EXCLUSIVE 'No stopping' for UC fundraising
It's raised $1 billion, but can it keep the momentum going?
Feb. 16, 2013 9:26 PM,
Shelbie Johnson, 19, a senior at Ashland High School in Ohio, checks out Nippert Stadium during a tour for potential students Universities, like UC, are seeing a record number of applications for 2012. / The Enquirer/ Liz Dufour
Written by
Cliff Peale
Quote:About the UC campaign
• Largest gift: $50.2 million from the Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering Education, or PACE, a consortium of technology companies. The gift was mainly in hardware and software.
• Largest local donors: The family of former Reds owner Carl Lindner has given at least $45 million, most of it to create and operate the Lindner Center of Hope in Mason.
• Smallest gift: UC received 190 donations of $5 or less.
• Donors in New York contributed $21 million, topping totals in Washington, D.C. ($20.4 million) and northern California ($11.5 million).
• Alumni: About 59 percent of total donors graduated from UC.
• Employees: About 55 percent of employees gave to the campaign. Since 2005, faculty and staff have contributed more than $57 million.
Contributions by UC trustees
• Francis Barrett… $35,625
• Tom Cassady… $244,906
• Stan Chesley… $296,587
• Gary Heiman… $1,066,540
• Tom Humes… $326,350
• Carl Lindner III… $5,015,983
• Wym Portman… $10,600
• Rob Richardson… $5,975
• Ginger Warner… $743,359
Other local fund drives
• Xavier University: Raised $206 million over 10 years ending in 2011.
• Miami University: Has raised about $470 million toward its $500 million campaign goal since 2005.
• Northern Kentucky University: Considering a capital campaign now with a potential goal of up to $100 million.
• United Way: $61.1 million last year.
• ArtsWave: $11.2 million last year.
Largest gift
$50.2 million from the Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering Education, or PACE, a consortium of technology companies. The gift was mainly in hardware and software.
Largest local donors
The family of former Reds owner Carl Lindner has given at least $45 million, most of it to create and operate the Lindner Center of Hope in Mason.
Smallest gift
UC received 190 donations of $5 or less.
A billion dollars in private donations since 2005 has punched the University of Cincinnati’s ticket to the upper echelon of American public universities.
But keeping UC there will require another campaign soon, plus at least $125 million a year in private funding as the arms race accelerates to build bigger and more technologically advanced campuses to lure both students and professors.
“There is no stopping,” said Otto Budig, the 1956 UC graduate and co-chairman of the campaign, called Proudly Cincinnati. “In an institution of this consequence, where so many young people are impacted, we not only have been there but we have the capability to go forward.”
The university passed the billion-dollar mark late in January, stamping its campaign as the biggest in Greater Cincinnati’s history.
UC also joins about two dozen public universities nationally that have completed billion-dollar campaigns.
Add about 40 public universities that are in the midst of campaigns and a similar number of private universities that have raised more than $1 billion already, and that still puts UC solidly in the top 3 percent nationally.
As universities build football stadiums and new science buildings and spend millions to recruit top scholars and researchers, the campaigns will only multiply, said Rae Goldsmith, vice president of advancement resources at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education in Washington, D.C.
“You’re going to see them more often at larger research-focused universities,” she said. “It’s not surprising, because things cost more.”
The UC campaign has not remade its main campus. The Sheakley Athletics Center along Jefferson Avenue is the only new building constructed using campaign funds.
But about $101 million of the donations will pay for student scholarships, including 479 new scholarship funds. There’s also about $45 million to endow chairs for professors.
About $700 million already has been spent, and those students and professors are feeling the campaign’s direct impact.
John Stegall, a doctoral student in education who received a scholarship funded by former Cincinnati Public Schools teacher Jim Bruckmann, said it was “kind of like being welcomed into the UC family.”
He received about $4,400 this year.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve that, but I guess someone thought I was worth it,” Stegall said.
“I’d like to get to the point where I could give to someone else the way Mr. Bruckmann gave to me.”
About $370 million will go to UC’s medical school and other parts of the Academic Health Center. Other recipients include $319 million to UC’s various colleges, $135 million to university-wide programs including $76 million to athletics, and $171 million to research.
“Private philanthropy has transformed UC and this is just the beginning of what is to come,” UC President Santa Ono said in a statement.
Bruckmann and his wife Carolyn, who live in College Hill and both graduated from UC, each donated $108,181.71 to UC’s College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services for the endowed scholarships.
Interest generated by the gifts generates the funds to give deserving students several thousand dollars a year. The Bruckmanns targeted the money to train teachers.
“We wanted the connection to UC and to feel we’ve accomplished something for the future,” Jim Bruckmann said.
“We just wanted to put our names on something that would always be there.”
Questions about donor base, campaign structure
UC now faces questions about whether it has the donor base or the campaign infrastructure to keep the same pace.
Ono has referred openly to another campaign, this one targeted toward student scholarships and an Academic Master Plan that envisions a seven-year, $100 million investment.
Even that won’t be enough. UC says it will still need to collect $125 million a year in new donations.
That doesn’t include up to $70 million to renovate Nippert Stadium, up to $100 million to renovate Fifth Third Arena, and up to $60 million for a new law school building.
Since the Proudly Cincinnati campaign started in 2005, it has wrapped all annual donations into the larger campaign, a common practice across the country.
To accomplish those lofty goals, UC says it wants to get to 100,000 donors – from 91,000 now – to help fund its ambitions going forward.
That will require even more money spent on fundraising.
Last year, the UC Foundation, the arm that raises money for UC, sliced jobs to plug its own $1 million budget gap, mostly through early retirement offers to older employees.
With about 100 employees before the cuts, it had been building up the foundation to national standards for large public research universities.
Ono said last year that UC still needs to solidify the foundation’s funding to make it less vulnerable to economic swings.
Funding for foundation operations is based on a rolling average of endowment earnings during the last three years – through the teeth of the recession – making this year’s budget especially tight.
“We’re working on that,” board Chairman Fran Barrett said. “The foundation is great, but we have to make it better.”
Barrett said he thinks UC has joined the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and other groups on the elite roster of regional causes that the wealthiest citizens here always will support.
Ten years ago, UC wasn’t on that list, he said.
“People are looking at how important UC is to the community,” Barrett said.
“There are people coming forward who say, ‘We want to be a part of this.’
“People who have always donated to other things are donating to UC.”
About one-third of the money came from outside Greater Cincinnati.
Michael Sinkus, a consultant for the campaign from New York-based Marts & Lundy, said volunteer leadership and geographic diversity was the key to the campaign’s success.
“I think that was the magic sauce,” he said.
I write about higher education and the University of Cincinnati Health system and all their impacts in our region. Contact me at cpeale@enquirer.com or http://www.twitter.com/cliffpeale.
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