Academic Library Fund-Raising: Organization, Process, and Politics

Library Trends, Wntr, 2000 by Susan K. Martin

ABSTRACT

IN RECENT YEARS, THE TRADITIONAL FUNCTIONS of the library have been supplemented by new functions and structures, among them information technology and development. Fund-raising, part of development, is of critical importance to schools and departments of universities, which are increasingly engaged in capital campaigns and major gift programs. While libraries have the disadvantage of not having a built-in constituency, they do have the ability of acquiring and building such a constituency with the capability of supporting the library's monetary and programmatic goals. The fund-raising environment is discussed as well as techniques for enhancing a library's major gifts program.

INTRODUCTION

Fund-raising is truly an art. There exists little real research on the topic, although the literature in this area is increasing in size, scope, and quality. Many questions raised about specific areas of fund-raising must be answered with the phrase "it depends": the answer depends on the kind and size of institution under discussion; the nature of the potential or actual constituency; the maturity of the institution; and various other factors. In recent years, academic centers have been established to study philanthropy at a theoretical level, particularly as it affects nonprofit institutions. However, the interest of librarians involved in starting or continuing a fund-raising program remains on the immediate environment, the politics, and the "how-to's" of developing external resources on behalf of library programs. This article will address issues of major gifts, capital campaigns, organization, staffing, constituency, and the role of the library development program within the academic community.

THE NEW KID ON THE BLOCK

Until the mid-1960s, most academic libraries could consider themselves the "heart of the university"--an island not only of tranquillity but also of bibliographic expertise that was found nowhere else in the university. Alone among its colleagues in academia, the library collected, organized, and made available the repository of the knowledge of humanity or that part of it suited to the requirements of each college or university as a locus of teaching and research. With the possible exception of unofficial departmental or seminar reading rooms, no one else on campus collected the literature, cataloged it, lent and borrowed books on interlibrary loan, and operated large reading rooms and other public service facilities such as periodicals rooms, government documents departments, or special collections and manuscripts divisions. While the faculty could argue then and now about what resources are acquired for the collection, librarians were alone as performers of these often-arcane tasks. If anyone else on campus were to embark on a library-like activity, they often came to the library for advice and frequently used standards and procedures developed by the library. Therefore, with the exception of advice on collections, there was no urgent need for librarians to coordinate their work with anyone else in the university on a daily basis.

In the past thirty years, this "splendid isolation" has been removed: two of our most significant current functions have come into being in these decades and, in both cases, they imitate or duplicate what is done elsewhere on campus rather than being unique to the library. These functions are systems/automation and development. In both cases, someone else--some other unit--considers him- or herself the expert, requiring the library to cast its plans, actions, and often policies within the standards set elsewhere in the university. Libraries began to use computers in the 1960s and 1970s and tended to be the first unit on campus to use the computer for non-quantitative purposes. With the passage of time, the lead once held by libraries in applications of information technology has disappeared; the trend is for universities to have a chief information officer, one of whose tasks is to ensure that standards are in place for the use of computers throughout the institution. Now, instead of possessing just one set of knowledges and skills defined by more than a century of experience within a library environment, librarians must explain why the library application of information technology is different enough to warrant separate treatment, and what issues are of concern to the library and to no other department of the university.

Development is even further removed from the once-cozy and easily defined arena of the academic library. While the large private universities have endowments that date back two or more centuries, few institutions of higher education have been involved in serious fund-raising for more than two or three decades. Driven by the fortunes made during the industrial revolution, philanthropy and charitable giving made their way into the landmark of American culture as recently as 100 years ago. At that time they concentrated more on correcting social ills than on enhancing the educational environment of what then was a very small minority of wealthy young men attending a small number of universities (Burlingame & Hulse, 1991, p.20). Organizations such as the YMCA, Red Cross, and Hull House attracted the attention of the wealthy of the time. It was, of course, Andrew Carnegie who focused his attention on libraries, and for a number of decades public libraries were the beneficiaries of most of the dollars going to libraries.