Spelman mission was not impossible: how college's fund-raising drive netted $113 million

Black Issues in Higher Education, Sept 19, 1996 by Donald E. Winbush

Atlanta - When the totals were in, Spelman

College had not only met its "mission impossible"

goal of raising $81 million, it had outdone

itself -- amassing a record $113.3 million.

"Today marks the end of the most successful capital

campaign of any historically Black college and the

beginning of a new era of African-American

philanthropy," beamed Spelman College President Dr.

Johnnetta B. Cole.

But all the counting is not done yet.

Elated Spelman officials say that it will be difficult

to calculate the collateral benefits of the

college's "Initiatives for the 90s" in

terms of lessons learned, bridges

crossed, and visions inspired. College

Fund/UNCF President Bill Gray, on

hand for the campaign's spirited wrap-up,

agreed.

"There is a new reality that you have

shared with the rest of the academic

community -- and that is: You can do it if

you work awfully hard," said Gray. "And

you can do it working with corporate

America, with people of goodwill and

foundations. And you can do it by

stimulating philanthropy within [the

African-American] community. That is

going to be more and more important in

the days to come."

Indeed, Spelman officials say the campaign's success

at tapping the African-American community, especially

Spelman alumnae and students, was perhaps the

campaign's crowning achievement. African-Americans

contributed more than $25 million.

The $113.3 million is the most money raised by a

historically Black college and for any liberal arts college

with fewer than 8,000 students. It also helped push

Spelman's endowment to more than

$138 million -- second only to Howard University.

"The money was important," admitted Billie Sue

Schulze, Spelman's vice president for institutional

advancement, "but it wasn't the driving force of the

campaign. This campaign was really about positioning

Spelman for the future."

When Cole was installed as

Spelman's president in 1989, she set a

goal for the college to become one of the

best small liberal arts colleges in the

country. Spelman would be bench-marked,

she said, against colleges such

as Wellesley, Oberlin, Williams and

Amherst.

In terms of faculty and students, Spelman compared

well. But Spelman lagged significantly in areas that

depended on financial resources. Thus came the idea of

launching the $81 million campaign. The most that had

been raised by a previous Spelman campaign had been

$11.4 million, a decade earlier.

"I will tell you, we really weren't quite sure how

long it would take or how we would do it,"

said Cole of the $81 million goal.

"But this we did know: If Spelman was to

take her rightful place among the best of the

small liberal arts colleges in our country,

then we would have to extend our reach all

over this great nation of ours."

Ambition is one thing. But the college

launched the campaign having some glaring

deficiencies. Like many HBCUs, it lacked a

strong professional development

staff. it also had no consistent annual giving

program, no ongoing stewardship program, no

planned giving or major gifts program, and an

out-of-date computer system.

Moreover, Spelman's comparatively small

alumnae base (of about 8,000) had no history of

giving major gifts -- the average alumna gift

being about $300, with a $30,000 estate gift

being the largest it had ever received. The

college also had no established communication

strategy to encourage alumnae giving.

College officials say the most difficult

challenge was the lack of major gift prospects.

Pre-campaign efforts had yielded more than $50

million from two donors, but the remaining $31

million could not be identified.

For ideas, Spelman researched how

other schools, including Wellesley, raised

funds. What quickly became apparent,

Schulze said, was that creating a traditional

gift chart to identify donors based on

past giving would not be a practical approach

for Spelman.

"We found we didn't have a prospect base

that we had enough knowledge about to put

into categories," said Schulze.

Against considerable odds, and with some

supporters expressing doubt, Spelman began

putting together a systematic, yet

nontraditional, campaign.

The three-year campaign was organized

on three initiatives: an endowment

initiative; a science initiative to raise support

for a new $22 million science complex; and a

constituency initiative to involve all of the

college's constituents.

Schulze said, "We felt like one of the first

things we had to do was learn about our

constituents. And one of the most important

lessons of the campaign -- and one I am most

proud of -- is that the administration and the

trustees of Spelman invested in the resources

we needed to allow us to reach out to the

college's constituent groups."

As part of developing a professional

fund-raising operation, Spelman boosted

its Office of Institutional Advancement. It

reorganized and redeployed staffers to

increase the number of full-time fundraisers

from two to seven. It increased the

budget for institutional advancement from

$1.1 to $1.3 million.

Rather than taking the more traditional

approach of putting prospective donors into

categories, Schulze said, the college

developed individualized campaigns for the