Despite its 85 on-Grounds staffers, multi-million dollar projects and billion dollar expectations, many students have never heard of the University's Office of Development.
Yet, in less than a year, development officials will launch a seven-year fundraising campaign aimed at bringing $3 billion into University coffers.
Funds raised in the campaign would go toward current investments, including the South Lawn project, the Arts precinct, the athletics arena and the Commerce School, and future investments in the sciences, graduate fellowships and integrated practical ethics programming, according to Bob Sweeney, senior vice president for development and public affairs.
The upcoming campaign's ten-figure goal is over twice the amount raised in the University's last campaign. The Capital Campaign that finished Dec. 31, 2000 tallied $1.43 billion in gifts, pledges and other commitments. At the time, it was the second-highest amount ever raised by a single public university.
The new Capital Campaign will begin its "quiet phase" on Jan. 1, 2004 and continue until Dec. 31, 2011.
During the "quiet phase," campaign ideas will be tested and the initial gifts needed to get the process under way will be raised, said Charles Fitzgerald, associate vice president for development. The public kick-off date for the campaign has not yet been set, but is targeted for 2006.
Planning for the capital campaign is the result of work by academic leadership, volunteer leadership and volunteer staff, Fitzgerald said.
Ultimately, decisions about the campaign go to the Board of Visitors in the form of recommendations.
The high aim of a $3 billion campaign "really relates to the aspirations of the University, coupled with the reality of state funding today, and in the foreseeable future," Sweeney said. "For us to be one of the most important American universities, our fundraising needs to be much more akin to fundraising at the premier institutions."
Sweeney said he hopes to model the University's private fundraising after fundraising at Stanford and Cornell, two private schools that do not receive state funds.
In 1984-85 state funding made up 27.9 percent of the University's operating budget. Since then, the percentage of state contributions fell to 13.8 percent in 1994-95 and to 9.6 percent in 2002-03. The decline in state support has led the University to seek to raise more money from outside sources.
Fundraising "has become very important here since about 1990, when the state cut funding for all of the public colleges," University President John T. Casteen III said. "Here and in peer public institutions, private dollars are now core dollars rather than marginal dollars, which they were as recently as the early 1980s."
Officials say the quality of education offered by the University is largely dependent on money raised by the Office of Development because it is one of the few sources of funding that officials can control.
Tuition also is partially dependent on the amount raised in fundraising efforts.
"Endowment income contributes some $4500 to every student's cost of education; without this income, tuition would be dramatically higher than it is," Casteen said.
Because of the crucial importance of the development program, active fundraising did not cease with the end of the previous campaign over three years ago. During the current "bridge period" between the last campaign and the next, fundraising has remained active and intense, officials say. Such intensity has seen two of the largest contribution years in University history, Sweeney said.
With the next Capital Campaign soon to begin, the University is in the midst of refining a three-step planning process for the program.
The first step for campaign planners was to create an argument in favor of giving to the University.
This involved "defining values and [explaining] why it's important that this institution, maybe even more than any other public university, continues to thrive and enhance itself," Sweeney said.
Next, Sweeney and other development staffers found out who the key prospective donors were and gathered information about them and their personal interests.
Lastly, the development team outlined the University's priorities.
The fundraising activates University representatives, from President Casteen to school deans, in selling an image of the University to potential donors.
"The most effective approach is to tell the straight story -- the strengths, weaknesses, needs, other gifts or possible gifts, and so on," Casteen said.
Casteen, dubbed the "chief solicitor" of large figure donations by Sweeney, meets with groups at receptions, special meetings, retreats and private dinners.
Many donors have some personal affiliation with the University, either as alumni or as parents of alumni. In the campaign ending in 2000, $638 million, or 45 percent of all contributions, came from alumni. Parents of alumni gave $22 million.
John Nau, a college alumnus and the father of two other alumni, has been giving to the University for over 10 years.
"You absolutely will never separate yourself from the University and because of that, the funding and the contributions of alumni are very generous," Nau said.
Engineering and Darden alumnus Lucien L. Bass III said he felt a similar sense of responsibility to the University.
"You give back to the University because of what the University has given to you," Bass said. "I give because of what the University is and what I want it to continue to be."
Bass' gifts to the University include support of the Jefferson Scholars program, the Darden and Engineering foundations, the honor endowment and athletics.
Corporations and foundations also are common sources of support.
"They are willing to make gifts if the research we're doing will enhance the area where their company operates," Sweeney said.
Most large gifts are pledges payable over three to five year periods and many are given to specified aspects of University life and academia.
Nau, for example, began funding the chair of history prof. Gary W. Gallagher because he had a personal interest in Gallagher's field of study -- the American Civil War period.
Because most donors give with a particular beneficiary in mind, the campaign pushes some projects more than others in order to focus on key institutional priorities.
While Sweeney said restricted gifts are important, he said the University needs more unrestricted gifts that allow officials to allot the funds wherever they think the money is needed most.
"The vast majority of our giving is restricted," Sweeney said. "What we need is an increase in unrestricted giving."
Nau and Bass give both restricted and unrestricted contributions to the University. Bass said his level of involvement in the University, as a Commerce professor and as a member on several boards and foundations, allows him to make informed decisions about where his money is most needed at the University.
While Nau and Bass are able to keep afloat with University needs and events with active participation, many donors rely on the development program for feedback on the progress of their gifts and on the under-funded elements of University life.
"After a gift is made its important to keep the relationship going," Sweeney said.
Development's stewardship program communicates with donors through update reports on scholarships and professorships and steward reports about endowments.
Society meetings and events also are held regularly to acknowledge donors and thank them for their contributions.
Yet donors say acknowledgment is far less important than the knowledge that their contributions will have lasting effects on the quality of education at the University.
"Recognition events are secondary to me, supporting the University is the primary thing," Bass said.
Casteen said forming a bond between donors and University officials is key to successful fundraising.
"People make gifts of this kind because of relationships as much as because of a sales talk," Casteen said. "When the University's interests and donors' interests coincide, we usually see a gift as the result."
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