Donor Relations as Public Relations: Toward a Philosophy of Fund-Raising - library fund-raising

Library Trends, Wntr, 2000 by Robert Wedgeworth

ABSTRACT

IN THE MID-1970s, THE LATE BETTY STEARNS, vice president of the Public Relations Board, Inc., introduced me to the concept of identifying and cultivating multiple publics related to nonprofit organizations. This marked the beginnings of a professional public relations program for the American Library Association (ALA) that did more than issue press releases. That experience continued to be useful. Most recently, it helped prepare me to work with Joan C. Hood, director of Library Development and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois, as we developed a multimillion-dollar campaign for library endowments. Over the years, I have found that whether soliciting and retaining members of organizations, building alumni loyalties, or cultivating donors, while techniques may differ, the process of identifying and developing constituencies is essentially the same.

BACKGROUND

Fund-raising is not a well-researched activity. Within the library field there is even less upon which to base the development of a philosophy of fund-raising. What we do know is that fund-raising at some institutions for many years has been used as a source of both recurring and current revenue. Libraries in private academic institutions have been engaged in fund-raising for decades. Some libraries in public academic institutions like Illinois have extensive experience in fund-raising as well. However, until recently, few of them included a separate development position on the library management team. Campus-wide fund-raising personnel have directed most academic library fund-raising. Most campus-wide fund-raising personnel are guided by external consultants that almost uniformly recommend against separate library subcampaigns and library fund-raising professionals. While their reasoning is not entirely clear, it can be attributed to the experience of organizing academic fund-raising campaigns around alumni of the institution. Since the library has no major or minor degrees, identifying and cultivating library donors is more complex than for academic departments.

Where libraries have organized fund-raising activities, the campaign appears to be driven by the funding need rather than by any broader rationale that integrates fund-raising into the management of the institution. Therefore, there is little recognition that fund-raising creates new constituencies that must be influenced and that, in turn, influence the institution. This essay presents a rationale for understanding the broader implications of fund-raising in academic libraries and for organizing it as an integral component of public relations activities.

INTRODUCTION

The fiscal crisis in higher education in the United States is well known. A recent two-year study by the Commission on National Investment in Higher Education, established by the Council for Aid to Education (CAE) in 1994, examined the financial health of America's higher education sector (Commission on National Investment in Higher Education, 1999). The central finding was that costs and demands upon higher education were rising at unsustainable rates. It recommended increased public funding of higher education and a wide range of institutional reforms. Among the reforms recommended was that, "substantial savings and improved library services can be obtained by focusing on the software needed to place library resources on the Internet rather than continuing to support individual research library collections" (Commission on National Investment in Higher Education, 1999, p. 15). The report notes that a shift in the educational requirements of the workforce will place increasing demands on all levels of education. Minority ethnic groups and immigrants will need increasing access to higher education if we are to bridge the growing gap in earnings between the rich and the poor in the United States. This shift has come at a time when public investment in higher education has been declining.

An earlier report by the Association of Research Libraries showed a decline in library support as a percentage of the institutional educational and general (E & G) expenditures from 1981 through 1992 and extended these findings through 1996. For the eighty-eight research libraries reporting, the average percentage of their institutional E & G represented by library expenditures fell from 3.91 percent in 1981-82 to 3.32 percent in 1992. The graph extending these data to 1996 shows a continuing decline to 3.25 percent (Stubbs, 1994).

A number of reforms are likely to be activated to address these funding concerns, and additional public funding will be sought. Nevertheless, private funding is viewed increasingly as a means to ensure that libraries in higher education, private and public, can meet increased demands and costs. Many institutions have already mounted major fund-raising campaigns to increase endowments and to finance current programs including libraries.

Fund-raising as an activity for libraries is not new. However, fund-raising as an organized integral function of library management is new. For some time now, fund-raising professionals have used the term "development" to include not only fund-raising but also the planning and goal-setting activities that guide those activities. More recently, at the parent institution level in higher education, fund-raising has been incorporated with alumni relations and public relations under the current term of "institutional advancement" in some institutions. Both terms--"development" and "institutional advancement"--recognize the essential nature of activities that manage communications between an institution and its public constituencies for the specialized purpose of fund-raising. However, for purposes of this essay, the term "fund-raising" will be used and the broader set of activities implied by development and institutional advancement will be discussed as a specialized form of public relations.