For the fiscal year ending June 30, 2014, colleges and
universities in the American States received a record $37.5 billion in
donations, which represent a 10.8% increase from the prior year.[1]
Alumni giving increased 9.4% to $9.85 billion, with the average graduate gift
up more than 25% to $1,535.[2]
The top ten universities by amounts raised snagged 18% of the total ($37.5
billion), thus doing disproportionately better than even the schools in the
middle stratum. What is behind this growing economic inequality, and can
anything be done to reverse the trend?
Ann Kaplan, at the Council for Aid to Education, explains
that the colleges and universities in the middle of the pack are less likely to
have as active, wealthy, or well-connected alumni.[3]
I suspect, however, that the level activity takes a nosedive at the level of
local universities, which tend to operate as commuter schools. Also, while the
propensity to do well financially years or even decades after graduation is
likely enriched from having received an excellent education, the top ten
universities by donation level in 2014 do not match up with the rankings based
on quality of the education. To be sure, Harvard and Stanford came in first
($1.16 billion) and second ($927.5 million), respectively, but they are
followed by non-Ivies including the University of Southern California,
Northwestern, and John Hopkins. Princeton, Yale, Brown, and Dartmouth did not
make the cut, whereas the University of Washington did.
Surely, the performance depends at least in part on the
quality of the university’s development office, and schools in the middle of
the donations-ranking can certainly invest in that. In fact, improvement may
not hinge on increasing budgets. For example, “(a)s schools get better at
tracking down alums due to the growth of social networks such as Facebook and
LinkedIn, they’re able to tap those graduates for targeted gifts to support
student scholarships and new buildings, among other things.”[4]
Encouraged by the financial bonus system, I made a habit while working
part-time at Yale’s development office while I was a student at the university
of asking the alumni whom I called what they liked about their experience at
Yale. I would then casually mention that I could target a donation to a
particular residential college, or group such as the Glee Club. Even a small
donation would make a difference if narrowly targeted, and I did well on the
bonus contests.
Beyond improving fundraising skills and tapping into the
great opportunities available through social media, university administrations
bent on increasing donations could do the unthinkable: get the staff to
actually be nice to students, as they stand a good chance of being alumni one
day. This incredible insight is not as easy as it might seem. At the University
of California at Davis, for example, university police decided to use
pepper-spray on students sitting on a campus sidewalk to protest a tuition hike
in late 2012. For the university administrators at Davis, a heads-up: spraying
pepper spray in students’ eyes at close range is not the best way to get them
to donate years later. Just saying.
[1]
Melissa Korn, “Harvard Tops Record Year for College Gifts,” The Wall Street Journal, January 28,
2015.
