Institutional Advancement

What We Know

E. Proper, T. Caboni

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781349478705, 9781137379306
• eBook ISBN: 9781137374288
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Institutional Advancement comprehensively reviews and evaluates the published empirical research on advancement in higher education of the last 23 years, covering fundraising, alumni relations, public relations, marketing, and the role of institutional leadership in all of these.

I

Introduction

1

Introduction

Consider the following news stories from 2012 and 2013:

• In 2013, donors gave $34 billion to North American colleges, the most ever raised in one year (Rivard 2014).

• Fourteen American colleges and universities have dropped the use of Native American terms or imagery from their athletics since 2005, thanks to public pressure (Rogers 2013).

• Vanderbilt University reduced average student indebtedness by over $5,000, thanks to a $108 million campaign to raise money for financial aid (Kiley 2013).

• The University of Delaware considered adding a PhD financed by JPMorgan Chase, which would include student aid, faculty salaries, and campus renovations; the bank would be involved with dissertation committees, among other areas (Rivard 2013).

• The University of Hawaii spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in damage control after attempting to hire Stevie Wonder for a concert but instead paying money to a sham talent agency (Stripling 2012).

• Two Koch brothers’ foundations donated $12.7 million to colleges and universities in 2012, funding initiatives such as programs as the “moral imperatives of free markets and individual liberty” (Levinthal 2014).

Each of these stories is about the field of higher education administration known as institutional advancement, a field that includes fundraising, alumni relations, public relations, and marketing. Also called “development,” this is the branch of the administrative apparatus responsible for communicating with its publics and raising support (both financial and attitudinal) from those publics.

Unfortunately, it is also known, both to critics and some practitioners, by pejoratives such as “rattling the tin cup” or by boosterish phrases such as “friend-raising,” indicating the discomfort many feel with the presence of an activity that seems to have more in common with Madison Avenue than the ivory tower. One of the earliest expressions of general distrust of institutional advancement’s role in higher education comes from the articulately outraged Veblen in The Higher Learning in America:

The American university is not an eleemosynary institution; it does not plead indigence, except in that Pickwickian sense in which indigence without shame be avowed in polite circles; nor does it put its trust in donations of that sparseness and modesty which the gifts of charity commonly have. Its recourse necessarily is that substantial and dignified class of gifts that are not given thriftily on compunction of charity, but out of the fulness of the purse . . . Donations to university funds have something of the character of an investment in good fame. (pp. 113–14)

This statement is actually rather mild by Veblen’s standards. Veblen was a veteran of Cornell University, the University of Chicago, Stanford University, and the University of Missouri by that point in his peripatetic career; one wonders what he would make of these universities’ fundraising operations today with staffs of dozens and budgets sufficient to run a small college of his day.

Advancement itself is not a core function of the academy; it neither teaches students nor produces new knowledge. In business terms, all parts of advancement are staff functions rather than line functions, something necessary to the functioning of the organization rather than central to its mission. Fundraisers are not unlike accountants or janitors in that respect. Indeed, while alumni relations is specific, if not to higher education, at least to education, fundraisers often have backgrounds in fundraising at other sorts of nonprofit institutions, such as museums and hospitals. This alone may account for why the scholarly literature on it is rather small compared to the literature on the student experience or academic careers. (On the other hand, certainly more has been written about advancement than about collegiate janitorial services.) Scholars writing about advancement have been told by reviewers that their work is not important enough to merit inclusion in conferences or journals.

Nevertheless, this is a book on institutional advancement.

It is a cliché to note that “fundraising has been an important part of American higher education since Harvard first raised money in 1693,” but historical importance does not guarantee present-day relevance. Most ancient European universities were founded on donations, yet today they are almost exclusively state supported. If this was the only rationale scholars could offer for our interest, we could leave the topic exclusively to our colleagues doing excellent work with historical approaches.

But advancement has advanced since the days of the colonial college, and today it is, if not a profession (Caboni 2010), still an important role in most institutions of higher education. Naturally, it is important to the men and women who work in the field. Like most nonprofit professionals, they are dedicated to their jobs and to the causes they work for. If no one else, we should expect fundraisers, alumni relations officers, public affairs practitioners, and others in the fold of “institutional advancement” to be interested in advancing their profession. Evidence suggests they are: both the Association of Fundraising Professionals conference and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education offer an array of local, national, and training conferences and events every year.

It is the size of the field—and its continued growth—that provides another reason for studying advancement. All the functions of advancement, but most notably fundraising, have become increasingly important for all institutions of US higher education, including sectors that traditionally did not conduct advancement activities. Public universities have long practiced alumni relations; today, they are engaged in billion-dollar capital campaigns. Community colleges have traditionally not engaged in any form of advancement other than public affairs; today, they raise funds from alumni, foundations, and corporations. At most institutions, the percentage of the budget that comes from direct donations is still small but rising. For example, in 2008–2009, gifts accounted for 21 percent of revenues at private, not-for-profit four-year institutions, and almost 4 percent at public four-year institutions, according to data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

What does this change in funding source mean for the institutions that engage in it, beyond the simple fact of a larger corps of advancement officers? Typically, the institutions themselves represent it in two ways. First, donations and endowments provide a “margin of excellence,” enabling institutions to offer programs and services (including scholarships) they otherwise could not. This benefit is particularly stressed by professionals in the course of their work. Second, this income provides “freedom” for public institutions. Unlike (dwindling) public funds, donative income tends not to be based on state-mandated institutional measures such as performance funding or enrollment. Of course, many donations come with restrictions, but the restrictions tend to be of a different nature. In states such as Virginia, the more prestigious (read: successful at resource gathering) institutions have recognized that demands for increased state accountability ironically come at a time when state funding provides a smaller percentage of the budget than ever before, and that has provided leverage for attenuating the state link (McLendon and Mokher 2009).

Advancement does more than buy excellence and independence, though. Aside from typically unrestricted annual fund dollars, most fundraising income comes with its own set of restrictions. According to the Council for Aid to Education’s Voluntary Support of Education 2011 survey, 86 percent of current operations gifts are restricted, and 90 percent of capital gifts are restricted. Historical research has shown that fundraising has often shaped institutional spending patterns, as institutions adjust their behavior to what donors are willing to contribute to (Neuman 2007) or even give up their own institutional identity under pressure from those holding the purse strings (Avery 2013). Most gifts do not have this kind of transformative power, but philanthropic giving can be a powerful force. Foundation spending is assumed to have the ability to reshape institutions. Witness the effect of the Northern philanthropy in pushing vocational education at HBCUs (Brown II, Ricard, and Donahoo 2004) or the role of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching retirement plans in secularizing small colleges (Lagemann 1999).

Corporate fundraising, too, has been criticized, and not only from the direction of free-market economists such as Milton Friedman who believe that corporations have no business (pun intended) conducting philanthropy (Friedman 2008). Observers such as Derek Bok have noted the pernicious effects that some corporate donations have had on academic freedom (Bok 2003). Cases such as the Berkeley-Novartis case continue to scandalize academia by their chilling effects on academic freedom (Slaughter 2011).

Even private donations influence institutional choices. Small annual fund donors tend not to restrict their gifts, but major donors have a long history of making gifts for specific causes such as starting a new school or degree program. Many a college or university is saddled with endowed funds for scholarships that no longer make sense but cannot be spent elsewhere. Today, much of the criticism and debate comes from donations to athletics. Phil Knight’s $100 million gift to the University of Oregon (Di Mento 2007) was met with a chorus to the effect that the money would be better directed to the university’s academic programs. Despite the efforts by advancement officers to find common ground between institutional and donor interests, donors can rarely be swayed far beyond their original area of interest. The University of Oregon very likely faced a choice between a gift to athletics and no gift at all. And far from providing “excellence,” some colleges, such as Fisk University, believe that donations are mandatory to merely remain in the good graces of accreditors (Fisk University 2011).

While fundraising has the most obvious effects on reshaping institutional priorities, other forms of advancement are not immune. Creating a cadre of interested, involved alumni may provide not only a source of support (not solely fiscal) for an institution, but also an oftentimes reactionary set of stakeholders. The more sophisticated public relations become, the more institutions become indistinguishable from for-profit corporations, at least in the eyes of some. Municipalities are increasingly seeking payments in lieu of taxes from not-for-profit colleges (Fischer 2010), institutions are depicted as “real-estate tycoons” (van der Werf 2006), and commenters on stories about campus amenities suggest colleges do not deserve tax-exempt status (Carlson 2013).

Ironically, too, some of the drivers of increased advancement activities are simultaneously sowing the seeds of reaction. Higher tuition and student loan debt lead some alumni to say, “Why should I give you more money?” Alumni in low-paying professions may be cynical that their small donations could be meaningful as anything except as numbers in U.S. News and World Report rankings. Increasingly, students are more likely to transfer and to attend graduate or professional school, meaning that donors have more institutions making claims on their interest and their wallets. In years when endowments perform well, critics clamor to mandate higher endowment spending; in years when endowments perform poorly, colleges and universities struggle to balance budgets. The success of a few elite institutions, in an era when $5 billion capital campaigns make the headlines, has obscured the fact that most institutions have far fewer resources.

Surely, advancement is not the only factor in these conversations. Philosophies such as Milton Friedman’s and shifts in public opinion to regarding higher education as a private good are important, but they are part of the same national conversation. Advancement is both cause and effect of institutional change.

So why this book?

The majority of published work on fundraising is directed at practitioners—which is surely logical—who aim to improve their own institution’s practice. Most of it is based upon a lifetime of experience, rather than on research. Some of it is based upon institutional research. It is difficult to evaluate the quality of this work, which has not been peer reviewed, because the authors typically do not explain their methodology in depth. A small but dedicated cadre of scholars has dedicated itself to the study of advancement; however, the majority of work continues to be produced by reflective practitioners rather than full-time scholars. One result of this has been that the field is fragmented. Many studies are never published. Other research is conducted by faculty in areas such as economics or business, and the resulting work is published in journals that many among their potential audience would not think to read. Some scholars find that the study of advancement is not seen as central to higher education, which has the effect of encouraging them to pursue other careers or to refocus their research. As a result, the literature is scattered. This fragmentation makes it difficult for newcomers to come up to speed in the field. It leads to reproduction of work. It makes obtaining large-scale funding difficult.

By contrast, only a few works in the field tend to be considered comprehensive. The first is Michael Worth’s New Strategies for Educational Fundraising (Worth 2002). This book does not claim to be a literature review or meta-analysis, but it covers the major areas of interest within fundraising from the perspective of the reflective practitioner and is frequently used as an introduction to the subject. The second is The Campus Green: Fund Raising in Higher Education (Brittingham and Pezzullo 1990), to which this book is in many ways indebted. Its focus was strictly on fundraising, not on advancement writ large. The Campus Green was published as an ASHE-ERIC Higher Education report in 1990. Like the rest of the series, it focuses on what the authors believe are the most important ideas in the field. Brittingham and Pezzullo begin with a brief history of US higher education fundraising before discussing how fundraising is organized and what it costs; how donors behave and what motivates them; the role of ethics; and suggestions for researchers, institutions, and related organizations, all based on the previous two decades of research. Both of these books, despite their fine qualities, suffer from one common issue: They are slowly growing out of date. The Campus Green is now over two decades old. More recently, Dr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Part I Introduction
• Part II Review of the Literature
• Part III Major Questions and Answers
• Part IV The Future of Advancement Research
• Appendix
• Notes
• References
• Index