connections that benefit them long beyond their days studying at the university have concluded, and through the process of recruiting new students to the university as ambassadors, they will help the university grow, generate revenue, and pass the torch to its next generation of alumni. While these are the kinds of contributions that are lifeblood to public regional universities, they don’t show up in the alumni giving rate, per se, nor do they count strictly as alumni donations. Most boards, presidents, and legislators would say “So what?!?” to this fact, and they’d be right to do so, revealing the flaw in reducing the evaluation of an advancement unit’s success, particularly at a public regional university, down to a set of universally compared, but not always universally applicable metrics. As CASE president Sue Cunningham notes, “volunteer engagement […] experiential engagement […] communication engagement, particularly in an era defined by digital and social connectivity […] and the more traditional metric of philanthropic engagement10” are the components by which advancement should be measured, and the Truman alumni plan indicates a strategy to ensure their alumni outreach efforts meet the needs of their alumni as well as industry best practices.

Sonoma State University Location: Rohnert Park, California Enrollment: 7784 Academic affiliations (if any): COPLAC, Space Grant, Hispanic Serving Institution Total attainment (5-year average, 2016–2020, and high attainment mark): $5,038,003; $6,079,178 (2016) Notable college fact: Given the university’s proximity to “wine country” in central California’s Napa Valley, the university offers a major in Wine Business and, where students can prepare for careers in viticulture, wine marketing, wine finance and accounting, wine business strategies, and wine production. President/Chancellor and tenure: Ming-Tung “Mike” Lee (2022) University Advancement executive and tenure: Mario Perez (2020)

10  See: Cunningham, S. (2018). “Rankings must reconsider alumni giving rates.” Inside HigherEd.https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2018/09/17/us-news-rankings-provideprofoundly-limited-view-alumni-relations-opinion

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With just under 8000 students, Sonoma State is one of the smallest institutions by enrollment in the California State University System, but the university’s reputation and influence are outsized. In 2022, U.S. News and World Report ranked the institution in the Top 20 among public regional universities in the west, and in the Top 50 nationally in the “social mobility” category, which ranks how well institutions retain and graduate students who are Pell Grant-eligible11. As far as their fundraising, they not only look to alumni and local business owners, but  also  to benefactors who have chosen to live in Sonoma County, which is widely renowned as the largest producer of wine in the four-county Napa Valley region (their residence halls are named Cabernet, Zinfandel, Verdot, Sauvignon, Beaujolais, and Tuscany, if that is any indication of how important winemaking is to the region). Most fundraisers wouldn’t be excited to meet with a donor about a gift that amounts to peanuts; however, when the donor is famed cartoonist Charles Schulz, of Peanuts fame, you take the call. The result was a $5 million donation for the naming rights of the Jean and Charles Schultz Information Center on Sonoma State’s campus. Given the university’s relative youth (it was founded in 1961) and small size of its alumni body (approximately 72,000) university advancement and alumni relations must focus their engagement not only upon alumni donors, but also on residents of the area who appreciate the university’s contribution to the region’s culture and workforce. Despite the uniqueness of its programs and idyllic location, Sonoma State University has never executed a capital campaign and the maturity of their fundraising program is a work in progress. After nearly two decades of leadership under President Ruben Arminana, whose 24 years represent one of the longest tenures in California State University System history, their next president resigned under ignominious circumstances after a scandal-filled year of headlines rocked the institution under her leadership. This may explain why the university’s 2018–2025 strategic plan for university advancement appears stalled.12 Of course, the current strategic plan also doesn’t include the words “fundraising,” “investment,” or “raise” in

11  See: “Sonoma State University Rankings.” https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/ sonoma-state-university-1156/overall-rankings 12  See: “Transformative Impact - University Advancement.” http://strategicplan.sonoma. edu/priorities/transformative-impact/university-advancement

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its language, so it is difficult to surmise how important fundraising is to the institution’s perceptions of its path forward.13 While the fundraising numbers might not necessarily reflect robust alumni engagement, Sonoma State University provides ample opportunities for alumni to engage with and mentor students and receive services from the university and benefits from the alumni network. The university ranks just outside the top quartile among regional universities in the west (36/120) and social mobility (35/120) indicating that experts in the field think well of the institution and know that it, like its fellow California State System universities, does excellent work to provide a socioeconomic ladder for its alumni.14 Their ranking for alumni giving rate places them below average compared to their regional university peers (66/120), however their endowment size, compared to its California State System peers who have much larger enrollments and alumni bases, is at median for the system (11th/2015). This is perhaps a function of a combination of efforts, including affordable college tuition within California due to comparatively generous state support for higher education, including programs such as the California College Promise program which makes the first two years of college tuition free and its location, which is home to many successful businesses in the tourism industry and its proximity to three of the country’s wealthiest counties (Santa Clara, San Mateo, and Marin). It’s more likely that the unique amenities that the university offers citizens in the region connects them to residents in the area not otherwise connected to the institution. The Green Music Center (https://gmc. sonoma.edu/) is the university performing arts center, but the events they host are an enormously important draw. For example, another Sonoma resident, Sandy Weill (former CEO of Citibank) contributed one of the largest gifts in the university’s history—$12 million to build the “Joan and Sanford Weill Hall,” a 1400-seat auditorium on the campus.16 Another 13  See: “Building Out Future @ SSU: Strategic Plan 2025.” https://strategicplan.sonoma. edu/sites/strategicplan/files/strategic-plan-2pg.pdf 14  See: “Sonoma State University: Rankings.” https://premium.usnews.com/best-colleges/sonoma-state-university-1156/overall-rankings 15  See: “U.S. and Canadian Institutions Listed by Fiscal Year 2020 Endowment Market Value and Change in Endowment Market Value from FY19 to FY20 (Report).” National Association of College and University Business Officers and TIAA. February 19, 2021. 16  See: “Sonoma State University receives $12 million gift.” (2011). Philanthropy News Digest. https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/sonoma-state-university-receives12-million-gift

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local businessman whose only tie to the institution is his relationship to their people (and not his alumni status) donated $2 million in artwork to the institution, tripling the size of their collection. Joe Benziger, who owns Imagery Winery, appreciates the arts and Sonoma State University provided a perfect new home to keep the collection together.17 Because of its unique co-location with some of the wealthiest individuals in the country, Sonoma State University has tremendous potential to acquire resources without necessarily turning to alumni and annual giving donors, making them an extremely unique subject for closer study.

Mansfield University (Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania) Location: Mansfield, Pennsylvania Enrollment: 1462 Academic affiliations (if any): COPLAC Total attainment (5-year average, 2016–2020, and high attainment mark): $1,527,532; $2,428,196 (2018) Notable college fact: Beginning in July 2022, Mansfield University and two other Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) members consolidated to form the “Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania.” The university merger will allow for students to “blend course offerings and in-house tech systems […] that will help make the new merged university systems more affordable for students.”18 President/Chancellor and tenure: Bashar Hanna (2022) University Advancement executive and tenure: Erik Evans (2023) Since 1857, Mansfield University (originally founded as a seminary, and then after burning down five years later, re-opened as a normal school) has served the northeastern region of Pennsylvania. However, in recent years, due to declining enrollments across PASSHE and ensuing financial challenges, the university found itself mired perennially in discussions about potential closure and merger. Finally in the spring of 2022, officials 17  See: Warren, C. (2016). “Imagery Winery donates $2 million art collection to Sonoma State University.” The Press Democrat. https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/ imagery-winery-donates-2-million-art-collection-to-sonoma-state-university/ 18  See: Dunklau, S. (2021). “PASSHE’s university merger plan is on track, chancellor says, and needs funding to keep it going.” WITF. https://www.witf.org/2021/10/27/ passhes-university-merger-plan-is-on-track-chancellor-says-and-needs-funding-to-keepit-going/

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announced a new plan to merge the university with Bloomsburg and Lock Haven Universities to create a tri-campus merger—The Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania. The merger allows the three institutions to merge their administrative and back-office functions to generate cost savings while still allowing each university to maintain their original name (“doing business as” or, D.B.A.) for marketing purposes and for delineation when it comes to athletic competition. As a COPLAC member and public liberal arts option in a state dotted with highly regarded private liberal arts colleges (with colleges such as Bucknell University, Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, the state has 13 liberal arts colleges ranked in the national top 100 according to U.S. News and World Report19), Mansfield University offers students a liberal arts education at a fraction of the cost of its in-state competitors. Now, the university faces its most unique challenge to date, which will require alumni relations and advancement staff to continue cultivating, engaging, and building affinity among their alumni while combining their efforts with staffs from their new institutional partners at Bloomsburg and Lock Haven to promote their new brand. After announcing a capital campaign in 2020, the university has had to suspend the campaign and begin anew with a new strategy to acquire resources as a newly re-envisioned institution. The “Mansfield United” campaign, as described by former president Charles Patterson, was launched to support key areas of excellence on the campus, including “General Academic Scholarships, Music, Natural Sciences, Nursing, Athletics, and the Mansfield University Public Safety Training Institute20” but officials did not publicly disclose financial targets and the touting of a $25,000 “Giving Tuesday” to kick off the campaign does not suggest that the target was aspirational. Another reason for muted confidence in fundraising success in recent years, even as the potential for closure and/or merger loomed, is the schism between the Mansfield University Foundation and Mansfield University, who in 2016, came to loggerheads about the future of the university’s endowment and investment plans. For two years, the university and foundation stood at an impasse, with legal action

19  See: “2022–2023 Best Colleges in Pennsylvania.” https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/pa?schoolType=national-liberal-arts-colleges&_sort=rank&_sortDirection=asc 20   See: “Mansfield University Launches Mansfield United Fundraising Campaign.” https://munews.mansfield.edu/?p=3684

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threatened, until they signed a memorandum of understanding in 2018.21 With such acrimony at play in its past, and a merger in recent history, the hesitation to launch a long-term fundraising campaign appears to be sensible. Former Mansfield University Executive Director of Advancement and Alumni Association Director Casey Wood, who transitioned into a role as Executive Director of Philanthropy at the Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania, knows the university as well as any alumna her age could possibly know it. She worked in university advancement since 2017, and previously led marketing efforts for the admissions department from 2012 to 2015. As a new vice president (Erik Evans) takes the lead of the merged university advancement division, Mansfield’s alumni and supporters will work with a fundraising executive who must now maintain their sense of pride and affinity while helming an operation charged with stewarding of three institutions shared little in common heretofore save for their location. He’ll have a couple of built-in advantages post-merger, including the maintaining of separate athletic programs and mascots of each of the three institutions, and the ability for donors to designate gifts to the institution of their choice. Meanwhile, their alumni association continues to recognize outstanding contributors, staff continue to offer small-scale fundraising events like days of giving, and the hard work of branding, (re)visioning, and strategic planning for future fundraising and engagement must follow.

Mississippi University for Women Location: Columbus, Mississippi Enrollment: 2640 Academic affiliations (if any): Space grant Total attainment (5-year average, 2016–2020, and high attainment mark): $5,481,111; $6,098,897 (2018). Notable college fact: Established in 1884, Mississippi University for Women is the first public university for women in the United States. In 1982, after a U.S.  Supreme Court ruling, the university became co-ed, but retained its name. 21  See: “Mansfield University, Foundation reach agreement to renew relationship.” (2018). Westfield Free Press-Courier. https://www.tiogapublishing.com/free_press_courier/mansfield-university-foundation-reach-agreement-to-renew-relationship/ article_1fa35838-90d7-11e8-94ba-db88d623c7b8.html

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President/Chancellor and tenure: Nora Miller (2018) University Advancement executive and tenure: Andrea Nester Stevens (2013) It would approach banality to state that as one of approximately 60 women’s colleges still operating in the United States, Mississippi University for Women is a unique institution. However, as a public liberal arts university, the first university founded exclusively for women, a university with the name “For Women” that now enrolls male students, and as of 2022–2023, the only public university in the Saint Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, “The W” is truly one of a kind. The university stands out in other ways as well—in the 2022 U.S. News and World Report rankings, it ranks in the Top 20 public regional universities in the South, #10 in social mobility in the nation,22 and Washington Monthly considers the university to have “bang for the buck,” ranking it in the upper quartile of universities in the South.23 In 2021, COPLAC recognized the university with provisional membership, highlighting their commitment to liberal arts education, making it one of only 31 universities in the United States to be recognized by the organization. Though it isn’t unique to have an institution be led by an alumnus, Nora Miller is the first graduate of the institution to be named president, and she is leading the university through its first major fundraising campaign. The “Be The Light” campaign features a $25 million goal for scholarships, intercollegiate athletics, and new facilities and programs which the university hopes to complete by 2025.24 With 95% of their current students receiving federal financial aid, scholarships, or both, the focus on endowed scholarships makes sense, and is 72% of the campaign’s goal, at $18 million. The university currently competes in the United States Collegiate Athletics Association, a non-NCAA or National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) affiliated league with 69 member institutions across the United States and aims to compete in NCAA Division III.  They aspire to raise $2 million to support athletic facility enhancements to strengthen their application. The university has set an additional $3 million goal for facility enhancements to the 22  See: “Mississippi University for Women: Rankings.” https://www.usnews.com/bestcolleges/mississippi-women-2422/overall-rankings 23  See: “2022 Best Bang for the Buck rankings: South” Washington Monthly. https:// washingtonmonthly.com/2022-college-guide/best-bang-for-the-buck-rankings-south/ 24  See: “‘Be the Light’: An Historic $25 Million Campaign.” https://longblueline.muw. edu/foundation/be-the-light-campaign

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university’s academic buildings in areas such as teacher education, music, and the library. The remaining $2 million goal will support endowed professorships and study areas across the campus. President Miller held an official campaign kickoff in 2021 when she announced that $18 million has already been pledged and the university expects to complete the campaign by the end of 2024.25 Mississippi University for Women’s unique institutional identity, however, creates some branding challenges and potential for controversy in an age in which identity politics is all the rage (and for many, all the enraging). Nearly four decades ago, and nearly one hundred years after the university founded exclusively for women opened its doors, a Supreme Court decision altered the university’s course significantly. In Mississippi University for Women vs. Hogan, a 5-4 majority ruled that denying male students’ admission to the university’s nursing school violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and as a result, men were subsequently admitted to the university. The case placed the small southern university in the crosshairs of a national reactionism against the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s that culminated in “an anti-­ government, pro-tax cut stance in America” that led to the reduction of state and federal investments in higher education, leading to the high tuition and student loan debt crises that impact individuals and families to this day in America.26 Literal interpretations of de jure case law led to lawsuits and countersuits on the behalf of white and male citizens citing discrimination in the applications of Title VI and Title IX laws which were originally passed to provide newfound rights to women and people of color discriminated against in societal, commercial, and governmental settings. Fast forward four decades, amid several Supreme Court cases currently under review considering affirmative action in the admissions policies of major universities and considering the recruitment challenges small public universities are facing across the country, Mississippi University for Women is now investigating a rebranding effort. With their sterling academic reputation and low tuition, and only 18% of their student body being composed of male students, a rebrand could 25  See: Smith, S. (2021). “MUW kicks off public face of $25 M fundraising campaign.” The Dispatch. https://cdispatch.com/news/2021-06-16/muw-kicks-off-public-face-of25m-fundraising-campaign/ 26  See: Wright, K. (2022). “The higher cost of higher ed for Americans of color.” Notes from America with Kai Wright on NPR. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/anxiety/ episodes/higher-cost-higher-ed

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prove extremely generative in new admissions among male college goers. However, a previous attempt to change the university’s name a decade ago failed, and again, alumni are strongly responding against a recent announcement that a university task force was formed to explore a rebrand/name change effort.27 “The W” is a newly developed moniker that appears to have gained traction. Hearkening to the traditions upon which the university was founded while nodding to a growing capacity for students of all genders, “The W” now adorns the university’s website and many contemporary publications that the university produces. In 2022, the university surveyed multiple constituencies, including alumni, faculty, current and prospective students, and gathered suggestions regarding a possibly more substantive name change.28 In a survey of over 2500 alumni (representing almost 60% of the survey respondents), a majority believed that the university’s historical mission and uniqueness compared to other institutions (2.35 and 2.6 on five-point scales, where 1  =  most important) gives it a unique recruiting edge. Moreover, 39.2% of respondents (versus 26.4%) felt strongly that a geographical identifier indicating what region the university serves is important to new university name considerations moving forward (e.g., University of Southern Mississippi). Both the number of responding alumni and their eagerness to preserve their alma mater’s mission while encouraging expanded admissions with a regional focus suggest a high level of engagement and investment among alumni. This bodes well for fundraising considerations as the institution’s connections to regional economy and culture demonstrate how vital its contributions remain, whichever name it may be known by in future generations.

University of Montevallo Location: Montevallo, Alabama Enrollment: 2447 Academic affiliations (if any): COPLAC Total attainment (5-year average, 2016–2020, and high attainment mark): $6,077,977; $9,335,053 (2018)

27  See: “Mississippi University for Women considers rebranding.” https://www.wjtv.com/ news/state/mississippi-university-for-women-considers-rebranding/ 28  See: “Naming Process.” https://www.muw.edu/name/

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Notable college fact: University of Montevallo’s 15th President John W.  Stewart, III (no relation to Montevallo’s 13th president, John W. Stewart, Sr.) is a former fundraising executive, serving as Vice President for Institutional Advancement at Flagler College. During his tenures at both institutions, they have secured the largest donations in their respective histories. President/Chancellor and tenure: John W. Stewart, III (2010) University Advancement executive and tenure: Scott Dillard (2018) Across the country, legislatures and op-ed sections are debating the value of a college education. At the University of Montevallo, during the annual “Great Raft Debate,” faculty have the debate each year on campus, and an audience of students gets to be the judge. Since 1988, the annual tradition on campus has seven professors argue about which discipline should be the one discipline that should be preserved and thus the professor is given an oar and invited to join the raft that will carry the only survivors to their new land. No professor has ever successfully defended their title, and the debate has been so successful that it has spawned copycats all over the country. To ensure that local residents always argue in the university’s favor, University of Montevallo officials take town and gown relations seriously. In 2011, the university partnered with the City of Montevallo to establish the ValloCycle Bike-Share Program and became the second city in the South to introduce such an agreement.29 The bikes are available across town to students and residents to encourage exploration of the surrounding area and to invite the residents to tour the campus. The annual membership fees are around $2/month for adults and $1/month per child. For a university ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the sixth best value and as the twelfth best regional university in the South,30 the University of Montevallo makes a strong argument in favor of supporting public liberal arts universities as the only public liberal arts higher education institution in Alabama. In 2016, officials at the University of Montevallo announced they were entering the public phase of a $20 million campaign entitled “The 29  See: Spencer, T. (2012). “Birmingham bike-share program pedals into downtown business life.” The Birmingham News. https://www.al.com/spotnews/2012/01/birmingham_ bike-share_program.html 30  See: “University of Montevallo: Rankings.” https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/ university-of-montevallo-1004

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Campaign for Montevallo: It’s About Family.” At that point, they had already secured $11 million in pledges.31 By 2020, the university had shattered this target, successfully securing $36.5 million, including the largest and first million-dollar donation in university history in 2014. They followed this up with a $1.1 million donation in 2017.32 The university received its first endowed chairs and professorships, $7 million in endowed scholarships, and improvements to the college of business building, a 3D art Complex, a new track and field facility, lacrosse field, and softball stadium, along with renovations to other athletic facilities, and renovations to two additional university classroom buildings.33 The University of Montevallo has cracked the code regarding the provision of a quality, affordable education that opens up a world of opportunities to its alumni and has managed to keep them engaged and giving back. Their alumni giving rate of 5.1% is below the national average but places them in the upper third of all regional universities in the South (41st/13634). The secret may be the output of their alumni association program. With only three full-time staff members (and a thoroughly dynamic website), alumni have plenty of opportunities to connect and engage, along with multiple opportunities for recognition and open lines of communication across their alumni base. The alumni association offers standard fare for alumni, including automatic membership in the alumni association upon graduation, an alumni board representing the diversity of the alumni base, and distinguished alumni awards every year. Additionally, they also support a “Junior Alumni Board,” for graduates of the last 15 years along with a “15 Within 15” alumni award (think “40 Under 40”) that recognizes the accomplishments of young alumni early in their career development. They sponsor events on campus and on the road to host alumni, volunteer on campus and abroad, and around Homecoming and Founders Day. But taking things a step further, they also offer resources aligned with the best practices of the industry, and features often observed at bigger, 31  See: “The Campaign For Montevallo: It’s About Family launches public phase.” https://www.montevallo.edu/campaign-montevallo-family-launches-public-phase/ 32  See: “Montevallo announces new scholarship fund.” https://www.montevallo.edu/ montevallo-announces-new-scholarship-fund/ 33  See: “University of Montevallo shatters goal in largest campaign in school history.” https://www.montevallo.edu/university-of-montevallo-shatters-goal-in-largest-campaignin-school-history/ 34  See: “University of Montevallo: Rankings.” https://premium.usnews.com/best-colleges/university-of-montevallo-1004/overall-rankings

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more well-resourced institutions. For example, all alumni qualify for career services support, including access to job boards and the ability to talk 1:1 with career services staff. Alumni also receive discounted access to the student center facilities, as well as the ability to be featured as an author on the “Alumni Bookshelf” or to have their business recognized in the “Alumni Business Directory.” Alumni can also be featured on the “Alumni Speakers Bureau” if they have experience lecturing publicly on specific issues, or access web forms guiding alumni through the processes of how to hire interns or donate professional clothing to students preparing for interviews.35 With so many opportunities to remain engaged and explore more significant involvement, it’s no wonder that the University of Montevallo has success soliciting alumni for donations because the impact of their support is made transparent through alumni connections. Of all the challenges facing public regional universities, none may be more acute than those ahead of liberal arts universities in the sector. As private liberal arts institutions with enrollment and financial struggles and insufficient endowments to buoy their operations close across the country (Finlandia University [Michigan] and Cardinal Stritch University [Wisconsin] have already announced closures in 2023) university boards and elected officials continue to stress that workforce development and STEM-focused educations are the universities and programs for which they will be vociferous advocates. While the knock on the liberal arts is that broadly imagined curriculums don’t tie directly to workforce preparedness, employers appreciate the skills of capable and lifelong learners whose educations prepare them to be innovative and creative problem solvers. Though most liberal arts institutions are expensive, private institutions whose tuition rates deter many individuals from applying, public liberal arts universities offer comparable educational and co-curricular opportunities at a fraction of the cost. Raising money at these institutions is challenging, because their staffs and resources can neither rival their private liberal arts peers or those of the public R1 institutions where many graduates will enroll for their MBAs, juris doctorates, and medical degrees. However, as these institutions continue to provide a unique educational opportunity to students in line with the historical missions of public regional universities, their advancement leaders use the same ingenuity and creativity their institutions are known for to identify donors and resources to support their efforts across the United States.

 See: “Ways to get involved.” https://www.montevallo.edu/alumni/ways-to-get-involved/

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CHAPTER 6

Mission-Converged Philanthropy: Raising Money for Emergency Student Needs

What I should’ve said to the university rebranding task force is that Mami ain’t ever let me go hungry no matter how tight money got, even when she sent me to bed early without dinner for actin’ up. There’s anger, after all, and then there’s this—a bridge too far between upset and neglect. I should’ve said Dadi ain’t ever tell me check with somebody down the hall or across the street when I needed $5, even when he only had $10 to get to the end of the week. There’s broke, after all, and then there’s this—a kid who don’t understand what being broke is. I should’ve said Junior ain’t ever let me struggle along so I could toughen up. Yoki didn’t wait six-ten weeks to cut me in on the share of our inheritance when our parents died. I didn’t come out soft or lacking in resolve—and now everybody who asks me for half gets double. There’s family, after all, and then there’s this—the shit we tell college students they need to endure so they can build “resilience” and “grit.” There’s #OneBigFamily, and then there’s this: standard operating policies and procedures. In this chapter, rather than examine emergency student need fundraising activity at public regional universities to ascertain and analyze key similarities that unite the shared work of professionals at these institutions despite their uniqueness, I will focus the analysis on fundraising efforts at one institution. The analysis will incorporate an ethnographic and autobiographical approach because the activities I will describe represent work in which I have been engaged at universities where I have also been © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. J. Broussard, Fundraising at Public Regional Universities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45481-3_6

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employed as a fundraiser. The “narrative excurses” in the chapter, akin to those in the “Athletic Fundraising at an NCAA Public Regional Institutions” chapter, incorporate creative non-fiction and first-person derived storytelling to illuminate fundraising work while also highlighting that work’s beneficiaries. These are digressions within the text in which I incorporate personal musings and engage in reflections that situate me as the author and benefit the reader by providing important contextual notes. These excurses will once again feature “autoethnography,” which anthropologist and educator Mary Louise Pratt defines as literary art emerging from “contact zones.” Pratt defines the contact zone as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power1”(2). Along with “critique,” “collaboration,” “imaginary dialogue,” and “vernacular expression,” authoethnography allows us to challenge and resist the translation and recoding of the narratives and experiences of marginalized people and accurately capture their disfranchised voices (2–3). I consider it especially important to capture not only my internal and external dialogues as I engaged in challenging conversations at times and faced traditional bureaucratic roadblocks along the way as a fundraiser, but also to include the voices of students who lobbied for additional financial support and resources and the voices of their advocates. Rather than simply focusing on the outcomes, which can paint a picture of the institution as heroic in its responsiveness, autoethnography blends in the students’ concerns and complaints to illustrate the blind spots administrations need to address as well as how students respond when new resources met or do not meet their needs. Additionally, the chapter will incorporate both multi-genre writing and alternative discourses. In Alt-Dis: Alternative Discourses and the Academy,2 editors Patricia Bizzell, Helen Fox, and Christopher Schroeder define alt-­dis as the means by which individuals challenge the traditional and historically acceptable discourse practices employed in higher education as a means of bringing historically marginalized voices into focus. Further, doing so advances the project of exploring and identifying the literary and 1  Pratt, M.L. (2006). “Arts of the contact zone.” Retrieved from http://www.nwe.ufl. edu/~stripp/2504/pratt.html 2  See: Schroeder, C., Fox, H., and Bizzell, P. (2002). ALT DIS: Alternative discourses and the Academy. Boynton/Cook—Heinemann.

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discursive contributions of languages outside the bounds of Standard Academic English as well as the inherent value of language and literary practitioners who refuse to be restricted to its boundaries. Multi-genre writing, in the style of modern and contemporary authors and social critics, such as W.E.B. Dubois, Jean Toomer, Amiri Baraka, Amilcar Cabral, and June Jordan, blends more than one genre into single writing selections to highlight different features of the story appropriately. As composition scholar Tom Romano asserts, “A multigenre paper arises from research, experience, and imagination. It is not an uninterrupted, expository monolog nor a seamless narrative nor a collection of poems. A multigenre paper is composed of many genres and subgenres, each piece self-contained, making a point of its own, yet connected by theme or topic and sometimes by language, images, and content. In addition to many genres, a multi-genre paper may also contain many voices, not just the author’s3” (Romano, x–xi). As appropriate, this chapter will combine personal reflections of the author and students with documents from conference presentations, the author’s internal communications and memoranda, as well as university public relations documents to bring into detail and demonstrate the multiple perspectives from which students, administrators, and alumni view university fundraising efforts.

The Reporter “Isn’t it the university’s responsibility to ensure that every student has what they need in order to be successful?” the reporter asked, her tone more inquisitive than accusatory. This of course was a pattern she’d learned well in communication studies—make the question do the work of a statement. It’s a powerful rhetorical position. She was writing a series on food and housing insecurity at the university, and a recent survey indicated two out of every three students had experienced it at least temporarily during their academic careers. And while the university had introduced a program several years before to provide resources to students in need and recently introduced an emergency grants program to provide financial support outside of tuition and fee bills that many students incur, hearing that two out of three students dealt with it felt like a huge failure.

3

 See: Romano, T. (2000). Blending genre, altering style. Heinemann.

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“Yes,” I said, surprising her as much as I did myself. “It is our responsibility.” “I wasn’t expecting that answer,” she replied. I fought the urge to equivocate, talking about systemic funding issues at the state and federal level that make college difficult to afford for so many. It isn’t as if that was untrue. But it isn’t enough to lay blame once we diagnose an issue. The question is, what do we do now? So, I began sharing with her what we are doing to address these concerns. There’s exceptionalism and folly in responding to systemic challenges with a focus on solitary successes as proof of how those challenges have been overcome. However, telling the reporter stories about students who’d received additional resources and overcome their financial setbacks gave her a human response to a human problem as well as a new set of questions to ask students to hold my story to account. I wanted to believe that being forthright and transparent and vulnerable took the acid out of the reporter. In retrospect, I wonder if it were shock that she received honest answers when we administrators are usually more polished, “on message,” and deflecting, but I’d long lost my ability to equivocate on the issue of food insecurity. For her, as is the case for myself, a single question persists that keeps me from settling for progress when what we need is justice. That question is this: if we don’t have enough resources to ensure no student starves at our institution, then how many starving students is an acceptable number? From experience, I want to tell her this: the only correct answer is zero. In 2016, faculty surveyed students at the institution to learn about student experiences with housing and food insecurity and learned that most students (over 64%) faced these issues, as well as related financial emergencies during their academic careers. A follow-up study in 2018 showed that as many as 2/3 students faced temporary food or housing insecurity during their tenures.4 These occurrences threatened student success by causing interruptions or terminations of satisfactory progress toward degree completion and hampered retention efforts despite the best efforts of caring faculty and robust student support infrastructure. These issues impacted all students, and caused significant loss of retention among low-income, first-generation, Black, Latino, AAPI, and Indigenous 4  See: “A Long-Standing Commitment to Student Success.” https://www.mnsu.edu/ university-life/campus-services/student-affairs/maverick-moments/a-long-standing-commitmentto-focusing-on-student-success/

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students. As is often the case for the most disadvantaged populations, when tragedy strikes, their suffering is more acute, with more devastating and longer-lasting impacts.

The Graduate Student I never met Sunny, and I don’t think that most of the university’s Cabinet members had either. She still managed to become a daily talking point in their conversations in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing lockdowns. Her popular social media page and a handful of op-eds in the local newspaper led to a television interview. “The university must do more to support international students. We have sacrificed so much to be here already” she pleaded. All of a sudden, a spotlight was being shone on the university’s approach to addressing financially vulnerable student needs as the pandemic’s economic consequences mounted—school and local business closures meant no part-time jobs for students to pay rent, utilities, and for food. Add to this visa and travel restrictions, and international students could neither work nor qualify for public assistance, leaving them in a maelstrom of complications. Sunny’s articulation of those needs caused a mild stir among alumni and locals, who called on the university to do more. The questions we received, for the most part, weren’t accusatory, but inquisitive. One alumnus asked specifically if there was anything he could do to help her directly. On campus, there was continued discussion about putting the university in a defensible position and protecting its reputation. As someone who’d done a fair amount of crisis communication at previous institutions and was now leading institutional efforts to secure resources for emergency student needs, I was contacted and asked for my opinion about the situation. “Write an op-ed describing the support we have provided—additional emergency funds, free meals at the cafeteria … has the student been informed about these resources?” I asked how the conversation had gone with her when they met with her. Was she antagonistic, uncooperative, or, insistent and open-minded? Any of those emotions and 100 more would be acceptable for someone who was thousands of miles away from home and unable to work to feed her family or pay her rent. But they hadn’t talked to her. Only about her. How do you solve a problem like Sunny? Several weeks later she stopped by the food bank in town where I volunteered. I greeted her and her son, a toddler, as she walked up to the front door. Perfectly pleasant, and her adorable child thanked me gleefully when I handed him a small bag of candied dried fruit. I’m completely convinced

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that if we’d simply reached out to her a month ago to hear her out, we’d have learned for ourselves that she was just scared. And probably helped her and dozens of others acquire the resources they needed. The riot is a festival of the unheard, I’ve read elsewhere. In 2017, the university introduced an emergency student grant fund thanks to the support of a grant from a midwestern foundation whose focus was addressing equity gaps and retention issues for low-income students. This resulted in the creation of $1000 grants that students could apply for any time they encountered financial emergencies. As the grant funding expired, University Advancement and the Foundation collaborated with a cross-section of campus partners to develop a more robust program to provide not only financial support, but free resources for food, mental health counseling, and retention and continuation scholarships for students facing a variety of challenges to successful college completion. Our goal was to replace the grant funding with a combination of private fundraising dollars, commitments of in-kind and departmental support, early identification, and resource delivery infrastructure to ensure students who needed the resources could receive them in a timely fashion, successfully intervening to retain them and promote their success. Since the introduction of the program, students who receive these grants are retained at an 87% rate, significantly higher than the overall student retention rate on campus. And in addition to those emergency grants, money raised through the program supported international students who had previously not been eligible for the program, and eventually, graduate students could apply as well. Over $1.545 million in private and institutional aid and in-kind support has been distributed to students in need since 2019. The program equalizes access by removing barriers that the most economically vulnerable students face, allowing them to focus on their academic success. The university pivoted as nimbly as I had ever observed to address these students’ concerns, and those who benefited showed immediate return on the investment private donors committed. A hundred students, and then eventually over a thousand, and over the years, perhaps as many as 5000 unique students benefited from the various programs. But as is so often the case, staff cannot meet the needs of every student, and the dollars available cannot meet every need. Sometimes, we can even overlook the students who would most obviously qualify and know how to access the resources.

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The Student Leader Taryn was, by any measure, a model student. Dean’s list. Student government representative. Involved on campus and a frequent participant in campus-wide volunteerism initiatives. A first-generation student from out of state that had done well enough to receive a scholarship to go to graduate school. She was an exceptional ambassador for the university in virtually every imaginable way. So when she took the stage to give a speech at an inaugural campus-wide scholarship event that invited donors and supporters from all areas of the university, we anticipated her talk and the impact it would have on some of the university’s biggest supporters. Her talk would have quite the impact—but certainly not one any of us had predicted. Despite all her achievements, and the fact that she’d been awarded scholarships every year that she was in college, in her senior year, she experienced homelessness for the first time in her life. “I was homeless. And even though it wasn’t my fault, I felt like such a failure. Like a loser,” she shared, to an audience filled with shock, compassion, and quite likely, anger at the university administration. It shouldn’t have surprised any of us who work at the university. After all, this happened to our students, according to surveys we’d performed, and academic success at the institution does not equate with one’s socioeconomic status. In fact, the most common reason students who failed to persist at the institution was due to financial constraints eliminating their ability to register for classes. But it shocked many in attendance. Some because they had not realized how expensive college had become since they graduated; others because they simply couldn’t square a student government president being unhoused; still others who simply resented that she forced them to consider such an uncomfortable subject—as if speaking truth to power isn’t the very damn thing we’re supposed to encourage young people to do. A week later in a debrief, I hear the word “resilient” used to describe her at least a half dozen times. I’m so tired of this term. And white-hot furious that “resilience,” “grit,” and any other euphemism for overcoming suffering is now so squarely embedded in the curriculum for so many college students in the twenty-first century. In the fall of 2019, I began identifying a network of campus-wide partners for addressing students’ basic needs at the request of the President, who’d asked me to report these findings to the Cabinet. The architecture

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of care at the institution included either whole departments, or individual representatives from the following areas: 1. Admissions (Scholarship Coordinator, and ad hoc committee to determine emergency grant eligibility), 2. Foundation Board, 3. University Advancement (VP/AVP-University Advancement, Annual Giving, and Directors of Development), 4. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (multicultural center department heads), 5. Student Affairs, 6. The President’s Office, 7. The University Fundraising Work Group (co-chaired by AVP-­ University Advancement and Director of Annual Giving, with representation from Library, Food Pantry, Campus Kitchen, International Student Affairs, Undergraduate Research, Admissions), 8. Sodexo (Campus Dining), 9. Academic affairs (primarily through encouraging faculty to make resources known to their students and make referrals), and, 10. Student Government Association Basic Needs Committee. Each department listed provides critical resources to ensure that student emergency needs are met when they arise, and that thoughtful strategy centers the communication and processes needed to address these concerns effectively and efficiently. Staff recognizes that more substantial responses to the factors that cause food and housing insecurity and mental health concerns among students are necessary (e.g., reducing tuition and fees through increased state and federal investment; debt jubilee; commitments to control rent prices and increase housing options by local government, etc.). However, until those more considerable and impactful decisions are rendered by the bodies which must deliberate them, we agree that we must do what we can to support students until that day comes.

The Immigrant Joseph was a quiet and kind student worker in our building a couple of years ago. His detail was custodial, so there wasn’t much glamor in his daily rounds vacuuming, cleaning toilets, and emptying trash. Each day he greeted everyone kindly in our office. Until he was greeting us every other day. Until it was once a week. Until he wasn’t smiling at all.

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We learned that he’d grown depressed about how much he was struggling in school, by how tired he always was, by his fear he wasn’t being a good enough role model to his little sister who was now also enrolled in classes here and living with him. And he was depressed that his coats weren’t warm enough for the long walks he made to and from school and that his funds were so depleted that he was now rationing meals. He was far too proud to accept our help, claiming that in his culture, accepting charity from anyone who isn’t a friend or a family member is a sign of profound weakness, particularly among men. I also imagined he was concerned about being a public charge, which could threaten his ability to remain enrolled in college in the United States. A week later, I saw him again and I asked him how long we’d known each other. “Over a year by now.” I knew where he was from, what he was studying, his sister’s name, his favorite kinda music. “Joe, I’d say we’re friends, no?” “Of course,” he speedily replied, perhaps failing to sense the ruse. I handed him a bag full of bread from Panera, which we’d rescued the previous evening for the Campus Kitchen, and another bag with heavy coats for him and his sister. A gift from a friend isn’t a handout. And it’d be rude not to accept a gift, right? Joe is graduating in the spring. He would’ve found a way whether he’d received those coats and loaves of bread or not. Nobody’s a hero here. I’m just glad he can graduate knowing he’s made friends out of people who’d previously been strangers. All it took was a couple of loaves of cinnamon toast and sun-dried tomato. After we identified the institution’s infrastructure for providing emergency student need response, we engaged in/introduced the following fundraising initiatives: 1. Admissions Office applied for grants through the Office of Higher Education to fund emergency grants (since 2019, over $75,000 secured), 2. Annual giving dedicated the Campus Drive (focusing on donations from faculty and staff) to fundraising for emergency grants & the Foundation Board/Board Members matched with $10,000 (since 2019, over $135,000 secured/pledged), 3. Annual Giving dedicated crowdfunding projects for emergency grants, Campus Kitchen (service-learning program), and campus food bank (since 2019, with grants from Swipe Out Hunger providing refrigerators to the Campus Kitchen and the campus food pantry), 4. Campus Kitchen added partnerships with Panera Bread, Second Harvest, and Olive Garden (food rescue) (since 2019),

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5. Annual Giving sought small-dollar donations throughout the year through mini-campaigns (since 2020), 6. Directors of Development began discussing major gift donations to student emergency need programs (gifts of over $25,000) (since 2020), 7. Student government association leaders worked with Campus Kitchen leaders to partner with Swipe Out Hunger, a national nonprofit organization that promotes campus dining services to donate meals already purchased through meal plans, but unused, to students in need (since 2020), and 8. AVP-UA began researching, qualifying, and submitting grant proposals on behalf of emergency grants/campus food bank/Campus Kitchen (since 2021). A now constant stream of communication, inquiry, outreach, and solicitations for donations has replaced the occasional, crisis-driven, one-­ student-­at-a-time reactionary posture of the institution that existed merely five years earlier.

The Camel and the Straw “I don’t know what else I can do.” My first response to a student who says this is typically “Well, what have you done so far?” Generation-Z gets an awful rep for being the generation most paralyzed by anxiety and depression, but such paralysis is not what I had come to expect from Khadijah. An international student from Ethiopia, she came to the United States with her luggage and the contact information of a cousin in Chicago. Over the course of three years, she’d made the most of her opportunity. While earning a 3.8 GPA with a double major in computer science and gender studies, she’d also found time to volunteer on campus and in the local community through two different registered student associations (one of which she was the president) and served as a senator in student government. She did all of this, too, while her country raged through a civil war, and news from back home on each day could contain peril for her family and her homeland. She was not someone who easily panicked. But on that October day, she was truly paralyzed at the thought that after seven semesters of navigating her way toward graduation, a $4000 bill caused a hold to be placed on her registration. Of course, if she could not register for class, she could not graduate in the spring. So, a nearly 45-day, 50-email exchange began to help her find the

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resources that she needed. When I asked why she didn’t qualify for scholarships with her credentials, I learned that the university had so few scholarships available that no student below a 3.9 GPA in her major earned one. She contacted the international student center, admissions office, African-­ American student affairs, department heads, advancement services staff and others to plead her case. She simply did not understand why there was no help available—and I, a university administrator, was as stumped as she was. If this is a student we can’t find help for, what on earth are we doing here? Finally, through a combination of emergency student grants, international student grants, a small departmental scholarship, and borrowing $750 from a friend, Khadijah got her hold lifted, got registered, and graduated on time. Far from a happy ending, I’m left with the knowledge that if excellent students must have executive-level interventions just to help them barely get by, surely this isn’t scalable. I’ll not soon forget Khadijah. I hope, for her own well-being, that she doesn’t remember us as an institution that solved more problems than were created for her by the narrowest of margins. As a result of the university’s collaborative fundraising efforts, the following benefits have been afforded to students: 1. Emergency grants and International Student Extra Assistance grants (up to $1000/student, open to all students, including graduate and international students) have been provided to over 500 students; 2. Groceries and essentials (available through Campus Kitchen and campus food bank) have benefited over 1200 unique students; 3. Dining Hall credits (through Sodexo/Swipe Out Hunger) provided 7950 meals to 1665 students; 4. Emergency Scholarships (60 $1500 student scholarships, since 2021) and Continuation Grants (83 $1500 grants, since 2020) provided to students during university scholarship application procedures. We have seen continued retention success among student beneficiaries of these resources and a continued increase in retention, in particular, among students who receive at least $1000  in cash support from these funds from 2019 to 2022. By all measures, this institution accomplished so much in its efforts to provide these resources to students. It stands among the work of which I am most proud in my career that we have accomplished this. The answer wasn’t always “yes,” and I didn’t always receive support or agreement

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when I solicited it. However, nobody involved with this project should feel anything but pride, and I know that it will yield tremendous results for the students who benefit from it.

The Legacy Anna was something else. The first time I met her volunteering at an on-­ campus event, she was friendly and energetic, and truly interested in talking to and assisting the people we met that day. I didn’t know that she’d come from a low-income family in a rural neighboring county; that she lived with chronic illness; that the emergency grants she’d received bailed her out and enabled her to graduate on time and pursue a master’s degree. All of that would serve her well as a graduate assistant in the advancement division. We are often detached, by several degrees of separation, from the students on whose behalf we work as fundraisers. Of the roughly 15,000 students enrolled here, many are online, or dual-enrolled high school students, or studying in non-degree-seeking certificate programs, or at satellite campuses across the state. Of the remaining several thousand students, only 2500 or so live on campus, and even among those, we have no idea that the group of students walking aside us on campus are beneficiaries of scholarships or grants. Anna was living proof of concept—a student from a low-income family who graduated with her bachelor’s and master’s degrees with low student loan debt as a result of assistance provided by the university foundation. The work was so meaningful to her that even though she graduated in nursing and allied health, immediately after graduation she began seeking jobs working with non-profit organizations. “I love this work. I feel destined for it. I am so excited to make this my career,” she later shared with me. Hold the applause, though. Anna and Khadijah’s stories have one important element in common. Impossible scalability. I’m not in the habit of counting hours spent on solving each problem I’m faced with and were I asked to intervene again, I’d do so in a heartbeat. But with roughly 2000 faculty and staff on a campus with 14,500+ students, there literally aren’t enough people to address each of these students’ issues with a 1:1 Intervention model. The alternative, triaging crises until they demand our attention, will not work either. The cultural differences alone ensure that some students will seek help and resources and others—because of the public charge, because of their own pride, because of imposter syndrome—won’t ask, won’t know who to ask, won’t persist. It’s important to pat yourself on the back when you do work. Heavy lifting, though, requires both hands. The ultimate goal of the campus student services program is to earn a reputation and develop the university’s brand as an institution of caring with the most robust student emergency needs infrastructure in its

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university system and serve as a model to the 32 member institutions. As an institution whose enrollment has remained steady over the past five years, we are an outlier in the state, where enrollment is down among all institutions of higher education, including the state’s flagship institution in recent years. We believe this is in no small part due to the reputation that the university has earned as one who not only wants to enroll lowincome, first-generation, ethnically, and culturally diverse student populations, but also one who will provide the resources to retain them when they encounter financial emergencies. The execution of unique collaborations marks the university as an especially innovative public regional university in its efforts to expand student support when available university budgets are unprecedentedly stressed in the COVID-19 era. In 2020, after several years of discussion between student government leaders and university administrators, the university established a partnership with Swipe Out Hunger, a non-profit organization that partners with institutions of higher education with the objective of ending student hunger. According to founder and former CEO Rachel Sumekh, the organization “is the leading nonprofit in addressing hunger amongst college students.” Since her time introducing the non-profit while enrolled at UCLA as an undergraduate student, Swipe Out Hunger now affiliates with over 500 university campuses, and has provided students with over 5 million meals (swipehunger.org). In the university’s first year of partnership, campus dining provided $35,000 of meal “swipes” (so named after the act of swiping your credit card to pay for a meal) that were then distributed to students who signed up for the program, or the equivalent of ~4000 meals. With students signing up for a maximum of five meals per semester, this means 400–800 students could benefit from a hot meal in the campus dining center at times when their individual budgets had become depleted or missed work or otherwise late-arriving funds put them in a position in which food wasn’t affordable or available. By year two, campus dining had increased its commitment to nearly $40,000 of meal swipes and the university Foundation committed $5000 additional dollars. At the beginning of year three, campus dining and the university Foundation once again committed to fund $45,000 in swipes and earned support grants from Swipe Out Hunger to provide two new refrigerators to the campus food pantry and a $3000 grant5 to support the Campus 5  See: “Swipe Out Hunger awards $3000 grants to thirty campus pantries.” https://www. swipehunger.org/fall22swipegrants/

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Kitchen’s operations. The working relationship between the university and Swipe Out Hunger has been so strong that new CEO Jaime Hansen has committed to send an executive from the non-profit to serve as a keynote speaker at a university-sponsored health educators’ summit in 2023.

The Reported Ashlie Polanco Medina’s voice quivers as she recounts how a new adventure in a new school in a new state nearly fell apart. And how a nick-of-time scholarship saved the day. A third-year college student from Arlington, Va., Medina had in fall transferred from that state to the University’s […] Engineering program when little financial hits kept coming—ultimately exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. Losing some financial aid in the transfer, Medina nonetheless had money in savings from a good-paying job at a theater in Arlington […]. She panicked when her work-study registration got hung up and stalled. Her savings account was evaporating. The tuition notices, of course, were prompt and timely. “As a student, just knowing there’s a balance pending, it’s hard to focus,” she says. Even after ironing out her work-study payment schedule, the numbers weren’t working in her favor. Work study provided $300 every two weeks. Of that, $270 went to schooling. It left $30 for all else, including food. She spent some dark days exploring options that included quitting school. […] “The scholarship changes everything, because I don’t have to worry about this semester,” she says. “It was just in time, but it was perfect.6”

The ultimate goal of this program is to earn a reputation and develop a brand as an institution of caring by offering the most robust student emergency needs infrastructure in our university system and serve as a model to all 35 system institutions. With enrollment remaining steady over the last five years, the school is an outlier in the state, where enrollment has been down among most institutions of higher education in recent years. It is believed that this is in no small part due to the reputation that the university has earned as one that not only wants to enroll low-income, first-­ generation, and ethnically and culturally diverse student populations, but one that will provide the resources to retain those students when they encounter financial emergencies. 6  Excerpted from “Scholarships in the nick of time” from Today Magazine, a publication of Minnesota State University, Mankato.

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The Promise7 “[…] Since the introduction of the program, students who receive these grants are retained at an 87% rate—significantly higher than the overall student retention rate on campus. More than $1 million in private and institutional aid and in-kind support has been distributed to students in need. [The University] has seen continued retention success among student beneficiaries of these resources and a continued increase in retention among students who received at least $1000  in cash support from these funds from 2019 through 2022. Key Takeaways The most important element to success in this endeavor was developing architecture of care—a broad base of cross-divisional and cross-departmental support combined with presidential endorsement. The large number of individuals and departments committed to the success of this program was vital to ensuring its stewardship and growth. Another key commitment is that of private donors, local businesses and nonprofits, and foundation and alumni board volunteers. Their ability to assist the university in making connections to and leveraging support from private industry and donors was invaluable to the program’s success.”

Public, Universal, Democratic, Independent In Winners Take All, Anand Giridharadas notes that while philanthropy has been sought after and widely designated as the solution to many of the world’s problems which governments and societies cannot solve, permanent philanthropic solutions fail because wealthy philanthropists are not accountable to the public. As a result, the public’s needs are not paramount in the eyes of select philanthropists, but far more often, their personal agendas. In other words, philanthropists can engage in giving to causes that fancy them, or that provide them with opportunities to build their reputations and public goodwill even if their donations do not address the most pressing societal woes as defined by those in greatest need. In effect, what philanthropists decide to give money to takes precedent even over the most pressing needs of a particular community when their needs cannot be otherwise provided for. Further, while even the 7  Excerpted from: “Casting a wide net of support.” American Association of State Colleges and  Universities. https://www.aascutellingourstory.org/promising-practice/casting-awide-net-of-support/

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most cynical among us believe we have opportunities to replace politicians who fail to invest public money properly via the voting booth, and even through direct confrontation (e.g., protests that shift public opinion; social media engagement; town halls), no such option exists for holding philanthropists accountable, so long as they don’t violate the law.8 Imagine for example that a community needs a school, a hospital, and a museum, and the philanthropist decides to fund renovations to a local sports stadium. Even though it isn’t the community’s highest priority, that is the project whose completion is advanced first because the funds are now available. In higher education contexts, this is how universities with dilapidated academic buildings and failing infrastructure in their dining and residence halls end up building new football stadiums. New football stadiums get excellent media coverage and place the donor in the spotlight in ways that funding the direst—and often unsexy—needs of a community or institution can never yield. Journalist and professor Robert Mann illustrates this phenomenon of needs prioritized by private investment at his university, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge: Where the Middleton Library has threadbare, decades-old furniture, the grand Cox Center (for athletics)-outfitted with white marble and hardwood flooring-is filled with the latest and most comfortable furnishings. No expense (it’s all private money) was spared for the comfort and education of the athletes. There is, among other features, the Shaquille O’Neal Life Skills Offices, the Academic Center of Excellence Computer Lab, the Academic Center of Excellence Study Area, the E.D.G.E.  Nutrition Station (Eat. Drink. Geaux. Excel – that’s what signage says) and a tutorial center. You can bet that while the Middleton Library is forbidden to high school tours, guides proudly show off the Cox Center to athletic recruits.9

What, then, does all this have to do with food insecurity, emergency grants, and enhanced student resources in higher education? The year 2017 was not the first time that anyone at my institution realized that hunger and housing insecurity cause financial problems that harmed 8  Except for the fact that wealthy people can afford effective legal representation and often use philanthropy to sway public opinion up to and including judges, who may lean toward leniency for fear that an incarcerated wealthy person is no longer able to provide the aforementioned philanthropy. 9  See: “LSU library’s decay is symbolic of Louisiana’s misplaced priorities.” https://www. nola.com/opinions/article_7c553a5f-b9ed-5eb3-9ee5-a0f697b34191.html?utm_ medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=user-share

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students and led to lower retention and graduation success. But it was the first time the university explored the enhancement of emergency student resources, and it was private foundation money that drove the decision and expansion of the available programs. When that funding dried up, we had to seek new sources of private revenue rather than rely on an increase in public dollars once the pilot projects yielded promising returns. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic recession, private and public dollars filled public and private coffers in a manner not seen in over four decades. Within two years, however, austerity returned, beneficial social and economic programs that students accessed expired, and the social and financial incentives of supporting philanthropy during the pandemic expired, as well. Once again, the availability of private funds will dictate what can be done regarding student emergency support. Giridharadas offers a checklist to determine the viability and suitability of social programs to deliver long-term, meaningful impacts—is your program open to the desired direction of the people (democratic)? Is that discussion open to the public, particularly those directly impacted (public)? Are new funding proposals made universally available, or are they means-tested (universal)? Finally, once the new funding becomes available, can independent groups direct the investment, or is the availability of the funding subject to the philanthropist’s whims (independent). As praiseworthy and impressive as the student emergency needs program we’ve built became, what happens when the current architects leave, the private donors shift their priorities, or the university’s fundraising priorities change course? All this time, I believed we were building pyramids. I now wonder if we were building Ozymandias (which, if I recall, was also a privately funded project). Time will tell, and time will tell us the truth.

Postscript In early 2023, I accepted a Vice Chancellor of University Advancement position at an institution in a neighboring state. Upon arriving, I reached out to the coordinator of the campus food pantry, requesting a meeting so I can introduce myself, sign up for some volunteer shifts, and share some ideas about requesting funding from the university Foundation (hell, I’m the new CEO) and external agencies. She politely agreed to meet with me, and I am excited about exploring these options on behalf of the students here. She doesn’t know that the last Campus Kitchen director I worked

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with cried when I left, that I used to haul 200 lbs. of food rescued from Panera every other Thursday for the last four and a half years, or that I helped my last employer provide $1.5 million of support to students in need. Most importantly, I arrive a more capable, knowledgeable, and reflective partner than I was five years ago, and I hope that I’ll be able to say the same five years from now. And I hope I’m held accountable to that promise by anyone other than my journal.

CHAPTER 7

Major Gift Fundraising at Public HBCUs

“The instructor said,     Go home and write     a page tonight.     And let that page come out of you—     Then, it will be true. I wonder if it's that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above Harlem. I am the only colored student in my class. The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem, through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y, the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator up to my room, sit down, and write this page: […] —Langston Hughes, “Theme for English B”

Every time I have read and taught “Theme for English B” as Professor of English, I become more fascinated with the preamble to the actual page Hughes writes for “English B” at Columbia University in the 1920s. In the second half of the poem, he draws parallels to and examines contrasts between himself—a Black man from rural midwestern town now living in Harlem at the YMCA—and his classmates at Columbia—white, wealthy, legacies of the institution and those like it. But in the first half, Hughes’ © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. J. Broussard, Fundraising at Public Regional Universities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45481-3_7

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foreshadowing is heavy-handed. How can someone so unlike the people with whom he now must study and work and learn ever appreciate or be appreciated by, or welcome and be welcomed by him? The question is not answered in this poem, though, the fact that Hughes transferred from Columbia and gave up his scholarship after one year and later enrolled and graduated from Lincoln University of Pennsylvania is the only answer we’ll ever need. The pages let out of him—the pages that would be his truth—would be written about and be produced in Black communities such as the one he found at the one of the nation’s oldest HBCUs and a public regional university focused on creating opportunities for higher education among groups historically excluded by rejective private institutions. I spent seven years writing for HBCU Digest, an online magazine that has become a premier source for HBCU-centered information, perspectives, and news. During that time, I learned from reader feedback that when HBCU alumni/supporters read news stories regarding fiduciary challenges, layoffs, furloughs, or infrastructure and facility concerns, the conversation nearly immediately takes on the form of chastising other HBCU alumni for failing to support their institutions and those institutions for allowing themselves to be misled or failing to ask for support. The chorus features seemingly odd bedfellows that includes self-­proclaimed HBCU alumni and supporters as well as racial bigots often trolling and seizing any opportunity available to malign Black people and their institutions. Making these kinds of accusations of HBCUs and their alumni, though, assumes a ‘history started yesterday’ approach and does not take into consideration many factors that have led to this moment’s conundrum. The characterization that HBCU alumni do not financially support their institutions, leading to massive problems of reputational harm and bad social media exposure is accurate in one sense, misinformed in another, and completely misses the point in a third. Firstly, it is true that public regional HBCU alumni do not give in ways that can aid their alma maters’ financial independence. But this is due to historical, financial, and structural limitations vis a vis white college graduates.1 It is also true of non-­HBCU alumni, as public university alumni give at lower rates than 1  Kelly, T., Woods, A., and Walker, R. (2017). “Barriers to Historically Black Colleges and Universities alumni giving in the Baby Boomer and Silent Generations: An interpretive phenomenology analysis.” Journal of Education and Social Development, (1–6). http://ibii-us. org/Journals/JESD/V1N1/Publish/V1N1_1.pdf

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private university alumni (5.5% vs. 18% respectively, according to Hanover Research2). This can be explained away in part by fewer degree programs that yield graduates with high disposable incomes at HBCUs (such as MBAs, law schools, and medical school programs), but also by higher student debt among HBCU graduates, and a historical mission to serve families and communities that yield fewer individuals who come from families with multi-generationally established wealth. Just because HBCU alumni do not donate as much money as PWI alumni peers do does not mean that HBCU alumni aren’t supportive (in fact, U.S. News and World Report data suggest that they give at higher rates when compared to PWI public regional alumni). Secondly, lower than average alumni giving rate percentages at an HBCU often lead to the dismissal of fundraising efforts, advancement resources, and fundraising infrastructure, but this is not because HBCUs don’t value or emphasize fundraising. Invariably, successful institutions of higher education take information garnered through the efforts of institutional advancement—capital campaigns, solicitations, strategic planning, focus groups, and donor feedback mechanisms—and use this feedback to develop programs, improve transparency, responsiveness, and constituent and alumni service, and justify increasing advancement resources. Failing to attempt to raise money leads to forfeiture of the kinds of rich data, feedback, and narratives that contemporary universities need to thrive, and this is part and parcel of university advancement work. In other words, fundraising and advancement efforts can yield more than dollars in—it can influence alumni to send their children to the institution and create legacy families, it can challenge pernicious stereotypes and offer a counter-­ narrative in the media, and it can reveal data from alumni that can help shape future strategies. Unfortunately, HBCU executives struggle to justify continued investment in advancement resources when other existential threats demand immediate redress. Negative feedback and poor fundraising results often do not lead to introspection, research, and reapproach at public HBCUs, primarily because a lack of resources cannot support increased fundraising activity without fundraising success in the first place, or a promise of immediate improvement. Thirdly, because of the relatively small staff sizes of HBCU external relations departments, HBCUs limit advancement activity to events 2  “5 trends driving university fundraising.” https://www.hanoverresearch.com/insightsblog/alumni-giving-university-fundraising-5-trends/

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(which are expensive and time-consuming, yielding little net revenue) and often fail to attract experienced and credentialed fundraising staff to critical positions, favoring “friendraising” instead. By way of example, the largest public HBCU by enrollment is North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro. Their development and advancement services offices appear comparable to large public regional universities (with 15,000+ students) regarding staffing: development officers assigned by college, division of labor between major gifts and annual giving, and robust stewardship and gift processing staff. Across the state, Fayetteville State University and Winston-Salem State University,3 HBCUs in the same university system as North Carolina A&T, have one-person departments for major gifts, gift processing, alumni relations, and corporate and foundation relations. As a result, HBCUs such as Winston Salem State and Fayetteville State feature advancement programs heavy on stewardship to cling to scant existing supporters and friend-raising (e.g., tailgates, receptions, and parties), and center events, such as galas and balls, that recognize alumni but rarely (if ever) ask them for donations  that aren’t transactional. It misses the point completely to say that their alumni are less supportive than other institutions when they cannot even marshal the efforts necessary to engage in traditional MOVES Management-based fundraising activity. Fundraising activity is a central focus for HBCU executives despite the lack of resources available. As Willliams and Kritsonis (2006) note,4 “one of the major challenges that public HBCU presidents face is shrinking revenues and growing school needs. Without external funding, HBCUs will be good institutions, but they will not have the quality that is essential for students to become successful in the global new world that is taking shape” (4). However, cultivating new donors remains nearly impossible due to lack of funds for travel, lack of staffing, and proper customer relationship software and donor prospecting. When solicitations occur, they are often not strategic and do not proceed orderly from a university-wide plan that ranks donors and their capacities to give and properly consider exactly who should be asking for what size gifts, and regular low-labor 3  Based on information available on North Carolina A&T, Fayetteville State, and WinstonSalem State university advancement staff websites, July 2022. 4  Williams, M. G., and Kritsonis, W. A. (2006). “Raising more money at the nation’s historically black colleges and universities.” National Journal for Publishing and Mentoring Doctoral Student Research. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED493566

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mini-campaigns such as giving days and crowdfunding (which tend toward being “all calls” rather than targeted market segmentation largely because the third-party vendors that provide that sort of analysis are expensive and the labor to carry out targeted solicitations is resource-intensive). As a result, university employees ask a small percentage of donors who are over-solicited and ask too often for inappropriately sized gifts without centralized strategy. There are more pressing concerns than short-term fundraising challenges for public regional HBCUs. Endowment growth often takes a backseat at HBCUs because of the pressing need for short-term funding to balance annual budgets in the face of lower enrollments, historical underfunding, and disproportionately high emergency student needs. However, the importance of endowment building is crucial to bring an end to the dependence upon state and federal funding and continuing enrollment growth to determine institutional missions. Further, endowments can underwrite budget shortfalls and prevent the shouldering of additional expenses (via tuition and fee increases) by students and their families and continue to ensure the value and affordability of HBCU degrees. The value proposition of the HBCU degree, coupled with the relative outperformance of HBCU graduates with regard to assuming higher status occupations and gaining graduate school entry compared to Black graduates of PWIs make them extremely competitive in the market for prospective students. However, the increasing debt that HBCU graduates accrue in comparison to PWI peers reduces and limits prospects, meaning these institutions must increase the availability of scholarships and debt-relieving measures.5,6 Additionally, HBCUs lack megadonors willing to invest in them. Former Dillard University president Walter Kimbrough, in a 2015 op-ed “An Obscene Use of $400 Million,” offers a scathing criticism of John Paulson, who donated $400 million to Harvard University. He argues that Harvard’s endowment, which at the time was $36 billion, is so large that such new gifts are vanities that do not even help the 86% of students who do not receive financial aid to attend. Buried as a lead, however, is the fact 5  Strayhorn, T. L. (2008). Influences on labor market outcomes of African American college graduates: A national study. The Journal of Higher Education, 79(1), 29–57. 6  Kreighbaum, A. (2016). “Report: students at HBCUs have burdensome debt.” https:// www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/12/15/report-students-hbcus-haveburdensome-debt

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that Dillard, ranked the #13 HBCU in that year’s U.S. News and World Report, has an endowment six times smaller than Paulson’s one gift to Harvard (approximately $65 million), and equals .002% of Harvard’s total endowment. HBCU Digest founding editor Jarrett Carter, Sr. offered in his essay “For Survival, HBCUs Must Develop Entrepreneurial Focus in Academic Offerings,” that “HBCUs (need to) condition students to think as owners and not workers, [so] the effort will yield the alumni who own property and business brands that will fund their respective alma maters, and develop the next generation of entrepreneurs that will create a golden age of self-sufficiency and unlimited growth for Black America.7” The historical mission of HBCUs, to train teachers, nurses, clergy, and soldiers plays a key role in assisting the entry into careers that helped shape the Black middle class, but has not yet yielded a generation of donors who can make truly transformational gifts to their alma maters en masse. As a result, the availability of donors, both present and future, who can and will make transformational gifts to HBCU is a small pool, and the gap continues to yawn. Finally, Carolyn Ash, Darrick Hamilton, and William Darity noted on their Atlanta Journal-Constitution blog entry entitled “As Morehouse and Spelman graduate, consider fate and funding of HBCU,” that the endowment gap between HBCUs and PWIs has almost doubled in the past two decades. They note how crucial the increased qualifications for Parent PLUS loans8 and reductions to federal Pell Grants have impacted fundraising on HBCU campuses. It is important to note that when over 75% of students are on financial aid and aid sources evaporate, fundraising efforts must focus on retaining these students and assisting their efforts today (and thus, distract from focus on building endowment value to benefit students one, five, or twenty years from now9). It is no secret that endowments—comprised of large principal gifts invested so that the interest derived helps underwrite expenses and projects while the initial principal investment remains intact—are how universities can offer more competitive scholarships to an increasingly more capable prospective student body, ride the waves of rises and falls of state 7  See: Carter, J. (2012). “For survival, HBCUs must develop entrepreneurial focus in academic offerings.” HuffPost. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hbcu-entrepreneurdevelopment_b_1542473 8  See: “Parent PLUS Loans | Federal Student Aid.” https://student.aid.gov/understandaid/types/loans/plus/parent. 9  Aja, Ash, Darity & Hamilton. (2015).

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funding more stably, and recruit and retain the best and brightest faculty. But when the ominous specter of balancing this year’s budget and helping next year’s graduates inevitably garner the bulk of officials’ attention, how can HBCUs afford (literally and figuratively) to focus on endowment building? The challenge is especially daunting for public HBCUs, which have far smaller endowments than private HBCUs: for example, Southern University-Baton Rouge, an hour’s drive from Dillard University, has an enrollment 5.5 times larger than Dillard’s, and an endowment 10X smaller; Fort Valley State University, an hour and a half away from Morehouse, has an endowment 55X smaller than Morehouse’s. The obvious challenge to foundation staffs and administrators is that when they are presented with opportunities to secure major gifts (say, $100,000 or more) is that the financial challenges that both private and public HBCU face in the present necessitate the immediate filling of budget gaps. This predisposes donors to give gifts (and institutions to allocate resources) in a manner that appears short-sighted. While it is especially challenging for private HBCUs to secure endowments outside of large foundation gifts to ensure they can continue to operate and provide scholarships, public HBCUs need to grow their endowments to support students heavily dependent on financial aid sources which are drying up and becoming more difficult to obtain. When otherwise capable students’ ability to matriculate is imperiled, universities and colleges need to be in a position to provide support to them. A more favorable position for institutions is to secure healthy endowment gifts to provide more competitive scholarships to students who choose us so that financial disruptions are less likely to derail their progress. But how can administrators ignore today’s problems while attempting to solve the ones that may emerge a decade from now? The need is demonstrably high for private support of HBCUs, and the means and resources to obtain them are inversely in short supply. Major gift prospects are also considered to be in short supply for HBCUs. Universities which are short-staffed and administrations with high turnover struggle to cultivate donors over the long term, urging and securing more significant gifts over time to the point that a six- or seven-figure gift becomes a possibility. The lack of formal capital campaigns or programs at HBCUs also misses out on an important opportunity to educate prospects about how gifts serve needs both now and into the future.

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No Permanent Friends, No Permanent Enemies, Only Permanent Interests One of the ways that HBCUs have attempted to play catch up is through lawsuits focusing on purposeful underfunding by state legislatures. In the past four decades, many HBCUs have demonstrated and successfully sued their state governments for disproportionately underfunding their institutions when compared with PWI institutions in the same state and university system. As recently as 2022, Coppin State University, Bowie State University, Morgan State University, and the University of MarylandEastern Shore—all public regional HBCUs—sued the state of Maryland for nearly $1.8 billion in restitution for the comparative underfunding that the state provided their institutions. Even though the four institutions will make significant and perhaps transformative investments based on the $577 million settlement that the state approved10: (1) the lawsuit took nearly 15 years to complete; (2) it was settled for one-third of what the state legislature acknowledged the damages should be, and subsequently approved; (3) the settled amount is the proof of damage done—nearly $2 billion in investment to grow the competitive advantages of the state’s PWI institutions while HBCUs were forced to try to raise money to cover the balance. A similar case unfolded recently with Tennessee State University’s lawsuit against the State of Tennessee, which yielded them a one-time transfer of $250 million from the state (which was less than half of the $544 million courts ruled it had neglected to award to the HBCU, in violation of the Second Morrill Act of 1890, and the largest settlement of its kind11). Still, HBCUs do yeoman’s work to attain resources from federal and state funders, private and corporate foundations, alumni, and a network of national non-profit organizations (e.g., Thurgood Marshall Fund) and supportive organizations corporations who have built pipelines to provide internships and entry-level jobs programs for graduates. High-profile decisions in recent years, including the cancellation of significant institutional 10  See: Baltimore Sun Editorial Board. (2020). “Maryland HBCU settlement: Historic, warranted, and overdue.” The Baltimore Sun. https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/ editorial/bs-ed-0324-hbcu-settlement-20200323-yim67i26z5dxdpjzr2rxpt73q4story.html 11  See: Barnes, R. (2023). “Tennessee State afforded $250 million from state of Tennessee, largest one-time investment to an HBCU from a state.” HBCU Pulse. https://hbcupulse. com/2023/01/18/tennessee-state-afforded-250-million-from-state-of-tennessee-largest-onetime-investment-to-an-hbcu-from-a-state/

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debts ($1.6 billion canceled in 2021,12 $330 million in 201813) and infrastructure investment in the Department of Education14 and from federal programs like The National Trust  for Historic Preservation demonstrate the collective ability of HBCUs to garner significant funding from federal and state resources, as well as debt forgiveness. Alumni giving rates, per reporting at Forbes, shows that the average giving rate among alumni at HBCUs is above 10%, significantly above average compared to public regional universities nationwide.15 Professional sports leagues (e.g., NASCAR, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association) have partnered with HBCU’s for internship, job-shadowing, apprenticeship, and scholarship programs; several airlines recruit alumni directly from HBCU aviation programs; and predominantly white institutions (PWIs) across the country have signed memoranda of understanding (MOU) for 2 + 2, 3 + 2, 4 + 2, and 4 + 3 graduate and dual-major programs. Megadonors, few in number but significant in impact, such as the Bloomberg Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Mackenzie Scott have also committed hundreds of millions of dollars to HBCU’s, and in the

12  See: Department of Education. (2021). https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/ department-education-discharges-over-16-billion-hbcu-capital-finance-debt. Alabama A&M, Alabama State, Central State (OH), Florida A&M, Grambling State, Harris-Stowe (MO), Morgan State (MD), South Carolina State, Southern University, Texas Southern University, and the University of the Virgin Islands along with 29 other universities and community colleges had outstanding debts canceled by President Biden in 2021. 13  See: Staff. (2018). “Feds forgive post-Katrina debt for Xavier, Dillard and SUNO.” The Louisiana Weekly. http://www.louisianaweekly.com/feds-forgive-post-katrina-debt-forxavier-dillard-and-suno/. Along with Southern University of New Orleans, Xavier University of New Orleans, Tougaloo (MS), and Dillard University received $330 million in debt relief because of this congressional budget bill signed by President Donald Trump in 2018. SUNO was the lone public institution receiving debt forgiveness. 14  See: Stratford, M. (2020). “DeVos opens up $1B in stimulus funding for HBCUs, minority-serving institutions.” Politico. https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2020/04/devos-opens-up-1b-in-stimulus-funding-for-hbcus-minority-serving-institutions-1928794. Based on this decision, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos enabled HBCUs to apply for an additional $577 million in stimulus funding on top of the $12 billion made available to all U.S. institutions of higher education. 15  “Fact Check: HBCU Alumni Give More Than National Average.” https://moguldom. com/451541/fact-check-hbcu-alumni-give-more-than-national-average/.

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process they have elevated both their needs and their unique ability to provide return on investment.16 Private investment has come from some strange bedfellows, such as conservative/libertarian billionaires and conservative think tanks. This is not to say that Black conservatives and republicans aren’t welcome or significantly present on HBCU campuses, but rather, that many of these same organizations support political candidates and back ballot initiatives often seen as harmful or oppressive to Black populations. For example, The Koch Foundation’s $25.6 million investment in the Thurgood Marshall Foundation is one of the largest donations to HBCUs in history.17 The gift generated significant controversy because its namesake, billionaires Charles and David Koch, have espoused causes that directly impact the quality of life of Black people, including funding climate change denial, “astroturfing” to create false optics of political opposition to candidates they oppose (who are often Black, women, and social justice oriented), and have been principally involved in infusing money in politics in a way that has damaged the public’s trust in government. Hardly in position to decline such investments given their perennial efforts fighting state underfunding and increasing needs of their disproportionately high low-­ income student population, HBCU leaders must abide by Missouri congressman William Clay’s edict: “No permanent friends, no permanent enemies, only permanent interests.” The same can be said for the practice of HBCU athletic programs earning hundreds of thousands of dollars every time they participate in guarantee, or “money” games against prominent PWI universities. Many of the same universities whose faculty will not collaborate with HBCU faculty on initiatives such as publications or grants because they lack cache have no concerns about paying $750,000 for their football team to pummel the comparably under-resourced HBCU team, causing many HBCU to decry the practice completely. Yet, one of those games will eclipse the total dollar amount of season tickets sold and private donations raised by entire athletic departments, forcing HBCU administrators to rely upon them to balance their budgets. 16  See: Roberson, V. (2021). “A reflection of the history and legacy of our HBCU’s.” HBCU Buzz. https://hbcubuzz.com/2021/06/a-reflection-on-the-history-and-legacy-ofour-hbcus/. HBCUs only represent 3% of the nation’s colleges and universities but produce nearly 20% of all Black college graduates. 17  See: Seltzer, R. (2017). “Thurgood Marshall College Fund defends accepting Koch money.” Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/01/13/thurgoodmarshall-college-fund-defends-accepting-koch-money

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So, whither public regional HBCU major gift fundraising in the twenty-­ first century, given these myriad challenges? While stretching the concept of lean management to the limits of its tensile strength, and under the intense scrutiny of sometimes under/misinformed media investigation (performed by too many journalists with no connections to HBCUs, leading them to rely on a small cadre of experts who themselves have little to no connection to them), it appears the directions it will take will encounter a level of forensic analysis not typical to public regional university media coverage. Unfortunately, higher education journalism is no more immune from racial bigotry, race essentialism, and irresponsible sensationalism than any other facet of American life, and this shows through in how often the media misses underlying nuances or historical antecedents which form the contemporary difficulties HBCUs face while engaging in fundraising and advancement work. In the following sections, I will consider how HBCUs have engaged the hiring of high-profile coaches who have the potential to generate fundraising and revenue generation at public regional universities; accepted donations from controversial figures/companies/organizations; and overcome depictions/allegations of fiscal irresponsibility and accreditation concerns due to financial crises. HBCUs must fight the fundraising battle on multiple fronts as they attempt to convince multiple funders and funding sources they deserve investment while fighting to maintain viability through traditional media outlets that do not depict their efforts with sensitivity, compassion, or a full sense of the historical antecedents which create their contemporary challenges.

The Deion Effect Of all athletes for a sociological effect to be named after in higher education studies, the only one that comes to mind is “The Flutie Effect,” named for United States Football League (USFL)/NFL journeyman and Boston College hero quarterback Doug Flutie. The effect is so named for the spike in applications for admission at Boston College (rumored to have spiked by 30%) that occurred after their improbable bowl game victory over Miami in 1984, in which Flutie completed a Hail Mary pass as time expired to secure the victory.18 Over the last four decades, universities have attempted to catch this particular kind of lightning in a bottle, hoping that high-profile athletic successes will introduce college-goers to their  See: McDonald, B. (2003). “The ‘Flutie factor’ is now received wisdom. But is it true?” Boston College Magazine. https://bcm.bc.edu/issues/spring_2003/ll_phenomenology.html 18

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university in a way that the most sophisticated marketing and branding programs could hardly imagine. While scholars have debated the veracity of the claim that those high-profile athletic victories will lead to increased enrollment, it is difficult to deny the correlation. Since Flutie’s magic moment, historically regional-serving universities such as Wichita State University, California State University, Fresno, and Appalachian State University have developed national reputations for their giant-killing sports programs which in turn assisted their revenue generation ability and allowed them to compete nationally for student enrollment. Critics of the Flutie Effect point out that the shunting of available funds and steering of fundraising energy into intercollegiate athletics created an arms race in higher education and a significant mission creep as focus on the athletic enterprise dominates both media attention and, in many cases, administrative focus.19 The raw facts bear out this criticism—for every dozen universities that shift investment into the athletic enterprise (often relying upon regressive athletic student fees which further increase college costs to all students) perhaps one will enjoy a return on investment that is sustainable for more than a flash in the pan. After all, athletic success is fleeting (as is the employment of the head coaches who lead the teams who secure it), but thirty-year debt servicing on new athletic facilities or ten-year, bonus-laden contracts for increasingly successful head coaches is nearly permanent. A tactic that public regional universities have employed with unremarkable results is the hiring of big-name coaches, often former professional athletes, whose name recognition may spur national interest and investment when the university’s brand historically has struggled to do so. For example, after only one season as a volunteer head coach (when he led NAIA Arkansas Baptist to a 6-12 record), the University of Central Arkansas hired 13-year NBA veteran and Arkansas Razorback standout Corliss Williamson to be their head basketball coach in 2011. In three seasons, none of his teams finished above .500. West Texas A&M University was already a perennial favorite to win the Lone Star Conference in football in the mid to late 2000s, securing championships and NCAA Division II playoff berths from 2005 to 2007. But even though his fame 19  Murray Sperber in Beer and Circus (2000); Andrew Zimbalist in Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in Big-time College Sports (1999); Allen Sack and Ellen Staurowsky in College Athletes for Hire: The Evolution and Legacy of the NCAA’s Amateur Myth (1998); B. David Ridpath in Tainted Glory (2012).

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had dwindled significantly since his college days and the hype surrounding his #2 overall selection in the 2002 NFL Draft, it still made headlines when Ryan Leaf was hired to coach quarterbacks for the Buffaloes. Despite no coaching experience and some substance abuse issues which later led to his coaching career’s abrupt end, he helped lead the Buffaloes to a 33-5 record over the course of those three years. The phenomenon is not limited to men’s sports. Several former Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) athletes have been hired as head coaches with little to no coaching experience by public regional universities. After one year coaching the now defunct Westchester Phantoms of the American Basketball Association and one year as an assistant coach at her alma mater, Louisiana Tech University, Teresa Weatherspoon, a Women’s Basketball Hall of Famer, was named interim head coach of the Lady Techsters. Her first three seasons were remarkable successes, as she led the Lady Techsters to Women’s National Invitational Tournament or NCAA berths in each season. Unfortunately, in her final three seasons, her teams failed to finish above .500 overall or in conference play, and after finishing in last place in Conference USA in 2014, she was released. Jackson State University broke the mold of this kind of media splash hire when it selected Deion Sanders to be their head coach in 2020. Without any collegiate coaching experience, having earned a college degree only months before receiving the offer (often considered a prerequisite for coaching employment at most colleges and universities), and after only four seasons of private high school coaching experience in Texas, “Coach Prime” generated headlines and media attention from day one, often more for himself than for his athletes or the university. Mainstream press heralded the hire and praised Sanders for making Jackson State Football competitive in a way nobody has ever accomplished and highlighted how underfunded athletic facilities created burdens for HBCU recruitment of elite athletes and marred branding efforts. According to this narrative, Coach Prime was the hero who could overcome it: The Ringer praised him for making Jackson State University the “best story in college football20;” AthlonSports noted that “the bar is low” at Jackson State University and that Sanders would raise that bar through increased

20  See: Sherman, R. (2021). “How Deion Sanders turned Jackson State into the best story in college football.” The Ringer. https://www.theringer.com/2021/12/16/22839153/ deion-sanders-coach-prime-jackson-state-travis-hunter-recruiting

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media attention21; and the New York Post characterized Sanders’ choice to coach at Jackson State University as a kind of charity, asking “The natural question, of course, is why—why would a Hall of Fame player opt to coach at a school like Jackson State?22” He suffered a lackluster first season in which he only finished above .500 with a win over an NAIA football team and a forfeit from Alcorn State University, who did not play because of COVID protocols. The next two seasons were comparably more successful, and when he abruptly ended his tenure to take the head coach job at the University of Colorado, a chorus of mainstream pundits heralded the decision to obtain a 1000% pay increase after being praised for donating half of his salary back to Jackson State University for facility renovations.23 The Black press and Black journalists who cover HBCU athletics were far more critical of his tenure, and their criticism merits close consideration as a counter-narrative that HBCUs (and public regional universities, writ large) are somehow proving grounds for the real jobs in college athletics, namely in the Power Five (composed of athletic programs sponsored by private and public flagship universities). His tenure at Jackson State University ended with a 27-6 record, two Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) championships and two Celebration Bowl appearances in 2021 and 2022. After it ended, The Atlantic’s Jemele Hill characterized his decision to go to Colorado, who finished with a 1-11 record and has not been nationally competitive in decades as “reinforc(ing) the narrative that mainstream validation is more important than fostering Black excellence at a Black institution.” Such a “Black flight” to PWIs from HBCUs preceded many of the resource and recruiting issues Sanders decried at Jackson State University.24 ESPN’s Bomani Jones, an HBCU alumnus, criticized Sanders for “(selling) a dream and [then] walk[ing] 21  See: Tallent, A. (2020). “Deion Sanders as a head coach: 5 reasons it could work.” Athlon Sports. https://athlonsports.com/college-football/deion-sanders-head-coach-reasons-could-work 22  See: Braziller, Z. (2021). “Inside Deion Sanders’ wild reign at Jackson State.” The New  York Post. https://nypost.com/2021/08/30/inside-deion-sanders-wild-reign-atjackson-state/ 23  See: Staff. (2022). “Deion Sanders donates half of his salary toward Jackson State sports facility renovation.” The Griot. https://news.yahoo.com/deion-sanders-donates-half-salary-155000672.html 24  See: Hill, J. (2022). “Deion Sanders’ disappointing exit.” The Atlantic. https://www. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/deion-sanders-head-football-coach-jackson-statedeparture-hbcu-impact/672396/

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out,” and additionally criticized a fawning media industry for not playing close enough attention to the fact that “the dream he was selling wasn’t possible, it was not an achievable one that he had, but he sold it and he got people to believe it.25” HBCU Gameday’s Steven Gaither also covered Sanders not-so-prime behavior, including accusations of disrespect in the media and on the day of their matchup from fellow SWAC coach Eddie Robinson, Jr. at Alabama State University, and his daughter’s false allegation that murders happened “every month” at Jackson State (in light of Sanders’ public criticism regarding feeling unsafe on campus and having personal items stolen from him). And an ugly, but woefully under-reported story involved Sanders’ banning of Rashad Milligan from covering him at SWAC Media Days in 2021. Milligan, a Black reporter from the Clarion Ledger in Jackson, MS, was barred from covering Sanders after he asked him about a sexual assault allegation involving one of Jackson State’s football players, and Deadspin’s Carron Phillips characterized this, and other behaviors of Sanders to be “egotistical,” always drawing attention to himself instead of focusing it on Jackson State University and its athletes.26 What now for Jackson State University football, and as importantly, the spike in revenue it experienced due to increased ticket and apparel sales and donations? Time will tell if it gains more than a temporary rise to the head of the pack in the SWAC as Coach Sanders heads west with many of the four- and five-star recruits he brought to Jackson State following along (including their MVP QB, his son Shedeur Sanders). More importantly, will the increased revenue and media attention garnered in this short stint remain accessible to Jackson State, or will it, too, leave town as soon as it appeared? Can this success be replicated, as several HBCUs make hires of individuals with high name recognition with no previous ties to HBCUs (Tennessee State University has yet to post a winning season under Heisman Trophy winner Eddie George; former NFL head coach Hue Jackson’s inaugural season at Grambling was underwhelming at 3–8 and even more embarrassing as the head coach attempted to hire Art Briles, who was fired for a lack of institutional control at Baylor where his football players were accused of over 50 acts of sexual assault during his tenure as 25  See: Clark, J. (2022). “ESPN host criticizes Deion Sanders for leaving HBCU for big promotion: ‘He sold a dream and then walked out’.” Fox News. https://www.foxnews.com/ media/espn-host-criticizes-deion-sanders-leaving-hbcu-big-promotion-sold-dream-walked 26  See: Phillips, C. (2021). “Deion Sanders meltdown highlights hot mess of a SWAC Media Day.” Deadspin. https://deadspin.com/swac-media-day-was-a-poopshow-and-itwasn-t-just-deion-1847335579

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head coach; and NFL Hall of Famer Ed Reed was fired by Bethune Cookman before even coaching a single down). Tough questions for an institution so rich in history and tradition and with such promise—and anyone with any knowledge of Jackson State University’s existence before Deion Sanders would tell you the same. Let’s hope ESPN Gameday’s first SWAC visit and only the fourth visit ever to an HBCU campus is replicated soon, and they ask the question while offering the continued attention HBCUs deserve in the national spotlight.

All Money Is Green (and Sometimes, Black and Blue) A picture is worth a thousand words, and some of them elicit at least that many in gasps, epithets, and swears. The October 2020 photograph of several dozen HBCU presidents surrounding the Oval Office desk of President Donald Trump is one such photograph. Rarely does a single photo, with no accompanying video or statement, become such a think-­ piece generator. The occasion for the summit, which many dismissed as a cynical and manipulative attempt to take a shot at President Obama’s failure to hold such a summit as the nation’s first Black president, was the potential for an executive order to be issued that would benefit HBCUs and meeting with leading officials in the President’s administration.27 While most agreed that HBCUs were not a true priority for a president who’d watched nearly 9/10 Black voters support his opponent in the election, it became obvious that HBCU presidents and chancellors truly could not win in this scenario. How could they accept an invitation from someone nearly universally dismissed as a racial bigot? How could they turn down an opportunity to meet with the President to represent their institutions? How could they allow themselves to be used as photo-op pawns in such an obviously cynical ploy? How could they decline the offer to assemble the largest group of Black executives ever to visit the Oval Office? HBCU executive leaders face this scenario far more often than once in a lifetime. The routine news that focuses on HBCUs winning lawsuits against their own statehouses stands as evidence that the institutions are chronically and perennially underfunded compared to their PWI peers. Adam Harris, author of The State Must Provide, explains the source of the

27  See: Rogo, P. (2020). “Over 100 HBCU presidents met with Trump.” Essence. https:// www.essence.com/news/hbcu-presidents-trump-meeting-executive-order/

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historical underfunding as he compares the status of his home state’s two public land-grant institutions—Auburn and Alabama A&M: How states build out their funding models - several states will have things like a performance-based funding model, where institutions that have better graduation rates, institutions that have more students will receive more money. And those with lower graduation rates or fewer students will receive less money, even if they are serving two, you know, vastly different student populations. And then it becomes more difficult to serve those student populations, as you're receiving less money because of kind of a historic linkage. And so the thing that I always point people to around historically Black colleges, in my own institution in particular, is they're still being judged on a history that was at its base, unequal, right?28

To sum, the institutions founded because segregation would not allow Black students to study elsewhere are now funded in such a manner that reveals the plot fully—the biggest fear within a structurally racist system is not only Black integration, but a feeling of revanchist, ressentiment toward Black education, itself. As funding for state institutions has been winnowed nationally and public regional universities have acutely suffered, the effect at HBCUs has been more pronounced because of discriminatory practices. This, of course, creates a terminal paradox: how do HBCUs make up for state underfunding, due to racial bigotry and discrimination, by relying upon public funding from the legislatures that have neglected them or private funding from a sector that has also historically underinvested and discriminated against Black institutions? The answer requires participation in a system in which every action and inaction is fraught, criticized, and potentially damning. Private sector funding acquisition for HBCUs challenges fundraising and university executives similarly, with ethical and moral dilemmas written into many contract proposals. In late 2020, Thurgood Marshall College Fund President (and former president of public regional university Delaware State University) Harry Williams announced a career readiness partnership with Google that promised to train over 20,000 students with the digital skills they’d need to be employed in Big Tech. The initial partners, before a promise to expand to all HBCU campuses, were Bowie 28  Listen here: “‘The State Must Provide’ is a lesson on inequality in higher ed, past and present.” NPR. https://www.npr.org/2021/08/16/1028076069/the-state-must-provideis-a-lesson-on-inequality-in-higher-ed-past-and-present

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State University, Virginia State University, Winston-Salem State University, and Southern University A&M College—all public regional HBCUs serving large populations of first-generation and students from low-income families. A win for Google, HBCUs, and most importantly, the students, many would say. Until, of course, Google became the subject of a class action lawsuit by many of its former employees accusing it of systemic racism29 and we learned that Google’s treatment of Black women, like April Curley30 and Timnit Gebru31 augured poorly for students who aspired to work in Big Tech. This is an especially heinous consideration in Curley’s case, considering that she recruited HBCUs for Google and found out that students who attended HBCUs and other “unfamiliar” schools were screened out of search processes, regardless of their qualifications. In response, Google’s CEO met with HBCU leaders and later announced a $50 million commitment, given as $5 million donations to ten HBCUs, to relaunch their diversity initiatives (led, depending on your perspective, either cynically or cleverly by Google’s Chief Diversity Officer Melonie Parker, herself an HBCU alumna). This process serves as an appropriate metaphor for private fundraising at HBCUs, as their executives face pressure to work with and accept contributions from companies accused of mistreating the embarrassingly low number of Black employees they recruit, and as it is alleged, fail to retain. Damned if they don’t be evil, damned if they do. Even the most wholesome appearing agreements are fraught with controversy, especially when HBCU scholars and Black media examine them more closely. Another controversial example of HBCU partnerships with a major corporation involves the “Retool Your School” collaboration between participating HBCUs and Home Depot. Since 2009, the program provided HBCUs with $5.2 million in campus improvement grants to perform small scale capital improvements or repairs as proposed by

29  See: Stempel, J. (2022). “Google is accused in lawsuit of systemic bias against Black employees.” Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/google-is-accusedlawsuit-systemic-bias-against-black-employees-2022-03-18/ 30  See: Gordon, J. (2020). “April Christina Curley black diversity recruiter for Google claims Baltimore accent was disability.” Daily Mail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ article-9078173/April-Christina-Curley-black-diversity-recruiter-Google-claims-Baltimoreaccent-disability.html 31  See: Staff. (2020). “Timnit Gebru: Google staff rally behind fired AI researcher.” BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55187611

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participating institutions.32 Home Depot determined winners based off student and alumni participation, which involved online voting as well as tallies of reposts/retweets/messages from students and alumni (such as the hashtag “#RTYS”). On paper, of course, this seems beneficent of Home Depot and advantageous to HBCUs, as the company has distributed nearly $500,000 annually to these institutions. Critics, however, have pointed out that Home Depot, which reported $16.1 billion in revenue in 2021 and trades on the NYSE/Dow 30, has invested far more resources into major universities in the form of athletic sponsorships and that one of their founders has given over $300 million of his personal wealth to New York University, which already has a $5.8 billion endowment (more than the total of all HBCUs combined). Further, as former HBCU chancellor Charlie Nelms points out, the amount of free publicity generated by HBCUs promoting the contest and alumni voting and posting their social media for them far exceeds the value of Home Depot’s investment.33 Perhaps because of growing criticism, and equally because of pressure placed upon corporation to invest more into Black communities in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and ensuing protests in 2020, Home Depot has dramatically increased its annual investment in the program for 2023. A new slate of funding, which includes nearly $700,000 for the Retool Your School program, also now includes $150,000  in scholarships for HBCU students, several hundred thousand dollars for community improvement grants supporting the neighborhoods adjacent to HBCUs, as well as internships, resume guidance, and job training available to HBCU students. At this pace, Home Depot will invest more in the next two years than it did in the last decade.12 This sudden influx of investment, of course, begs the question. If Home Depot can give so much now, and increase it by 100–150% in one fell swoop, could they have been investing more all along? Should they base their investment on popularity contests when Black customers spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually, dollars they should be competing for like they do anyone else’s? Despite the increased giving, the question still stands: why do HBCUs alone have to show and prove their worthiness by publicly extolling a corporation’s virtues and then literally building or 32  See: “Retool Your School 2023: Exciting changes on the way.” https://retoolyourschool.com/thedrill/retool-your-school-2023-exciting-changes-on-the-way/ 33  See: Nelms, C. (2022). “Dear fellow HBCU graduates.” Diverse. https://www.diverseeducation.com/opinion/article/15290471/dear-fellow-hbcu-graduates

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repairing infrastructure that states should be providing the money for in the first place? In other words, why are HBCUs required, above all their institutional peers, required to DIY?

To the Brink and (Nearly) All the Way Back: Southern University’s Declaration of Financial Exigency In 2013, Harvard professor and higher education scholar Clay Christensen predicted that 25% of colleges and universities in the United States would close due to disruption, but by 2018, he changed his mind. He then predicted that the number would be much higher—as high as 50%. A combination of skyrocketing costs for tuition and fees, the number of universities running deficits without sources of revenue from declining tuition and fees received from ever smaller enrollments, and a population decline among 18-year-olds writ large signaled difficult times ahead.34 It is not unusual, sadly, to read headlines about HBCUs facing closure and loss of accreditation due to severe financial crises. This is especially true among low-enrollment institutions with small endowments struggling to generate revenues due to declining enrollments, whose margins for error regarding finance are razor thin. Within the past decade, the Lewis College of Business (MI), St. Paul College (NC), and Concordia College (AL) have fallen victim to such circumstances, although a movement led by educator/fashion designer D’Wayne Edwards resulted in the re-opening of the newly renamed Pensole Lewis College of Business,35 now with an emphasis on the fashion design industry. Several other institutions have, or continue to teeter on the verge of complete closure, such as Barber-Scotia College (SC), Knoxville College (AL), and Morris Brown College (GA) have faced such dire circumstances in recent years, although Morris Brown, under the leadership of President Kevin James, has enjoyed a resurgence as they earned accreditation and welcomed back full-time

34  See: Horn, M. (2018). “Will half of all colleges really close in the next decade?” Christensen Institute. https://www.christenseninstitute.org/blog/will-half-of-all-collegesreally-close-in-the-next-decade/ 35  See: “Founder  - Welcome to Pensole Lewis College.” https://pensolelewiscollege. com/overview/founder-2/

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students after a 19-year loss of accreditation lapse.36 One unifying factor among the aforementioned institutions is their “private” status, which makes them uniquely ineligible for some sources of state and federal revenues that help to keep public colleges and universities afloat during their most difficult times. Insolvency. Retrenchment. Financial emergency. Since public universities go to great lengths to avoid bankruptcy, given that they would become ineligible for federal funding if they did so (per the 1992 Higher Education Act), institutions and state educational boards facing financial peril have come up with many colorful euphemisms to avoid the “B” word. Make no mistake about it, however, when universities use these euphemistic declarations and immediately begin merging and closing colleges, discontinuing programs, and even terminating contracts for tenured faculty to reduce spending and eliminate deficits, this is the higher education equivalent of bankruptcy declaration. So, when one of the nation’s most recognizable HBCUs, Southern University, declared financial exigency in 2011, a nation full of HBCU alumni and supporters couldn’t help but take notice. Facing a $10 million budget shortfall due to declining student enrollments, state budget cuts, and leadership failures internally to balance the budget, Southern became only the second public university in Louisiana history to declare exigency (the University of New Orleans did so after 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, then the costliest hurricane-related disaster in United States history, when it decimated the urban campus). While the institution turned inward for solutions first—program eliminations, faculty and staff furloughs of every employee making more than $30,000/ year, frozen budgets, and early-retirement incentivizing—eventually it made the difficult decision.37 Making matters worse, then Governor Bobby Jindal signed into law the “Granting Resources and Autonomies for Diplomas (GRAD) Act” in 2010, instituting a multi-year performance-­ based funding metric for the state’s public institutions.38 This forced the university to commit to increasing retention and graduation rates while restructuring its budget during a process that caused widespread fear and 36  See: Whitford, E. (2021). “Morris Brown earns accreditation candidacy after 19 years.” Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2021/04/14/morrisbrown-earns-accreditation-candidacy-after-19-years 37  See: Blum, J. (2011). “SU Board OKs exigency.” The Advocate. https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/su-board-oks-exigency/article_e60008e6c432-56fb-8756-7b959f073e32.html 38  See: “GRAD Act – Louisiana Board of Regents.” https://regents.la.gov/grad-act/

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loss of confidence among current and future students, alumni, and investors. Fundraising as a response to bankruptcy proceedings may be the most difficult sell in the business. While university officials faced increased media scrutiny and scathing rebuke from national organizations such as the American Association of University Professors (AAUP),39 they turned to alumni and friends to provide increased financial resources to help them cover their deficits and keep the institution open. For obvious reasons, the university could not turn to fundraising for long-term solutions as their reputation faced multi-lateral harms, though the Southern University System Foundation40 recorded nearly $13 million in revenues in the ensuing fiscal year (compared to just $6.7 million in 2011, a ~100% increase). System President Ronald Mason launched the “Save Our Southern-S.O.S.” campaign ahead of the financial exigency declaration, setting the stage for a dire battle to ensure the institution’s future through the acquisition of private donations.41 For all the reasons that we’ve noted that present challenges to HBCU private fundraising, including a lack of multi-­ generational wealth among the populations they serve; and a predominance of HBCU alumni seeking professions in education, nursing, and social work that do not provide higher salaries; fundraising returned to normal in the ensuing years, as the System Foundation averaged revenues of $7.6 million between 2013 and 2017. Reputational harm and its link to fundraising may also explain the dip in attainment after an initial increase. As Peng, Kim, and Deat (2019) note, “a tarnished reputation […] can have a damaging impact, leading to possible losses in donations,

39  “Academic Freedom and Tenure: Southern University, Baton Rouge.” https://www. aaup.org/report/academic-freedom-and-tenure-southern-university-baton-rouge 40  Southern University System is comprised of five universities/programs located in three cities in Louisiana. They include Southern University-Baton Rouge and Southern UniversityNew Orleans, public regional universities; Southern University-Shreveport, a two-year college; Southern University Law Center and Southern University Agricultural Research Center, both located on the Baton Rouge campus). 41  Pope, J. (2019). “Kofi Lomotey, chancellor of Southern University’s Baton Rouge campus, resigns.” Nola.com. https://www.nola.com/news/education/kofi-lomotey-chancellor-of-southern-universitys-baton-rouge-campus-resigns/article_e2c64fce-dbf55c98-9fe1-852dfab4634a.html

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volunteers, clients, support of stakeholders, and public trust.42” While the net assets of the System Foundation doubled during this time from $5 million to $11 million, (median public regional university endowments are approximately $100 million43) investment proceeds on such a small endowment could not be relied upon to solve a multi-million-dollar problem that presented annually. A decade later, the Southern University System has stabilized its enrollment and finances, largely because state and federal support for the institution has increased steadily, subsidy reductions faced during the years of the GRAD Act have been discontinued, and the administration’s ability to innovate has been restored. In 2015, the State of Louisiana removed restrictions on students who wished to enroll at universities but needed remedial courses, allowing them to attend Southern University and take the courses there rather than being forced into community colleges.44 The new governor, John Bel Edwards, also supported its marijuana research facility, the first of its kind (HBCU or otherwise) to be hosted on a public university’s campus and receive state approval and funding.45 While the kneejerk reaction among so many alumni and supporters of HBCUs every time an institution struggles financially is to declare that they need to raise more money, Southern’s re-emergence demonstrates a crucial counterpoint. Private fundraising and philanthropy cannot and should not be the only solution available when publicly funded institutions face hardship. In a recent profile in Christian Science Monitor of HBCU presidents who fixed financial problems at their universities, the author praises fundraising efforts at Dillard University and Howard University while failing to note that Dillard increasing its endowment from $50 million to $105 million is impressive, but not nearly as impactful as having nearly $170 million in debt forgiven in 2018. Or, the fact that 42  Peng, S., Kim, M., and Deat, F. (2019). “The effects of nonprofit reputation on charitable giving: A survey experiment.” Voluntas: The International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333761624_The_ Effects_of_Nonprofit_Reputation_on_Charitable_Giving_A_Survey_Experiment 43   “2021 NACUBO-TIAA Study of Endowments.” https://www.nacubo.org/ Research/2021/Public-NTSE-Tables 44  See: Staff. (2015). “Placement realities.” Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/08/04/louisiana-officials-hope-changing-admission-policieswill-help-remedial-students 45  “Southern becomes first HBCU to launch THC line of medical marijuana products.” https://www.subr.edu/news/southern-launch-thc-line-of-medical-marijuana-products

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Howard receives hundreds of millions in federal funding each year, despite its status as a private university. The only public HBCU president profiled in the piece, Aaron Walton of Cheyney State University, was praised for reducing the university’s expenses by $2 million—so that the State of Pennsylvania would agree to erase $35 million in debt.46 And when The Plug correspondent Mirtha Donastorg shared that HBCUs received $100 million in the first week of March 2023, it wasn’t a private donor, but rather a $100 million federally sponsored initiative, supporting 43 institutions to improve broadband internet access on their campuses and in their communities.47 Apparently, the most important contribution HBCU alumni and supporters can offer is not always a monetary donation. Sometimes political pressure through the form of organization, rallies, engaging legislators via traditional and social media, and electoral engagement can create change that allows institutions to chart their own course and fulfill their own missions while directing fundraising efforts toward new program development and student support. In other words, for every post on Twitter critical of HBCUs, we may do well by them to donate $14 instead, write 140 words to a congressperson, or remind our employers that for every 140 Black professionals they know or employ, remember that over 100 of them probably went to an HBCU.

46  See: Porter, I. (2023). “How these HBCU presidents fixed their colleges’ financial futures.” Christian Science Monitor. https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/amphtml/ USA/Education/2023/0222/How-these-HBCU-presidents-fixed-their-collegesfinancial-futures 47  See: Donastorg, M. (2023). “Why HBCUs Received Nearly $100 Million This Week.” The Plug. https://tpinsights.com/why-hbcus-received-nearly-100-million-this-week/

CHAPTER 8

How Much Does a Dollar Cost?: Annual Giving, Alumni Relations, Advancement Services in Lean Management Scenarios

$837. $837 was all that stood between our team captain and a released hold that would allow him to register and complete his senior year. Bad debt from a medical procedure two years earlier that the university mistakenly attributed to him instead of absorbing the cost. The process to get this debt cleared would take weeks of phone calls and paperwork and notarized statements, and by then, it would be too late. No senior year. No class salutatorian. No all-­ conference performance and division championship in football. (No future Ph.D. graduate from Purdue, btw). There was no “Athletic Director’s Fund” available for discretionary spending. No annual fund for intercollegiate athletics. The campus did not have fundraising staff—literally. Not a single full-time fundraiser on the campus. The NCAA’s student-athlete special assistance fund dollars were spent as soon as they were received. I could probably have afforded to pay the bill myself without great pain, I can’t bail out all 300 student-athletes each time an unforeseen expense emerged, and on a campus where over 90% of the students were Pell-eligible, this wouldn’t be the last time (also, NCAA violation, big time). I lamented the decisions that were made at the university as it stared at insolvency years before I arrived. And I feared the day when we’d realize that the athletic trainers, fundraisers, and compliance officers that had been terminated to balance the budget would cost us far more now than they saved us previously. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. J. Broussard, Fundraising at Public Regional Universities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45481-3_8

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In my interview for the position, about six months previous, I sat with the chancellor who hired me and made a strange prediction. “Everyone knows what throwing good money after bad means. But nobody ever thinks they’re bad enough to be thrown good money at. Everything you’re telling me suggests to me that you are very nearly too broke to take donations.” He laughed at my brazenness and assured me things weren’t that bad. I remembered that assurance as I considered how to approach a donor for a gift to pay off a three-year old medical bill. Alumni, higher education critics, and even many higher education professionals and colleagues overlook the work done by annual giving, alumni relations, and advancement services personnel. Their daily work engaging and showing appreciation for donors of all kinds goes unrecognized, or worse, is work that many assume all fundraisers do without assistance. Over the past three and a half decades since a Cornell senior gift officer codified the process of MOVES Management, fundraising professionals have expanded their ability to guide donors and prospects along several continuum—thinking of them as capable of giving gifts, being properly thanked, and shown appreciation, and repeating the process over a donor’s lifetime (and even in death). Effective advancement services professionals behind the scene work—acknowledging donations and properly receipting and accounting for donations, providing accurate and compelling reporting, being shown appreciation in unique and effective ways—is all at once absolutely critical and yet, to so many institutions, so invisible as to be overlooked completely. Moreover, a lack of knowledge about university advancement as a profession (and/or a lack of resources to provide for fully supported departments) results in those back-end responsibilities either remaining neglected (damaging donor morale and reducing their interest) or, they are delegated to fundraising staff, reducing the amount of time they spend on the road and engaging with donors and prospects face to face. With a commitment to lean management as a central pillar of public regional universities, addressing limited resources for staff who do not produce major gifts for institutions presents financial and political problems for higher education executives, even as the explanation for why major gifts fail to materialize hides in extremely plain sight. The size of university advancement staffs and prevalence of one- to two-person departments when many more are needed for effective fundraising practices is another common feature at public regional universities.

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According to McClure (2018),1 lean management is a practice college presidents have adopted, largely, to maintain the value proposition to students—that state colleges and universities have the lowest tuition and will result in the lowest debt upon degree completion (122). On the surface, the practice is part and parcel of the regional university approach—administrators are expected to wear multiple hats and fill in multiple roles when there are vacancies/retirements/leaves and faculty carry significantly heavier teaching/advising/committee workloads than their private liberal arts and public research university peers. It stands to reason that public flagship research universities, with their large enrollments, would have significantly larger alumni bases, and with their national reach, have alumni spread across the country. Additionally, private liberal arts colleges, though they have smaller alumni bases, have significantly higher alumni giving participation, justifying their large advancement staff sizes, relative to regional universities. The result is public regional universities, with their lean management ethos in one hand and the scalpel of chief financial officers and legislative demands for higher return on investment in the other, cut first at the periphery of their expenses (advancement/athletics/student life) rather than the core (academic affairs) as tuition remains the main revenue driver. Lean management, unfortunately, is incompatible with the achievement of fundraising goals. Consider the MOVES Management life cycle of a donor and what advancement resources are necessary to ensure its completion: 1. Identification: In this initial stage, donor prospect bases are built, usually through inputting data into a customer relationship management software program, with appropriate information (e.g., alumni year, address/contact info, engagement history, past notes on actions engaging the prospect, job information) coded into individual profiles for further collation. This is an ongoing process which can involve obtaining data from sign-in sheets at events, data-sharing with other on-­campus units (like Athletics or the Theater, for ticket sales) or data dumps, such as year-end additions of recent graduates to be coded as alumni. A staff, or minimally, a prospect 1  McClure, K. R. (2018). “Institutions of opportunity: Using presidents’ narratives to retell the story of public regional universities.” Journal for the Study of Postsecondary and Tertiary Education, 3, 117–134.

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researcher working with advanced student workers can manage this process; 2. Research: During this stage of the process, donor prospects data are identified and input based upon established parameters (wealth estimation, engagement, affinity) and assigned for engagement to the appropriate development officer/annual giving officer. For example, if you are planning a 50th reunion event for a specific college or school, one might run a report from the database on all the alumni who fit that category and also review archival sources, such as yearbooks, to ensure that the database information is as accurate as possible. A prospect researcher working with a prospect manager and staff/students can coordinate this process, and gift officers may get involved as well, scheduling meetings with appropriate staff or board members to determine options that might interest prospective donors; 3. Cultivation: In this stage, the donor is engaged one-on-one by a mix of major gift officers, university administrators, board members or others assigned to do so often with visits to their home, taking them out for meals, inviting them to campus-sponsored events, and generally attempting to curry favor and build relationships with them through gift-giving, curated participation opportunities, and goodwill generation. This work will be carried out by major gift officers who may also enlist Deans, faculty, executive administrators, and even presidents/chancellors/board members as necessary, with each additional layer of added support adding time to schedule and conduct meetings; 4. Solicitation: At this point, staff identifies a project that the donor is interested in and asks for a specific donation to support it. From this point, the request is either negotiated further until both parties are satisfied, the donor says “no,” or the donor says “yes” and the appropriate contracts/pledge forms/charitable gift agreements are executed. For major gifts involving facility construction, for example, this process may take months or years, even, as you schedule periodic updates on progress to completion. Major gift officers will also carry this process out, all the while depending upon facilities, admissions, college, department, or other advancement staff to advance proposals to completion by gaining the appropriate permissions and promises;

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5. Stewardship: Finally, once the gift is received and properly invested, staff will demonstrate to the donor a completed process—a scholarship awarded, a building named, a professorship initiated, etc. This can be done on a large scale with annual reports and small celebrations or t­ ailored to the donor with gifts of recognition, press releases, handwritten thank you notes,  and campaign stories featuring the donors, and the like. Everyone from executive administrators, presidents/chancellors/board members can be involved in this process, which can be coordinated by an advancement services/stewardship professional and staff or students. Upon successful stewardship of the gift, with any luck, the process can be repeated over the course of the donor’s lifetime until they make their greatest gift later in life or perhaps leave the university in an estate plan, or ideally, both. This process occurs for every. Single. Donor. Now consider how limited or non-existent resources in any of these areas will lead to a failure to identify major gift prospects and close sizeable donations from them: 1. Identification: A lack of staffing in the identification stage is a twofold problem. Firstly, not enough prospective donors are identified, meaning that passive solicitations like annual giving campaign mailouts will be sent to fewer individuals and businesses and incorrect or non-­updated address info results in solicitations never being delivered. Smaller pools of prospects yield fewer donors, and the university fails to contact individuals who may otherwise be interested in supporting their efforts; 2. Research: Like the identification stage, the research necessary to qualify and then refer prospects to major gift officers can suffer if universities don’t provide proper resources or staffing to this area. On the one hand, a lack of qualified potential donors means a limited number of potential engagements and asks. On the other, it means that incomplete profiles on donors that do not include most current job promotions or major financial transactions, or other intelligence gathered through purposeful engagement means that gift officers will not put meaningful, carefully tailored proposals in front of donors they meet with. In such departments, major gift officers become heavily reliant upon word-of-mouth assurances (e.g., “you need to go see so and so, he’s got a lot of money!” when we

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have no verification of total assets, affinities, or past engagements to provide any clear sense of what should be solicited, and for what project(s)); 3. Solicitation: With no prospects qualified, identified, or assigned to major gift officers, the problems in the solicitation stage seem obvious. If nobody on the staff is asking for money, how on earth can the institution raise money? Even worse, how often are people in the organization raising money for projects that cannot be completed, asking for $100 donations for $1 million projects, or otherwise making promises that cannot be kept? The problems are much more considerable. Nature loves a void, so when the university doesn’t ask for donations or does so only in a limited official capacity, alumni will fill the void. When alumni and fundraising organizations (often known as “booster clubs”) raise money for universities with no oversight or collaboration, there is little recourse to ensure the university’s mission is being carried out, and further, no assurances that they are being carried out in ways that comport with federal and state law and compliance with organizations in which the school is a member. In recent years, schisms between universities and their foundations, alumni associations, and booster clubs (Lincoln University-­ Missouri,2 Grambling State 3 4 University, Mansfield University, and Florida A&M University5 come to mind) have led to fundraising that does not advance the institution and causes distrust and animosity among alumni and university officials. When untrained individuals and organizations engage in fundraising, they can unwittingly break laws and violate rules that hurt the institution even when they are well-meaning and well-intentioned. 2  See: Staff. (2019). “Lincoln University Foundation sues Board of Curators.” The News Tribune. https://www.newstribune.com/news/2019/may/07/lincoln-university-foundationsues-board-curators/ 3  See: Huguenin, M. (2013). “Doug Williams says fundraising groups were reason for his firing.”NFL.com. https://www.nfl.com/news/doug-williams-says-fundraising-groups-werereason-for-his-firin-0ap2000000269854 4  See: Chap. 5 “Advancement and Fundraising to Engage Public Regional Liberal Arts College Alumni and Donors.” 5  See: Culver, J. (2017). “Missing records stall Rattler Boosters audit.” The Tallahassee Democrat. https://www.tallahassee.com/story/sports/college/famu/2017/06/08/ missing-records-stall-rattler-boosters-audit/378441001/

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4. Stewardship: At low-resource institutions, stewardship programs are either non-existent or paltry, at best. Far from surprising and delighting donors as thanks for their continued investment and providing detailed and thorough reporting on how investments in the institution have advanced its mission, communication is irregular and infrequent and attempts at showing appreciation are insignificant and/or exclusionary. The annual report that staff placed online to save printing and mailing costs? Your older donors and supporters never see it, and your lack of social media strategy restricts even savvy online consumers from ever reading it. The big BBQ tailgate thrown to thank season ticket holders? Lotta good that does for your football donors who are out of state/region. The $49.99 polo you send to every $1000 donor? They can google how much the polo costs (unless you’ve deducted the value from their tax-deductibility in which case, you’ve made it perfectly clear) and remain none-too-pleased that they paid $1000 for a polo they can get at the campus bookstore. The advancement services, alumni giving, and alumni relations departments at low-resource institutions are often not departments at all. Often relegated to one-person shops, these individuals are somehow responsible for setting strategy, developing tactics, and often engaging in their day-to-­ day work without budgetary support while being pulled in different directions to backstop overflowing responsibilities of fellow staff. One-person shops neither have enough time, resources, or bandwidth to properly support their advancement units and their presence indicates either an attempt to simulate the organizational outlay of better-resourced university advancement units, or perhaps the remnants of past administrations’ attempts to build out advancement units unsuccessfully. University officials should use material analysis of available resources and tie the resources of advancement units directly to their strategic goals, which may involve difficult decisions about investment in advancement while divesting from other campus units. Otherwise, leaders should reduce fundraising goals significantly and discontinue the public pronouncement of said goals while the resources to effect those results do not exist. (pause for laughter and derision) The alternative is stagecraft—advancement units attempting to behave as such without accomplishing any strategic or tactical goals, leading to employee burnout and turnover and blame being placed on individuals

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and teams who never stood a chance at succeeding. Further, the obsession with capital campaigns, particularly among new presidents and chancellors who have no idea if their advancement units have the capacity to undertake them, should be considered carefully as staffing up frontline fundraisers and storytellers/creators and investing in consultants are minimum considerations for launching a campaign.6 This chapter section is written by Chat GPT The proliferation of artificial intelligence is one of the most talked about topics in the first half of 2023. From its growing application across sales and marketing, to educators’ fear that it will dominate student writing and explode plagiarism investigations, it is no longer a topic that serious educators and critics dismiss or ignore. Seeking the same “solutions” that have led the private sector to replace customer service agents with chatbots and warehouses and supermarkets to replace custodians with industrial-sized Roombas, higher education advancement has explored the use of artificial intelligence to perform social listening, prospect research, and stewardship functions. What if we could automate donor communication so that we didn’t lose touch or momentum due to forgetfulness or inability to keep an increasing number of donors and prospects straight in our heads? What if technology could identify potential donors through their social media interactions? From the largest educational tech software companies, such as Ruffalo Noel Levitz and Blackbaud to startups like EverTrue and Gravyty, all are pondering the question—can the onboarding of artificial intelligence replace outsourcing as a means to reduce expenses and increase fundraising yield? Virtually nobody understands what it means when the “Development Officer” or “Advancement Office” calls them up for a meeting. According to an infographic produced by Classy, an online giving platform that has assisted organizations in raising $5 billion, a typical day for a development officer involves careful planning to coordinate team meetings, donor stewardship, attending planning and Board meetings, giving tours, communicating face to face, over the phone, and via email with donors and prospects, 6  A recent survey of higher education leaders noted that 66% of survey respondents are either currently working with consultants or plan to work with one or consultants soon for capital campaign planning and execution (See: See: “Sharpe Group Survey  – Leaders in Higher Education Executive Summary.” October 10, 2022).

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and often ending the day attending social or fundraising events.7 On Grand Canyon University’s career Q&A blog, they further explain that: A development officer, also known as a “development director,” is the professional in charge of an organization’s fundraising efforts, also referred to as “development activities.” Development officers typically work for nonprofit organizations, including nonprofit colleges and universities. They are responsible for ensuring their organization receives sufficient funding to carry out its mission. […] In some cases, a development officer may meet face-to-face with potential donors. This is especially true of donors who plan to make sizable contributions to the organization. Some development officers place emphasis on soliciting planned giving, which refers to bequests in a donor’s last will and testament.8

With all of these competing and equally important responsibilities constantly at play, universities with considerable resources employ support staff to whom all these responsibilities can be shared with or delegated to. For smaller advancement shops, the choice is simple: reduce the number of prospects in the portfolio, or bleed potential prospects like a sieve as you race to respond to those with raised hands. While the primary role of the development officer is indeed attaining support through private donations, it is crucial that engaging donors “where they are” be seen as central to the development process. This is particularly important for public regional university officials to understand conceptually, as most of their alumni will never be able to or willing to make what institutions consider a major gift (e.g., $25,000; $50,000; $100,000+). However, their stories may inspire those who can give; their volunteerism and engagement can do so as well (particularly if they are engaged and savvy social media users); their connections to alumni networks that we need to engage can prove vital; and most importantly, they can help us recruit family members, friends, neighbors, and their children during their college choice process. However, as Kim Larson, Associate Vice President of Alumni Engagement at Utah State notes, to gain these kinds of alumni support, universities need to prove that they are still

7  See: “A day in the life of a development officer.” https://www.classy.org/blog/ infographic-a-day-in-the-life-of-a-development-officer/ 8  See: “What is a development officer and how can I become one?” https://www.gcu. edu/blog/business-management/what-development-officer-and-how-can-i-become-one

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relevant and important resources to them after they graduate.9 For these reasons and more, universities must connect with and provide valuable information and resources to alumni even as they court those alumni to become financial supporters. As you can imagine, the expense of maintaining good alumni database information, engaging with, and sponsoring program for alumni to connect and participate, and providing an effective mix of traditional and social media programming to keep alumni informed is resource intensive. Because public regional universities cannot afford to carry large staff sizes in alumni relations or fund travel and operations like large, public or well-funded private universities, this area suffers, leading to low alumni giving rates and shallowly cultivated major gift donor pools. Enter artificial intelligence. When lean management meets arduous tasks that individuals cannot complete, artificial intelligence is often proposed as a panacea. The educational technology industry has proposed a number of artificial intelligence, social listening, and social media tools to streamline processes and multiply the impacts of underfunded and small staffs wishing to engage with alumni. These products assist with mass communications; help us to determine readership and open rates on letters from the President and newsletters form the Dean; pair alumni mentors with interested students; and allow for efficient, yet meaningful donor appreciation activities. These are indeed enticing solutions for the short-staffed, the overworked, the multi-­ hat wearing alumni and donor engagement staffs at public regional universities. Newer companies, such as ThankView/EverTrue, have attempted to leverage communications and donor research abilities by streamlining donor communications and implementation of proprietary software that can leverage social listening to identify major gift prospects. However, the fact remains; as the number of successfully engaged alumni are identified through these platforms as those showing the kind of interest that may lead to giving, somebody must see them, acknowledge them, and invite them in. While it is too early to tell if these solutions will make a significant impact on public regional university fundraisers, the early signs are not promising. A quick scan of the “clients” section of most artificial intelligence solutions for fundraising reveals lists of large, public research 9  See: “4 important alumni relations trends every university needs to consider.” https:// cuseum.com/blog/2021/5/27/4-important-alumni-relations-trends-every-universityneeds-to-consider

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institutions and well-resourced private colleges. After all, if technology can help universities find more likely prospects to give money, but doesn’t increase the size of the staff responsible for doing so, what has really been gained? If technology can help fundraisers learn about incredibly successful alumni who have never given to the university, isn’t it at least a remote possibility that they have philanthropic causes that interest them, and the university isn’t one of them? A fault of many public regional university leaders is their obsession with what other universities do, especially when those universities are not peer institutions with comparable resources and staffing. This obsession is costlier when we factor in how expensive these solutions are in terms of their sticker price (a $60,000 subscription is nothing to the 12th Man Foundation at Texas A&M, but would fund 30–40 scholarships at, let’s say, Stephen F. Austin State University). Also, onboarding new software takes time and energy away from already beset upon support staff, who suffer through their skepticism not being taken seriously on the front end and a sense of failure on the back end when the returns in Kearney don’t match the returns in Lincoln. If artificial intelligence is the wave of the future, the least that can be done is more substantial investigation of what that future is, and that can be accomplished by spending more time learning from those doing the day to day, behind the scenes work, and less time with slick sales presentations in the vendor area at CASE regional conferences. Whatever the case, artificial intelligence is here to stay, and nobody with any sense can deny that. Soon enough, the headshots and bios of the advancement support staff will just be a series of Dell computers in a dank basement, and no one will be the wiser since computers don’t have hands and ears (we REALLY don’t do hands and ears well, lolz). Get with the program and save 25% if you sign on before June 30. Some restrictions apply; void where prohibited, there are no prohibitions. Who are you going to trust: me, or this Luddite author?

Moving from “Either/Or” to “Both/And” Hardly any university administrator would argue that to develop robust fundraising success, an institution must cultivate meaningful relationships with alumni, cultivate and steward annual donations effectively, and grow their capacity to acquire major cash, real estate, and estate donations from

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the wealthiest and most committed donors. Unfortunately, decisions that must be made to reduce budgets often force the question: if an area is to be reduced to save money, where do we cut first? Alumni relations, annual giving, or major gifts? Moreover, executive administrators often pit university advancement against other revenue generators at the institution, such as admissions and recruiting, choosing to emphasize on over the other depending on which is having more revenue-generating success. With scarce resources to go around, should the institution place more emphasis on recruiting new, tuition-paying students, or, soliciting those who have already earned their degrees? The Forbes “Grateful Graduates10” report (2018) ranks the top 200 institutions in the United States based on alumni giving percentage and the median gift amount over a three-year period. The results are sobering and staggering for public university leaders: . No public institutions appear in the top 200; 1 2. Every school in the top 35 boasts an alumni giving rate of 20% or above, with 14 out of the top 25 at 30% or above; 3. The average median giving among the top ten institutions is just under $7000/year; among 190–200, it is still an impressive $1400/ year, and; 4. If an alumnus of California Institute of Technology (#24 on the list) made a donation of $50,000 in 2018, it would have constituted a below average donation at the institution—and one out of every five of their alumni gave that year. Their narrow and inconsiderate definitions of happiness and success aside, Forbes notes that at a healthy number of highly-ranked private institutions, a typical donor makes an annual private donation that exceeds annual tuition at public regional universities. Further widening the gap is the size of university endowments, which provide resources annually based off the market performance of permanently invested funds at institutions. The 30 largest universities in the United States have endowments so large that their annual yield produces revenues roughly the same size as what a 10  See: Hansen, S. (2018). “Grateful grads 2018 - 200 colleges with the happiest, most successful alumni.” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2018/08/21/gratefulgrads-2018-200-colleges-with-the-happiest-most-successful-alumni/?sh=628a18f41a0a

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median public regional university’s full endowment constitutes.11 Put ­simply, to acquire significant infusions of revenue necessary to continue operating without massive deficits, public regional universities have to either garner increased subsidies (which have trended downward for four decades), raise tuition (a favorite canard of state legislatures is to trumpet tuition freezes while starving institutions of necessary investments while governing boards and bargaining units mandate pay and benefit hikes), or increase enrollment. Using the narrowest assessment of return on investment, increasing capacity to recruit students who will each pay tuition beats increasing capacity to recruit alumni to give, especially when only 1/20 do so on average, and even then, in increments of $10, $25, and $60. In the wake of a number of small private colleges and universities closing in the past five years, and dozens more being placed on accreditation probation or warning due to unstable finances, institutions of higher education are asking for philanthropic gifts far more frequently.  Many institutions  are including  solicitations on  every website landing page, paper publication, and update email they distribute. Institutions are also more aggressively pursuing enrollment growth for myriad reasons, not the least of which is their desperate need to generate revenue outside of support for capital campaigns, scholarships, facility enhancement, and endowments. Increased enrollment can have an immediate impact on revenue for institutions, however it is never guaranteed, as retention and resource delivery challenges to increased student rolls come with unexpected cost increases. Savvy institutions may rely on endowments, gifts, grants, capital campaigns, and fundraising to bolster their bottom lines, but increased fundraising success often comes with significant up-front costs. As companies compete to put their products in young consumers’ hands and to hire well-trained and educated future professionals, enrollment growth can be pitched as a sign that institutions merit investment in the form of research investments and various private-public partnerships. While there is no magic bullet to solve these financial issues, college presidents are faced with a serious 11  Based on NACUBO reporting, median value of public regional university endowments reported is $96.25 million, (https://www.nacubo.org/Research/2021/Public-NTSETables). According to Newsweek reporting, as of 2021, the 30 largest university endowments in the United States exceeded an average of $2.3 billion. Using a 4% annual yield (yields commonly range between 3% and 5%), a $2.3 billion endowment would produce $92 million in revenue annually.

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dilemma, nonetheless. Do they focus on increasing enrollment or focus on fundraising to raise revenues? The answer is both. Not only should one area of emphasis not be ignored in favor of the other, but institutions must recognize that robust recruitment and fundraising efforts are synergistic. Universities can promote fundraising, alumni engagement, and admissions with strategy and collaboration. At Minnesota State University, Mankato, Director of Alumni Relations Brian Zins and Director of Admissions Brian Jones recognized this synergy and have capitalized on it in a way that will drive alumni engagement, positively impact college choice, and provide opportunities for cultivation and stewardship of current and future donors. In 2021, Zins developed an idea that would involve meeting alumni who brought their children to campus for visits. Incorporating a user-generated checkbox on the campus tour request form, alumni self-identified and this information triggered a visit from an alumni relations representative. In the first year, this resulted in over 100 visits with alumni who were greeted not only by admissions officials, but someone bringing them an alumni gift (generally a mug/pen/lapel pin) who could also answer their questions with more perspective than the typically younger recruiters. If the visiting alumni are donors, the visit may be supported by a major gift officer who gets an opportunity for a donor visit without the typical travel expenses and back and forth negotiations to establish a time and place to meet. The extra attention and high-touch/ high-feel nature of the collaboratively coordinated visit elicited praise and positive feedback from alumni, and no doubt a significant influence on eventual college choice, as most of the students with whom visits were coordinated later applied for admission. The visit also provides an opportunity for alumni relations officials to promote legacy scholarship applications. Further, the high-wealth rated alumni whose children followed through with enrollment are now built in leads for major gift officers who know that they will have opportunities for interaction built in during their students’ time at the institution. Individuals are always advised to explore and develop multiple streams of income and diversify their personal investments to realize financial security. Institutions should behave similarly and recognize that enrollment and fundraising growth are not only individually necessary, but growth in one area can and should enhance the other.

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The Day (Week, Month, Year) of Giving: Defining Higher Education’s Most Ill-Defined Fundraiser While the focus of most university fundraising energy lasers in on corporations, family foundations, and individuals who can make major gifts to the institution, a trend over the past decade of celebrating and focusing on small dollar donations and pool-building fundraising opportunities counters the oft-repeated 90–10 rule of university advancement work. Crowdfunding platform Givebutter defines a day of giving as “a 24-hour fundraising campaign […] (used) for two main reasons: First, to collect as many donations as possible within the limited timeframe. And second, to grab the metaphorical megaphone for the day and create widespread awareness of their cause. Giving days are a favorite of nonprofits, businesses, community foundations, universities, hospitals, and athletics programs.12” However, as one can easily observe by simply browsing the internet to find information on their alma mater’s or a nearby university’s day of giving, the events are not always one day long and do not always focus explicitly on giving. People who value the meanings of words may struggle to understand how and why a day of giving can involve a month’s long campaign and not focus explicitly on giving, as the event has become one of the most ubiquitous, cliched, and overexposed donor engagement opportunities in recent higher education memory. With competition from days of giving that are more well-defined and built into many individuals’ traditions (such as “Giving Tuesday,” the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, which follows Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday) and with the full freedom and flexibility for universities to define its parameters, the event has come to mean virtually everything everywhere all at once, including the manifold ways the event is imagined across the higher education multiverse from the mundane to near-absurd. While most would agree that any giving is better than none (every little bit counts, right?) and that any increased focus on fundraising needs supports the greater good, the limited resources of leanly staffed advancement units and universities can be stretched in ways that simply do not merit the time or money invested from a net-net return on investment analysis. And if comparison is truly the thief of joy, attempting to benchmark the success of days of giving either across public regional 12  See: “Giving Day guide: Plan, host, participate in 2022.” Givebutter.com. https://givebutter.com/blog/giving-day

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university peers, or worse, by comparing to state flagship or nearby private institutions when no standardization exists becomes a fool’s errand. The volume and variety of days of giving reveal a lack of cost-benefit analysis across the industry and suggest that individuals who drive fundraising engagement without knowledge of the industry often require participation in projects that have low-yield and frustrate and burnout frontline and back office fundraising staff. Net-net analysis focuses on a subtraction of the expenses from the gross gains that are both obvious and those that are hidden beneath the surface. An example from the world of fundraising might compare the cost-benefit of raising $10,500 from spending $500 cultivating and soliciting one individual versus hosting an event that costs $20,000 to put on and raises $30,000 gross. In the end, both scenarios produce $10,000 net dollars, but the net-net of the second scenario reveals that the amount of labor cost of hosting an event and loss of fundraising opportunities from those who help put the events on show that the latter $10,000 is far more expensive to secure. These events waste the salaries and benefits of the individuals who work to host them on low return on investment priorities. Equally wasted are asks for support from individuals who might donate small silent auction items or hours of their volunteer time instead of more materially significant sums. Such an analysis is crucial to university advancement efforts, and every executive and director should know how to perform them and then have the courage of their convictions to share them with leadership. So that the reader doesn’t simply dismiss this as naïve and Pollyanna-like, this does not guarantee that the board member/university president/high-powered alumnus doesn’t get their way ultimately, leading to an expensive investment of time and energy into a project with disappointingly low yield. What it does guarantee is that the decision won’t be made out of ignorance, and it’s the only hope that we have to avert costly investments with disappointing returns. This isn’t to say that all days of giving are without merit. Days of giving can prove useful in many ways, according to Giving Tuesday, an organization that in its brief existence has branded the day of giving so well that many people do not realize that they are an actual organization and not just a popularized day on the annual calendar. While capital campaigns focus energy on a small population of mega-donors who must give to meet societal needs when government and corporations fail to do so for citizens and laborers, Giving Tuesday starts at the other end of the spectrum. Their definition of “radical generosity” depends upon a definition

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that renders philanthropy as the province of all people as opposed to the wealthiest and implores us to identify ways that we can engage in daily investment in ways that don’t generate headlines or require seven-figure net worths.13 Their approach is to demystify philanthropy and reclaim it from the clutches of history and pop culture that suggest one cannot engage in philanthropy unless their wealth and generosity rival Audubons, Rockefellers, and Vanderbilts. Such donor education is crucial to the ­fundraising work of public regional universities, many of whose roots are in a normal school tradition which remains core to most of their contemporary missions. While most teachers, nurses, and clergy will never earn the kinds of salaries that enable them to make five-, six- and seven-figure donations in their lifetime, they very well may consider making such a commitment in their estate plans if they have been engaged and appreciated for the donations they’ve made throughout their lives. Setting aside the belief that a day of giving which lasts two months and doesn’t set a goal for giving is conceptually adventurous on its face, a number of public regional universities have used the event to meaningfully advance their fundraising efforts and improve their university’s branding and highlight important traditions. In 2018, Elizabeth City State University’s first ever Day of Giving launched a month ahead of its culminating date to give the university enough time to introduce alumni to the concept, describe the many programs that the event would benefit, and most importantly to articulate wider university goals than fundraising. According to then Vice Chancellor of University Advancement John M. Lee, the goal of the event was to exceed $150,000 in donations from 3000 donors with over a dozen programs to choose from, including athletics, Greek life, scholarships and emergency student needs.14 While the fundraising goal and donor targets reflect an emphasis on small dollar donations encouraging all alumni, faculty, staff, and community members to participate, the targets of the fundraising event allowed the university to pursue other strategic initiatives. In the early 2010’s, the university precipitously declined in enrollment, leading the North Carolina legislature to propose a law allowing the state to close any university whose enrollment declined more than 20% between 2010 and 2013. In 2014, the North Carolina senate intervened to remove the budget provision, sparing  See: “About-GivingTuesday.” https://www.givingtuesday.org/about/  See: “ECSU announces its first-ever Day of Giving campaign.” https://newsroom.ecsu. edu/ecsu-announces-its-first-ever-day-of-giving-campaign/ 13 14

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the university from closure. In 2016, the legislature approved a pilot study called “NC Promise” which would allow three state universities—Elizabeth City State University, the University of North Carolina Pembroke, and Western Carolina University—to enroll students for $500/semester—as their tuition rate.15 With such a massive subsidy in place, Elizabeth City State could pivot its focus from student scholarships to other areas of vital need. More importantly, by demonstrating that they could increase donor participation among alumni, they could show that they were willing to do their part to keep the university’s doors open, and equally importantly, illustrate the engagement of alumni in the state who are taxpaying, voting, and politically engaged citizens. With the national median among HBCU alumni giving rates sitting just over 11% according to a 2017 U.S. News and World Report survey,16 3000 alumni donors would push the alumni giving rate well ahead of the national average and place put Elizabeth City State in the top ten nationally, alongside more prominent HBCUs such as Morehouse, Spelman, and Hampton. While the university did not reach its goal in 2017, it revised down its donor target to a more achievable but equally impressive 1500  in 2018 and secured $219,000 from 1844 supporters.17 In sum, a confluence of challenges that public regional university advancement units face regarding annual giving and alumni relations derives from a lean management philosophy that leads to understaffed and under-resourced advancement divisions. The nature of fundraising careers and the resulting high turnover often leads to untrained fundraisers being forced to execute campaigns that campus executives and alumni demand, and it is little surprise that most of these campaigns achieve underwhelming results, impressive results that university leaders and constituents cannot contextualize properly, or result in overwhelmed staff, leading to more turnover. This problem is compounded by a cottage industry of third-­ party vendors whose day of giving solutions cost more than many such universities could ever hope to organically raise. As is the case with all areas 15  See: “NC Promise – UNC System.” https://www.northcarolina.edu/future-students/ nc-promise/ 16  See: Friedman, J. (2017). “10 Historically Black Colleges where alumni donate the most.” U.S. News and World Report. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/ the-short-list-college/articles/2017-07-11/10-historically-black-colleges-where-alumnidonate-the-most 17  See: “ECSU’s Day of Giving establishes new records.” https://newsroom.ecsu.edu/ ecsus-day-of-giving-establishes-new-records

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of alumni relations and annual giving, close study of industry trends as often discussed in Currents and other industry-specific periodicals and reports produced by affiliate national organizations, along with discussion with peers to share tactics and strategies must be employed to develop good practices on each of our campuses. Available resources and staff skills and experience should always be considered when determining goals for engagement and fundraising, and nowhere is this more important than in areas such as alumni relations and annual giving, whose return-­ on-­ investment pales in comparison to their potential return on relationships,18 which can be as valuable to an institution as any currency. Ultimately, MOVES Management may not be compatible for most public regional university advancement staffs because of lean management, opening future opportunities for researching, investigating, and theorizing new approaches more specifically tailored to the resources they have available.

18  During her remarks in the Campus Sonar-sponsored webinar entitled “How Campus Leaders Can Increase Institutional Advocacy,” social media expert and student affairs professional Josie Ahlquist defines return on relationships, or ROR, as a counterpoint to ROI measurements that focuses on the value derived from deepening relationships with advocates and those who are deeply passionate about our institutions (8:45 mark on, here: https:// info.campussonar.com/typ-panel-march-2023).

CHAPTER 9

What’s Next? Collaboration and Shared Resources Across the University Advancement Landscape

Current and prospective students, university faculty, staff, and alumni, and higher education pundits waited with bated breath throughout 2020 and 2021 across the country on guidance from governors, mayors, and university presidents regarding whether students would resume traditional operations during the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. With depth or shallowness of breath remaining a central concern among the hundreds of thousands of individuals, families, and medical providers impacted by COVID-19, it’s fair to say that deep, relaxed breathing has become a precious commodity that most Americans took completely for granted as recently as three years ago. Meanwhile, most American colleges and universities claimed the middle ground, acknowledging a desire to return to traditional operations tempered by a necessary wait-and-see approach as to what limits may prevent such a return (e.g., federal, state, or local restrictions; new scientific evidence; public consensus). No matter the direction they announced, cancel culture, unintended allies and opponents, and ambitious journalists awaited, with traps set and eviscerations outlined for leaders they anticipated holding accountable. Years later, amid an inflation crisis, spiraling stock market, a federal election year (and many gubernatorial elections) and the first-ever passage of significant student loan debt relief in August 2022 (only to be overturned in the courts), higher education administrators find themselves fighting harder than ever to recruit students and defend themselves from slings and barbs even from populations who have historically been bedrock supporters. As the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. J. Broussard, Fundraising at Public Regional Universities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45481-3_9

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so-called enrollment cliff looms and governors/state legislators across the country deliver on campaign promises by targeting institutions of higher education cuts, eliminations, and new cost-saving restrictions, institutional advancement takes center stage as universities ramp up their efforts to meet basic student needs, provide scholarships to offset tuition and fee increases, and inject counter-narratives into a media climate tilting more toward highlighting the public’s misgivings regarding public education. As the path to survival through the COVID-19 pandemic helped us learn, advancement will need to share that stage (and the attendant responsibilities) with individuals across the public and private sector organizations and businesses through collaboration on shared goals and mutual interests. The devastating cuts to higher education experienced across the country for the better part of the past four decades have made clear to university leaders that advocacy and collaboration across the university landscape and into the public and private sector will pave the way forward for university advancement. This is particularly true at public regional universities, with limited resources for advancement work to be performed solely by its personnel. Shared responsibility for storytelling, advocating, and ultimately fundraising is key to leveraging the support that these institutions will need moving forward. In this section, I will highlight several public regional advancement-adjacent/supporting professionals and scholars across the United States, focusing on their concerns about the future of public higher education and advancement; what they believe universities will need to do to compete for resources as state legislatures roll them back; where they see the future of university advancement as an industry and what concerns or opportunities they believe will emerge; as well as what they believe the future of higher education fundraising will entail. I hope to illuminate a future trajectory for those in university advancement work at public regional universities—a future that maximizes relationships both inside and outside our institutions that are vital to our success. I ask each interview participant the following questions, and will also record any follow-up questions that I pose: 1. What is the biggest challenge facing public higher education right now and what do you think it will be ten to twenty years from now? 2. How will those challenges impact fundraising on public regional university campuses?

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3. What recommendations do you have for fundraising executives competing for resources (funding for operations and initiatives as well as new hires) on university campuses regarding demonstrating return on investment and impact of fundraising and advancement work? 4. What is the most important resource for successful fundraising in 2023? 5. What is one strategy or tactic that will become indispensable to university fundraisers in the future that the industry needs to begin preparing for? To gather a truly diverse compilation of responses, I selected the interview participants based off a desire to ensure that the perspectives represented were as diverse as possible, and in doing so, pre-considered the participants race/ethnicity, gender, age and length of tenure in or adjacency to university advancement, rank or higher education position (from directors, to vice chancellors/vice presidents, chancellors/presidents, graduate students and scholars), type of involvement in university fundraising (including foundation board/alumni board members and industry-­ adjacent professionals) geographical location, and institutional mission of their current employers/affiliations. Inside and out, from the ground level to 30,000 feet, I endeavor to capture a truly panoramic examination of public regional university fundraising from the vantage points of the individuals who do the daily work and whose ideas and productivity represent the best of the industry at a moment with inherent and encroaching challenges. Jack Thornton is a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Sociology focusing his research on economic sociology and the sociology of education. He is particularly interested in studying identity formation among university advancement professionals and analyzing their conceptualizations of the profession of development as an industry and as a career choice. In his doctoral research, he has interviewed dozens of advancement professionals, speaking with major gift officers, senior directors, and vice presidents/vice chancellors at private and public universities across the United States. One of the major challenges that advancement professionals have shared with Thornton,1 particularly concentrated in states in the South 1

 Conversation with Jack Thornton. April 7, 2023. Via Zoom.

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where conservative politics has seized upon criticism of higher education as a major site in this iteration of the culture wars, major gift officers are dealing with the twin assaults of right-wing media and elected politicians depicting their institutions as liberal bastions obsessed with “DEI.2” Major gift officers are on the front lines of working with alumni and donors whose perceptions of the institution’s efforts, informed by a level of access to university administrators because of their level of private support, should differ wildly from the characterizations they encounter in the media. And yet, as is the power of disinformation, daily exposure to what many university officials contend is mischaracterization of their DEI focus overwhelms their perhaps once quarterly or annual opportunity to summit with leaders and address their concerns. Major gift officers operate on the front lines of this cultural clash, often serving in the role of public relations officials that must take on the slings and arrows of an increasingly distrusting populace to earn the opportunity to later have proposals declined as if their engagement efforts were dead prior to arrival. Additionally, Thornton offers, major gift officers often feel concerned about dealing with donors who levy these criticisms because they must act as representatives in uncomfortable situations and held accountable without proper preparation for these scenarios. Thornton shared that with regard to their perceptions of the work and trends that they see emerging, fundraisers are unsure about the increasing obsession of upper administrators with metrics, such as tracking face-to-­ face (F2F) visits, proposals, and MOVES. They believe that this scientizing of the profession reveals an obsession with private sector modalities that universities perhaps should not replicate, and in many instances, cannot replicate. While advancement managers replicate the same metrics that may be used to guide sales or marketing professionals, many fundraisers feel that preconceived notions about what constitutes fundraising activity don’t always match what donor desires or needs are. Examples included requiring that a major gift officer visit a prospect or donor a specific number of times each quarter/year when they do not want to be visited that 2  University Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts, in these instances, becomes the site of conservative criticism as institutions focus their efforts on recruiting more students from ethnically diverse backgrounds. As universities prepare to recruit aggressively in non-white and international student populations as the enrollment cliff approaches because declining numbers of white (and specifically white males) enrolling in college due to demographic and workforce shifts, universities have been accused of neglecting the recruitment of white students in favor of non-white students.

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often; not counting teleconferencing or videoconferencing (e.g., Zoom, especially during COVID-19 lockdowns)3 toward F2F, or requiring baseline dollar proposals (ex: $10,000 or above; $25,000 or above, etc.) which discourages engagement with prospects who may eventually be major gift donors, but who are not there yet. Despite those misgivings, Thornton finds that fundraisers are generally positive and aspirant even about the most difficult donors (and supervisors) with which they are dealing. They know that higher education is in the crosshairs of consistent and ardent criticism, but they like their work, love the people, and have the right kind of comportment or personalities to sustain successful fundraising work. Many of them, Thornton finds, share a similar thread in their own identity formation that he believes predisposes them to university advancement: they acknowledge the importance of being beneficiaries of private support while they were in college, and simply want to be in position to pay that beneficence forward. While most individuals would never be able to pay a sizeable scholarship back to an institution (especially as even the most generous scholarships still leave the majority of college graduates with considerable student loans), a fundraising official would have the opportunity to participate in paying back such a perceived obligation many times over. Regarding the most important resource(s) they need to do their work, Thornton finds that they believe that retention of staff (both their fundraising colleagues and support staff) and incentives for their own retention dominates their attention. This often means more money/bonuses, but better management and more autonomy to meet their outlined goals, and less obsession with metrics that the industry is obsessed with at this historical moment are important, as well. In addition to the aforementioned concerns, they believe that the obsessions with artificial intelligence and metrics so present in the industry will give way to the next set of trends, and after committing to the training and education necessary to be successful in FY23 only to find that a whole new set of behaviors count toward 3  n.b. Admittedly, this finding gave me some pause, because as an executive administrator, I employ metrical analysis in my employee evaluations and in our annual goalsetting and midyear analyses. I do make exceptions and use what I believe is basic compassion when gift officers miss those marks. For example, when visits are down in February because the highs are below zero in Central Wisconsin and donors have retreated to their winter homes in Arizona/Texas/ Florida, I understand that visits will be down due to unsafe road conditions and that teleconference/videoconference options are acceptable. However, I have worked with the kinds of supervisors criticized here, so their qualms resonate.

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success in FY25, they can only be so patient in committing to continuing education and training with such a short runway for the payoff. Dr. Jerel Drew currently serves as Director of Athletics at Clark-Atlanta University and previously was the Director of Athletics at the University of the Virgin Islands, a public liberal arts-based HBCU and land-grant institution enrolling approximately 2500 students on two campuses. It is the only HBCU outside of the contiguous United States. According to Drew4, one of the biggest challenges facing higher education is how institutions continue to adapt to shifting needs of the contemporary student body, which is more diverse culturally, ethnically, and regarding age and traditional/non-traditional status than ever before. For example, when the campus converted to remote learning during the COVID pandemic to accommodate student needs and eventually recruited students back to traditional learning modes, we discovered many students (as well as faculty and staff) preferred the remote/hybrid model, which creates significant challenges for community building. While those flexible learning modes maximize enrollment opportunities, they do little to provide the kind of meaningful experiences that generate the kinds of ties that make for engaged alumni with high affinity for the institution. Neither of us is sure how attending the homecoming concert via Zoom will ever do the trick, but we’re sure that the folks at Verzuz are hard at work on it. Drew also noted that many students who didn’t have on-campus experiences and commencements will graduate and move on without the significant formative experiences to generate the nostalgia that drives fundraising interest in later years. This goes back further to include students who studied online or remotely in previous generations. Remote work and hybrid work from home forces adaptation in the way we deliver education, but its impact on how we raise money for facilities and programs among people who never participated remains unclear. Particularly in HBCU culture, in which one’s love for the alma mater cements itself through a litany of cultural experiences than cannot be replicated remotely (e.g., Homecoming, Football “classic” games, pledging a Divine Nine Greek organization) questions linger about future generations’ desire to remain engaged after a largely retail-based/transactional undergraduate experience.

4

 Conversation with Dr. Jerel Drew. April 1, 2023. Via telephone.

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Regarding the demonstration of return on investment, both to alumni and donors as well as university officials to whom requests for additional resources must be submitted, Drew suggests that at low-resource institutions, a signature event, facility, or symbol often emblematizes ROI. It can be a perennial championship sports team, a hosted event or tournament, or academic program which, if funding is cut or reduced, would dramatically reduce an institution’s ability to brand itself effectively and broadly. Furthermore, this emblem can draw interest from institutions that may not otherwise engage or collaborate and provide a revenue vitally important to the institution. At the University of the Virgin Islands, he attempted to accomplish this with a basketball tournament. The backdrop of the island location made participation attractive to institutions across the NAIA and NCAA and made it something that put the island in the spotlight, which many alumni and local businesses without direct ties to the institution would invest in to put Virgin Islands in a positive light for visitors and television onlookers. The HBCU Basketball Classic5 is a live streamed, HBCU basketball tournament and the first of its kind in the Caribbean that the University of the Virgin Islands hosted for the second time in 2022. Eight teams, including HBCUs from the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference and two fellow Sun Conference teams participated, and the event allowed the university to bring in new sponsors and sign multi-year contracts to provide a comprehensive opportunity to connect alumni, donors, and supporters of all teams with local businesses major sponsors. The events also provide an opportunity for local vendors to benefit from the regional economic impact brought to the island by the event. The premium packages provided on-site and online through streaming provides over 100,000 exposures, driving visitors and viewers to their websites and social media pages the likes of which would be extremely difficult for small businesses without formal marketing budgets to accomplish. Drew organized the tournament, and it remains among his proudest accomplishments during his tenure. While the outcome of his work is positive for the institution and the Islands, the work was not easy for Drew, who is neither a native islander nor an HBCU alumnus. For that reason, he suggests that one of the most important resources that a fundraising leader, such as an athletic director, 5  See: “UVI to host 2nd Annual HBCU Basketball Classic in November,” https://uvi. edu/news/2022/22-29-uvi-host-hbcu-bbal-classic-november.html

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can have are individuals who will provide vital cultural information and reconnaissance. “Within a few months of arriving (in St. Thomas,) we signed large contracts with an insurance company, beverage sponsor, and an apparel company not located on the island. Sometimes providing a local perspective or helping us understand local customs regarding onboarding sponsors that a university has never had a relationship with is invaluable, especially if you have successes that draw criticism or suspicion from long-time administrators who feel threatened by your fundraising activity,” Drew added. “The barriers a newcomer and outsider will struggle to navigate are present but often hidden, and those who are allies and supporters can funnel leads and conversations toward you that can be capitalized upon.” When I asked what skill, important to public regional fundraising in this moment, will remain indispensable, Drew replied that effective communication and presentation skills are never out of style. Understanding marketing and branding basics and the skill of soliciting appropriately based on the kinds of projects that need to be accomplished must be in sync. He believes HBCUs will need to make a quantum leap in discussions regarding private funding. The same individuals and organizations making hundred-dollar contributions toward million-dollar problems need and deserve to know what the true needs of the institutions are, so that they understand the need to increase capacity and identify new sources of funds that may be available. “Those conversations will need to be carried over to political representatives on the local and national level as well, but as far as private fundraising is concerned, we need more participation, more engagement, and since more resources and staffing isn’t likely to be available, opportunities to present the case for funding don’t come often and every opportunity needs to be articulately presented and ambitiously imagined.” Don Hasseltine: Hasseltine is Senior Vice President and Senior Search Consultant at the Aspen Leadership Group, an industry leader in executive searches for higher education and the non-profit sector located in Aspen, Colorado. A career university advancement executive, Hasseltine led advancement units at Brown University (where he successfully led a $3 billion capital campaign), as well as Carleton College, Dickinson College, and Colby-Sawyer College. In his current role, he recruits university advancement executives to roles across the United States, offering keen insights to university leadership and management/foundation boards as someone who understands the landscape and as someone who has had

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record-breaking success in those roles, he continues to mentor those executives after their placement. Hasseltine opens our discussion6 noting the direction he believes higher education will go in a couple of decades: that the “top name brand” institutions will continue to rest atop the industry, continuing to serve only populations from the highest socioeconomic echelons, and that the remainder of institutions will continue contracting even further due to various economic and political forces. He sees a parallel between this phenomenon and NCAA Division I athletics, with the biggest programs becoming bigger and bigger, creating a have/have not scenario for remaining competitors. For public universities, he sees a continuing consolidation and merger pressure between regional universities and neighboring community colleges, and that states will continue to question regionalization, forcing public regional universities to specialize. Further, he sees large public institutions moving in on educating student populations historically served by public regional institutions, as the value proposition continues to be questioned when large public and liberal arts institutions can offset their higher sticker price with more considerable scholarships. A “flight to quality” will ensue as public and private universities with large endowments and established reputations among state legislatures will increasingly educate low-income and first-generation students. Among his major concerns are that low-income and first-generation students will continue to be educated at institutions with the lowest resources and as their resources for student success dwindle, that the ensuing low retention and graduation rates will eventually be the reason states use to defund them. Perhaps I shouldn’t have had this conversation with Don before heading to work that morning. Regarding how this challenging landscape is impacting public regional higher education fundraising, Hasseltine wonders about the future of advancement labor at this institutional type. He references the 80/20 model, where 80% of the time and effort from advancement units focus on 20% of the donors to yield return on investment. After the 2008 economic crash, resources dwindled so significantly that increasing financial resources to focus on major gift prospects became a non-starter, forcing a similarly sized advancement unit to perform more and more miraculous fundraising feats, leading to further contraction of that 80/20 model (toward 90/10, 95/5, etc.). The choices are extremely difficult and there are 6

 Conversation with Don Hasseltine. May 9, 2023. Via telephone.

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solutions, but the creativity needed to solve those problems is not always persuasive to university leaders. Further, given most alumni that many public regional universities have produced historically, such as teachers and nurses, ignoring annual giving donors whose gifts range from $5 to $999 annually has led to a precipitous fall in alumni giving rates and unrestricted revenue. Worse still, those donors can potentially become significant major gift prospects later in life if they are fortunate enough to retire with intact pensions, and per research from FreeWill, individuals with great passion for a cause are the most likely to leave organizations in their estate plans. Annual donations are an indicator of commitment, regardless of the amount, and conversely, ignoring those donors means that their passions will likely guide them elsewhere.7 Though Hasseltine is retired from leading university advancement units, he is not retired from being an educator and promoter of university advancement as a recruiter for an agency that places executive-level administrators in advancement positions (Hasseltine was one of the first individuals I spoke to as I was recruited to my current role as a vice chancellor of university advancement). He offers counsel throughout the process and regularly checks in after his recruits assume their roles. He also connects individuals who have successfully completed their search processes with those now into their second and third years as executives, and continues to hold forums for many of them to connect, exchange ideas, and discuss important trends in the industry. Given his concerns regarding the challenges they will face, he knows that they will be better off individually if they don’t have to face them alone. Dr. Dakota Doman is the Chief of Staff at Texas Southern University, a public regional university and HBCU in Houston, Texas serving 7524 students. Before we could get to our conversation about the fundraising role he plays at Texas Southern, we chatted for about 20 minutes about HBCU leadership challenges, a topic about which I have published for nearly a decade. In a series of annual reports for HBCU Digest and in op-eds for several magazines, I identified the primary drivers of above-average executive turnover at HBCUs. HBCUs need consistency and length of tenure in executive (and middle-management) positions desperately to cultivate the business/industry and political relationships necessary to advance 7  See: Schmitt, P. (2019). “The 2019 FreeWill planned giving report.” https://lp.freewill. com/hubfs/FreeWill%20Planned%20Giving%20Report%202019.pdf

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their institutional missions. Even as we spoke about the two to three dozen HBCUs who find themselves in some stage of leadership transition often over the past two decades, we learned about a surprising decision that a state governing board rendered that very morning, unseating an HBCU president in Mississippi. Doman’s work at Texas Southern isn’t merely his latest administrative appointment—he has worked at two HBCUs previously (including West Virginia State University, a public regional university in in Institute, WV) and steered millions of dollars in grants and investments to Texas HBCUs in his role as a Senior Director for Strategic Investments at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Within five weeks of this conversation, the president at Texas Southern “resigned” suddenly after only two years at the helm, clearing the way for the third permanent and second interim president to be hired/appointed there since 2016. At Texas Southern, Doman shared8 that they operate with a “skeleton crew of fundraisers” as their Vice President of Advancement supports a small team of fundraising adjacent individuals with zero development officers, and only clerical and gift processing staff. In his role as Chief of Staff, he and the Vice President of Advancement support several individuals on campus who are actively engaged in fundraising, providing both strategic guidance and taking leads as handoffs for more detailed follow through. This is supported by a University Partnerships department who reports to the Chief of Staff and focuses upon multiple prongs of partnership, which include (list is not comprehensive): (1) Scholarships for students in need; (2) research support with materials and internships (one of 11 HBCUs with R2 status); (3) “Experts in Action” mentorship program to develop career ideation among current students; (4) internships/externships for students; (5) advocacy (working with lobbyists of Fortune 500 and major companies in Greater Houston area and regional/statewide elected officials); and (6) re-skilling and up-skilling mid-career professionals in the region through College of Interdisciplinary Studies (bachelors programs for individuals who haven’t completed bachelor’s degrees). While discussing these categories of engagement, it became clear why Texas Southern has had such notable recent successes despite their leanly staffed fundraising operation: in February 2023, the Houston Astros Foundation announced a $1 million investment in the building of athletic facilities for 8

 Conversation with Dr. Dakota Doman. April 21, 2023. Via telephone.

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their NCAA Division I program9; in March 2023, they agreed upon a $1 million collaboration with PING X HIDEOKI10; also in March, 2023, the university added a $3 million grant from Housing and Urban Development to further their research on housing and community development.11 This two-month period of million-dollar investments is a busy year on most public regional university campuses. I asked Doman about the major challenges he believes face public regional universities, and unsurprisingly, in the same week that the Texas senate recommended a dissolution of tenure at public universities,12 he notes that higher education as a focus of the culture wars, will have major impacts on recruitment, retention, and diversity among faculty, staff, and students. Recruiting and retaining executive talent at HBCUs remains a significant challenge, with potentially excellent leaders deciding not to pursue HBCU leadership opportunities on the front end and great leaders being lost to higher paying institutions or the private sector threatening retention on the back end. With a new legislative movement to end protections afforded to faculty and the elimination of efforts to recruit diverse faculty and administrators to higher education being phased out because of Supreme Court rulings on affirmative action as early as the summer of 2023, the next generation of great HBCU leaders are seeking lower-risk, higher-reward sectors of industry for opportunities. One of the major impacts to fundraising is that the private sector has aggressively invested in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)  programs in higher education to meet their workforce needs, and legislative overhauls and restrictions 9  See: Benavidez, A. (2023). “The Astros Foundation is investing in Texas Southern University by providing $1 million in funding for the university to build both baseball and softball stadiums on its Houston campus.” Virtual Builders Exchange. https://www.virtualbx.com/industry-news/astros-foundation-gives-texas-southern-university-1-million-for-constructionof-baseball-and-softball-stadiums/ 10  See: “Texas Southern University enters $1 million collaboration with PING x HIDEOKI in support of Men’s and Women’s Golf program.” https://tsusports.com/news/2023/3/9/ mens-golf-texas-southern-university-enters-1-million-collaboration-with-ping-x-hideoki-insupport-of-mens-and-womens-golf-program.aspx 11  See: Staff. (2023). “Texas Southern University awarded $3  M for grant research.” Spectrum News. https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/south-texas-el-paso/education/2023/03/30/texas-southern-university-awarded%2D%2D3m-from-hudfor-grant-research 12  See: Staff. (2023). “Texas Senate approves bill that would end faculty tenure at public universities.” Spectrum News. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/texas-senateapproves-bill-that-would-end-faculty-tenure-at-public-universities/ar-AA1a7Ki7

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threaten to discontinue such investments and derail these sought-after partnerships. This becomes an especially dire consideration when one factors in that 2/3 of university presidents who participated in a recent survey did not even appear to realize that affirmative action rulings by the Supreme Court could impact their campuses.13 As far as challenges that impact fundraising success at public regional universities, Doman notes that tying curriculum to workforce and job market trends is especially difficult at low-resource institutions who struggle to pivot and are subject to bureaucratic oversight (and drag) created by university and state governing boards. Even in the best of scenarios, the processes required to get new degree programs approved and ensure compliance with state and federal standards and accrediting agencies proceed many times slower than those of community colleges aiming to over new associate degrees or certification programs. Doman believes multi-pronged approaches to developing fundraising prospects and engagement opportunities for alumni and business partners will continue to provide many ways for workforce to engage and enter communications with students, faculty, and staff. Dividing the labor required to successfully coordinate university fundraising among several units whose objectives align is a hallmark of low-resource HBCUs and while it may not provide a long-term solution to burnout and retention (especially amid the “Great Resignation”) Doman believes that for low-­ resource institutions, this is an effective way to engage many campus partners in conversations that can lead to fundraising success and wider advocacy of the institution’s mission. Kinna Clark, J.D. is the Senior Director of Development and Gift Planning Services for the University of North Carolina System, which serves 240,000 students on 16 university campuses, which include R1-designated institutions, public regional universities, and HBCUs. She has a unique perspective gained from attending a PWI in the system for her undergraduate studies (East Carolina University, a public regional university in Greenville, North Carolina enrolling 28,021 students) and earning her law degree and beginning her career in university advancement at North Carolina Central University (a public HBCU in Durham, North Carolina enrolling 7553 students). Several years ago, Clark established an endowed scholarship at East Carolina University which is quite rare for someone in her thirties. The 13  See: Jaschik, S. and Lederman, D. (2023). “2023 Survey of College and University Presidents.” A Survey by Inside Higher Ed and Hanover Research. (7).

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combination of her knowledge and expertise regarding planned giving and her dedication to paying it forward make Clark unique among young alumni; but they exemplify the motivation of many individuals who choose university advancement as a career. Using a combination of deferred giving and annual donations, she has established an endowment that will payout upon death while maintaining the payments for a scholarship in the interim. She has set an example for other young alumni in her network to challenge themselves to give generously to their alma maters. In an interview with East Carolina University, she noted that she is a “big proponent of starting early. It can be as simple as a percentage of an insurance policy. Especially for young alums, they may not have amassed wealth soon after graduating, so it’s a great way to begin. When you’re younger, insurance policies are cheaper for you. You don’t have to have a lot of cash on hand to do something, and you can continue to build on it.14” While her age, level, and type of giving back are a rare combination, Clark represents an extremely important demographic among alumni donor bases—the young alumni. As Boomers exit the stage at which they are likely to give their greatest gift to their respective institutions, Generation X donors will become the focus, and it is likely that far fewer donors from this generation will be in position to give major gifts and even engage in devoted annual leadership giving as their wages have stagnated and they have higher debts to repay over the course of their lives. This pressure will become even more acute with Millennials, who by comparison are less likely to own homes (a principal driver of higher net incomes) and have higher student loan debt which has a double negative impact on giving to higher education institutions. For one, they will have less disposable income, and also, an increased sense that the debt they carry in the form of student loans make them more antagonistic about giving back to universities. As a Millennial herself and as someone in higher education advancement, she sits at a crucial intersection and will likely play an influential role in encouraging donors to give back across the University of North Carolina System. Dr. Liz Gross15: Dr. Gross is the Founder and CEO of Campus Sonar, a Madison, WI-based company that “partner(s) with higher ed campuses and associations that value marketing and communications as a strategic 14   See: “We can give back no matter what our age.” https://m-ecu.giftlegacy. com/?pageID=3&storyNum=57 15  Conversation with Liz Gross. May 30, 2023. Via telephone.

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ally [and] empower(s) leaders with insights from online conversation and social listening data to develop and align their strategies with the goals of the institutions they serve.16” Her organization works with all institutional types, including public regional universities, and she is also a public regional university alumna. Gross believes one of the biggest challenges facing higher education is changing demographics; namely, that “more people of color and low-­ income individuals are pursuing higher education, and the industry has not always served them as part of their missions.” Many southern universities did not admit Black college students until the 1960s/70s; institutions like Mississippi University for Women, founded to educate women, now admit male students; and universities are serving populations they never imagined they’d need to, such as Oregon’s oldest university, Western Oregon University, which is now a Hispanic Serving Institution. This is a crucial shift for preparing significant numbers of participants in society as citizens and as part of the workforce. This emerging mission shift lies at the center about a controversial point of discussion that historically has not been controversial at all—Is public higher education a public good or a public debt? Those who contend that the burden of public higher education should be shouldered increasingly by individuals rather than government hinder the evolutionary process of public higher education becoming an accessible benefit by diverse socioeconomic populations. Increasingly, higher education being reduced to a monolith that can only serve certain individuals and constituencies limits their ability to nimbly serve needs that emerge in specific regions. One of the areas Gross would like to see potential public regional university leaders focus on is more professionalization and preparation that addresses the contemporary ways constituents expect to be communicated to in higher education. Leadership roles require specific knowledge of region and the industry, but leaders also need to “know more about funding sources, regional market and economic studies, and so much more than the traditional preparation that provosts and presidents typically receive.” This is an excellent counterpoint to the increasingly prevalent practice that transformation in higher education requires “outside thinking,” leaning toward corporate and military leaders and elected politicians who have no experience leading higher education institutions. The ability to understand mass communication, budget management, and leadership  See: https://www.campussonar.com/

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in the ways that professionals from other sectors do is possible if the preparation for future leaders comparably incorporates them into leadership training. Capable university leadership will also be a continuing concern as they face increasing meddlesomeness from boards and alumni, which many leaders are not prepared for and often decide, early into the bargain, that those kinds of positions do not interest them because of that meddling and interference. Gross also believes financial concerns will remain, as well, if the public and political representatives bicker over where the funding for keeping institutions open and thriving should come from. For that reason, she believes university advancement and executive leaders need to learn how to share their successes by tapping into the potential of alumni leaders outside the institution to boost signals. Millennials and Gen Zs have tremendous potential to help universities learn about and communicate to their core audiences, and engagement needs to focus on alumni who can leverage this ability. This can be done through social listening, people impact, and return on relationships being focal areas of campaigns on public regional university campuses. This focus on sharing the burden of engagement with volunteers can also drive alumni engagement, storytelling, and even fundraising.

Introduction In MOVES Management, successful completion of a cycle that begins with an introduction to a new prospect or the beginning of a new project with existing donors and ends with a stewardship process. Once we ensure that the donor’s intent for the gift has been fulfilled, the process begins anew. In an interestingly paradoxical turn, each relationship begins and continues with introduction. An introduction is a fitting conclusion to the end of this year-long, cross-country examination of fundraising activity at public regional universities in the United States, because in so many ways, I am ending where I began. I noted earlier that I share a deep sense of gratitude for public regional universities and their mission to educate each new generation of learners as broadly, diversely, affordably, and democratically as can be imagined, and they continue to do so in a political and cultural landscape rife with existential threats. These threats result in limited and eliminated academic freedom, funding reductions, and lead to an exodus of professionals committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. These threats result in meddling among campus operations by politicians and independent management boards with agendas that

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run counter to their efforts, and for some campuses, threaten their elimination. The result is a loss of precious opportunity to prepare future generations to dream about lives, civic involvement, and careers as they have done for over 150 years. In this context, I view the work of public regional university professionals raising private funding as crucial to the continued university missions they serve—as a stopgap solution to the increasing costs that eliminate college matriculation from more and more college-­ready students and oftentimes as a solitary source of programmatic funding for the faculty and support professionals who help students achieve their goals. I hope that I have successfully demonstrated to the reader that the investment they have made—to support their alma maters, to engage with their local regional university as a volunteer or donor, to learn about this fascinating industry—is worthwhile. Like every other professional sector, recruitment and retention of these professionals seem as challenging as ever. Even among the most successful and accomplished individuals, private and large public institutions of higher education, non-profit and non-governmental organizations, and private sector opportunities abound, offering higher salaries, reduced stress, increased staff support and resources to accomplish their work as fundraisers, marketers, and storytellers. Those who continue to do this extremely important work (and those who are socioeconomically privileged to be able to pass on more lucrative offers because of their deep commitment) count as heroes in my estimation, even as their daily work remains unheralded and in the margins of national conversations about non-profit and higher education industries. University advancement professionals have so many motivations—love of their alma mater, commitment to culturally and socioeconomically diverse student populations, and pride in their hometowns, regions, and states. For me, I will continue engaging in this work as I began, and hopefully throughout the remainder of my career and everything that will come after. For Jackie and Elizabeth Broussard. For Acadiana and Louisiana. For Grambling, Northwestern State University, Southern University, Elizabeth City State University, Minnesota State University, Mankato, the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, for the thousands of students and families whose loads I’ve had the extreme privilege of making just a bit lighter. For the United States and the world and for future university advancement professionals whose lists are much like mine and who will continue working whether our work is elevated and recognized, or not. Tomorrow the sun will rise, and some hardworking students will need us, and we’ll be there to make sure we hear their voices. It’s been a privilege to play a small part in making sure that someone hears ours.

Index1

A Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges (ARRC), 2–4 American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), 1, 3, 4, 7, 39, 82 Artificial intelligence (AI), 148, 150, 151, 165 Autoethnography, ixn3, 100 C California State University, East Bay, 34–37 California State University, Los Angeles, 43, 52–55 Capital campaign, 15, 23, 24n8, 30, 33, 35, 36, 41–61, 64, 69, 85, 88, 91, 119, 123, 148, 148n6, 153, 156, 168 Carnegie Research Classification 1 (or R1), 11, 14, 18, 21–39, 59, 67, 83, 84, 98

Carnegie Research Classification 2 (or R2), 11, 14, 22, 24, 27, 29, 34, 37, 39, 60, 171 Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC), 60, 82, 84, 87, 90, 91, 93, 95 E Elizabeth City State University, 157, 158, 177 F Florida Gulf Coast University, 44, 55–57 H Historically Black College and/or University (HBCU), v, x, 6, 8, 14, 15, 19, 25–27, 25n11, 60, 64–66, 71, 72, 74, 117–140, 158, 166–168, 170–173

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. J. Broussard, Fundraising at Public Regional Universities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45481-3

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J Jackson State University, 2, 24–27, 25n11, 129–132 K Kennesaw State University, 17, 27–30 M Major gift, 19, 30, 35, 45, 51, 55, 57, 108, 117–140, 142, 144, 145, 149, 150, 152, 155, 163–165, 169, 170, 174 Major gift officer, 46n13, 144–146, 154, 163, 164 Mansfield University (Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania), 90–92, 146 Minnesota State University, Mankato, 50, 112n6, 154, 177 Minnesota State University, Moorhead, 43, 49–52 Minority-Serving Institution (MSI), 19, 25n11, 34, 53 Mississippi University for Women, 92–95, 175 MOVES Management, 36, 142, 143, 159, 176 N National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), x, 55, 57, 63–79, 129, 141, 167 Non-profit, 6, 23, 35, 36, 69, 72, 108, 110–113, 124, 149, 155, 168, 177

P Predominately white institution (PWI), 25n11, 66, 119, 121, 122, 124–126, 130, 132, 173 Public regional university (definition), 1–3, 5, 7, 9, 19, 22, 177 S Sonoma State University, 87–90 Southern University of Baton Rouge, 123, 138n40 T Tennessee Tech University, 43, 46–49 Texas Southern University, 17, 125n12, 170 Total attainment, 23, 24, 26, 27, 31, 34, 37, 46, 49, 52, 55, 58, 67, 84, 87, 90, 92, 95 Truman State University, 84–87 U University advancement (definition), x, xii, xiii, 7, 44, 177 University of Central Arkansas, 58–61, 128 University of Louisiana-Lafayette, vi, 31–34 University of Montevallo, 95–98 University of the Virgin Islands, 125n12, 166, 167 University of Toledo, 37–39