Setting the pace in fundraising

Westchester County Business Journal, Mar 12, 2007 by Soule, Alexander

Pace University led all Westchester County colleges in 2006 in fundraising, a new report shows, as Pace basks in a $7.5 million donation it will use to bolster science studies.

Donors funneled $12.5 million into Pace in the fiscal year ending last June, up $4.4 million from the previous fiscal year. No local college registered a larger increase, according to the Council for Aid to Education's annual nationwide roundup of charitable giving to schools.

The New York City organization listed the College of New Rochelle as posting the largest increase, but the college said the council's data is not accurate and that it increased donations 34 percent to $6.9 million. Polytechnic University, which has a campus in Hawthorne, increased giving by half to $11.4 million.

Annual giving and capital campaigns are critical for schools to improve campuses and scholarships, allowing them to compete for higher-caliber students. The College of New Rochelle is building a $28 million "wellness" center combining class and meeting space with a gymnasium, fitness center and underground pool. The building's designer has already won an architectural award.

The State University of New York, which has campuses in Purchase and Valhalla, increased giving systemwide to $252 million in 2006, up from $152 million the year before. The increase was driven largely by SUNY Albany, which rang up $86 million in donations. SUNY's 66 percent increase led all state school systems in the Northeast, though the Council for Aid to Education included only two of the University of Massachusetts' five campuses in its figures.

Cornell University was tops among all New York schools with a $354 milliRon take, $13 million ahead of Columbia University.

Such gaudy endowment figures tend to overshadow gains made by comparatively small schools that also contribute "infrastructure" talent for local companies, said George Brakeley III, chairman and managing director of Brakeley Briscoe Inc., a Now Canaan, Conn.based firm that consults on fundralsing campaigns.

"A university president once said, 'You have to value your 'A' students because they are the ones that will bring you distinction; but you better look after your 'B' and 'C' students because they are the ones, who are going to build your dormitories,'" Brakeley said.

The "A" students are pretty important, too, as it turns out - the Dyson Foundation's recent $7.5 million gift was the third largest in Pace's 100-year history.

With science majors up 38 percent in the past three years, Pace will use $5 million to renovate science laboratories at its Dyson College campus in Pleasantville. Another $2 million will go toward scholarships across a range of disciplines and the remaining $500,000 will be used to fund activities for students.

A dive in global stock markets in late February has set campus fundraisers scurrying to the history books to assess the impact of past bear markets on school donations.

"The stock market has a significant effect on giving and stock market uncertainty may discourage charitable giving by all but the most wealthy donors," said Funda Alp, a spokeswoman for Connecticut's Sacred Heart University, which enjoyed a 72 percent increase in donations in 2006. "We have found that as donors grow more anxious about the economy, they are more reluctant to give. But loyal donors to any institution always find a way to make a commitment. For instance, they may delay outright gifts and instead make estate gifts."