Pennies from heaven: with endowments ever more critical, IHEs are looking for leaders who can bring home the donors—and the dollars - Advancement Leaders - Cover Story

University Business, March, 2003 by Andrea Crawford

At a time when the stock market is down and the economic outlook is pretty dismal, fundraising officials have one of the toughest jobs on campus. Still, the challenge presents a good opportunity to go back to the fundamentals, and one basic rule of fundraising holds true now, more than ever: leadership counts--whether in a large, public research institution breaking fundraising records, or a small, religiously affiliated private college going for gold its administrators never imagined.

Greensboro College's Man Behind the Money

From 1994 to 2002, Greensboro College in North Carolina raised $48 million, dramatically bypassing the prediction of a feasibility study that it could expect to raise, at best, $6 million in a capital campaign. Yet under the direction of a new president, the college built relationships with business and professional leaders in its community, who in turn provided the hulk of the gifts during that time frame.

Was it just luck and timing? Not at all, says Allen Lee, a higher education consultant with First Counsel, a national fundraising consultancy headquartered in Charlotte, NC. "I used to think that a college could raise money without having a highly visible, dynamic president," Lee says. "But the longer I do this, I'm believing that less and less."

In 1993, Craven E. Williams arrived at Greensboro just as the school was seeking re-accreditation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. As part of that once-a-decade process, the administration, trustees, and faculty had completed a self-study of the institution, which they presented to their new president. An extensive compilation detailing what the institution needed in order to advance, the report recommended upgrading faculty and staff salaries, hiring new faculty, launching new curricula, providing new instructional resources, and addressing long-deferred maintenance on existing facilities, as well as building new performance spaces, classrooms, and laboratories.

The cost of implementing those recommendations? An estimated $45 million. For a college founded in 1838 as a women's college (Greensboro went co-ed in 1954), affiliated with the United Methodist Church, with 1,200 students, 9,000 alumni, and a development staff of just three people, $45 million was daunting. The school's endowment at the time was just above $8 million, and a fundraising consultant hired by the previous administration had recently completed a $6 million feasibility study. "They had recommended the college might be able to raise the dollars," says Alan Sasser, VP of Development, "but did not specify how long it would take."

Greensboro had a limited fundraising history. To build its library and a classroom-and-laboratory facility, it had raised around $500,000 during the late '40s/ early '50s, and it conducted another campaign in the 1960s that resulted in an additional classroom building. But for its 150th anniversary in 1988, it conducted what Sasser considers its first targeted campaign, with "modern fundraising apparatus," including an explicit goal of $5 million, and county chairs and volunteers making solicitation calls to alumni and corporations. It took about seven years for the college to reach its goal

Nevertheless, the new president was undaunted; the campaign he launched--New Dimensions in the Liberal Arts--was slated to raise $40 million over an unspecified time period. "The faculty and trustees had undertaken a long, elaborate study," Williams recounts. "To then announce a $5 million campaign is to say to the faculty, `Let's go out there and be mediocre.'"

The first two gifts--one for $1 million and a second, anonymous gift of $5 million--came within the first few months of Williams' presidency and immediately shot the college beyond the original feasibility study's recommendation. By August 2001, they realized that the college was close to meeting its first goal of $40 million, Sasser says, so they decided to bring that campaign to an end and try for another $60 million. The new campaign, "Campaign for Greensboro College: A Promise to Keep," is divided into two consecutive $30 million campaigns, the first of which is now in its silent phase. Since Williams' inauguration and the launch of the New Dimensions campaign, the college has raised more than $48 million. By its 175th anniversary in 2013, it aims to hit the $100 million mark.

The turnaround for Greensboro College has been "due primarily to a talented fundraising president," says Lee, who worked as a consultant for the institution. "It's a prime example of the absolute necessity for private college presidents to be able to exercise fundraising talents."

Williams, as it happens, came to Greensboro College with a long history of fundraising in higher ed. His first job after graduating from college was in the Development office of his alma mater, Wake Forest University. Afterward, while he earned a doctorate in Theology, he served as vice president for Development at two other colleges. Then, as president of Gardner-Webb College (outside of Shelby, NC), he successfully brought in more than $20 million in 10 years.