As the Capital Campaign moves toward its public phase, University administrators have hit the road to try to sell their vision for the University. Campaign officials are engaging alumni, donors and members of the extended University community in order to receive input and funding for future projects at the University.
The administration has taken the campaign to donors all across America and even hosted some events as far away as Asia. Meetings led by University President John T. Casteen, III and Robert Sweeney, vice president for development and public affairs, have achieved enthusiastic participation from donors. One such meeting in Memphis drew 175 attendees.
Topics discussed include an overview of the campaign, the impact of the higher education restructuring legislation and question and answer sessions. Students also have been invited to provide input, as they did at a meeting earlier this month.
The fate of the ambitious $3 billion Capital Campaign designed to transform the University into a top-15 research institution that still fulfills its public mission hangs in the balance of the dialogue.
"The goal is part of a strategy to create a new model, the first privately financed public University that maintains its public mandate," Sweeney said.
If the University is successful, some experts speculate it will have a truly transformative impact on the higher education landscape.
"In most cases, although it is extremely important for most institutions, private support was never meant and in most cases cannot take the place of public support," said Joye Mercer Barksdale, director of public relations for the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.
The scope of the transition and its impact is reflected by the efforts the University has made to reach out to various constituencies, Casteen said.
"One balances interests by listening carefully, testing variations in different contexts, acknowledging incomplete or otherwise difficult points and continually improving the product so that this combines truthfulness with appropriately understood ranges of meaning for different audiences," Casteen said.
So far the Campaign has been going successfully. The University has already raised $600 million, 6 percent ahead of schedule, and the campaign has yet to enter the public phase.
"I think that U.Va. is uniquely positioned to be able to do this," Barksdale said. "There are not very many public institutions that have the financial wherewithal of the University of Virginia."
The University is heavily reliant on forum attendees who offer their input. The Development Office expects individual donors will account for between 65 and 75 percent of donations to the campaign.
The donation trends bode well for the University, as alumni donations nationally increased 27.5 percent last year and non-alumni individual donors increased 21.3 percent, according to the Voluntary Support for Higher Education survey conducted by the Council for Aid to Education.
"I like the fact that most of our money comes from individuals because these are people who can really get invested in the quality of life of the University," Sweeney said.
Many fundraising experts, however, said challenges remain for the University. While overall national giving to higher education inched up 3.4 percent last year, donations to capital campaigns held flat, and actually declined 1.7 percent when adjusted for the consumer price index, according to the CAE survey. The University is entering a competitive fundraising climate with many competitor schools conducting large campaigns.
"The Atlantic Coast Conference is a full court press to the institutional family to give as much as possible to their alma mater," said Bob Carter, president of Ketchum, the largest fundraising consulting organization in America.
Given this competition, the University will need to work especially hard to be successful, including adding a greater emphasis on smaller donations.
"In today's campaigns you have to pay more attention to the lower and middle donors because they are the building block of a large chunk of these major campaigns," Carter said.
As a privately financed institution, University faculty will need to devote significant attention to fundraising, including professors who do not traditionally get involved in donor campaigns.
"It's a paradigm shift for an institution and you have to take fundraising more seriously," said Paulette Maehara, President and CEO of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. "Coordination is extremely important. You need to make sure that the deans of the schools, researchers and professors are involved."
The University must orchestrate its approach to donors carefully, known as the "ask" in fundraising parlance, in order to achieve the best donor response, Maehara said
"It's got to be a consolidated approach or you end up losing money" by leaving money on the table by not approaching donors with priorities that energize them, she said.
Or worse, they could come to the aid of a competitor.
"The alumni have to like the brand, and you have to be sensitive to that because they might find another institution that better reflects their values, like Chapel Hill," Carter said.
Sweeney and his staff appear to be acutely aware of these issues but remain optimistic and enthusiastic about the Campaign's potential, Sweeney said.
"The exact message I gave at the board meeting brings people to tears, so I know we've got the right message," he said. "We've got to tighten it and hone it into the tightest message"
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