College Capital Campaigns Falter in Sour Economy

[bclintonk]

<p>From the Chronicle of Higher Education:</p>

<p>

Colleges’ Billion-Dollar Campaigns Feel the Economy’s Sting </p>

<p>By KATHRYN MASTERSON</p>

<p>The economy’s collapse has caught up with the billion-dollar campaign. In the past 12 months, the amount of money raised by a dozen of the colleges engaged in higher education’s biggest fund-raising campaigns fell 32 percent from the year before, according to a Chronicle analysis.</p>

<p>The decline, which started before the worst of the recession, has forced colleges to postpone expansion plans, readjust their budgets, and ask better-off donors to expedite pledge payments. If the slump continues, experts say, more serious cutbacks could come. It’s a situation institutions can’t ignore as they look to private giving to make up for huge endowment losses and declining government support.</p>

<p>The economic volatility is causing donors — even some of the wealthiest, who are normally insulated from downturns — to postpone gifts or rethink the timing and size of future donations.</p>

<p>“Fewer people are willing to make multiple-year commitments at nearly the level they would have six months ago,” says Donald M. Fellows, chief executive of the fund-raising consultants Marts & Lundy. He and other observers predict a difficult 2009.</p>

<p>In response to the tough climate, colleges are shifting priorities from capital projects to student aid, hiring more fund raisers, and looking for any way to get in front of their most loyal supporters.

</p>

<p>Among the schools suffering the sharpest declines in fundraising from 2007-08 to 2008-09:</p>

<p>Cornell -54.8%
U Virginia -47.7%
Dartmouth -43.8%
Columbia -43.3%
U Pittsburgh -36.9%
Yale -25.1%
U Maryland -18.0%
Brown -11.4%</p>

<p>Outliers:
Vanderbilt +20.6%
Tufts +86.6%</p>