University fundraising
Grotty givens
Apr 15th 2004
From The Economist print edition
Universities’ fundraising woes reflect the clash of hope against reality
WHY are Britain’s needy universities so bad at fundraising? Oxford and its colleges pull in around £65m ($118m) a year to add to an endowment conservatively valued at around £2 billion. That is riches by British standards but less than a quarter of Harvard’s $558m haul last year on top of an endowment of close to $20 billion. At King’s College London, one of Britain’s top dozen universities, the five-year fundraising target is a paltry £44m.
Reasons for this include fewer rich people in Britain, no big recent tradition of philanthropy, and a social convention that asking directly for money counts as boorish. A bigger problem, though, is the government. Although tax treatment of charitable giving is similar on both sides of the Atlantic, university finance isn’t. British universities are largely state-financed, and state-run. Donors shy away from any risk that their generosity will just make up for government shortfalls—or worse, be maladministrated by bureaucrats.
British universities have persuaded the government that tuition fees should rise to up to £3,000. But David VandeLinde, vice-chancellor of Warwick University, says the new bill may have given the impression that the government is “well on its way to dealing with all the financial woes of our universities. It is not.”
None of this helps. But the biggest failing lies with the universities themselves. The vice-chancellors who run them are ill suited (sometimes literally) to schmoozing millionaires. Compared with America’s armies of fundraisers, the British efforts are tiny—King’s employs just 13 people for development and alumni relations combined. The pitches for funds too often sound modest and drab. “What appeals to a donor is the chance to start something or to complete it, not just to keep it going,” says one multimillionairess who has given to both British and American universities.
British universities are worse at integrating donors into university life, she says. An advisory committee for a library at, say, Harvard, includes donors and university high-fliers, all hobnobbing over an interesting project. By contrast, British universities may plunk big donors on to a “formalistic and horrible” board, she says. “At Harvard, they are made to feel they contribute more than the money.”
Then there is the question of competence: whereas American universities manage their money professionally, the British record is more mixed. University administrators tend to like new buildings; donors may be more interested in supporting bright but needy students.
To be fair, British universities are still learning, having begun serious fundraising only in the 1990s. One idea is to recruit more experienced staff from charities and the arts world, says Rebecca Williams, development director at King’s. Warwick and the London School of Economics have both hired fundraisers from across the Atlantic. Cambridge has high hopes for its new vice-chancellor, Alison Richard, poached from Yale. Americans are in overall charge of London Business School, Warwick and (come September) King’s. Oxford has a ten-person development office in New York and rotates British staff through American training courses.
But the sneaking suspicion is that good fundraising is a symptom of success, not its cause. If so, Britain’s tatty universities and demoralised dons may have a long wait for the hoped-for megabucks.
None of this helps. But the biggest failing lies with the universities themselves. The vice-chancellors who run them are ill suited (sometimes literally) to schmoozing millionaires. Compared with America’s armies of fundraisers, the British efforts are tiny—King’s employs just 13 people for development and alumni relations combined. The pitches for funds too often sound modest and drab. “What appeals to a donor is the chance to start something or to complete it, not just to keep it going,” says one multimillionairess who has given to both British and American universities.
British universities are worse at integrating donors into university life, she says. An advisory committee for a library at, say, Harvard, includes donors and university high-fliers, all hobnobbing over an interesting project. By contrast, British universities may plunk big donors on to a “formalistic and horrible” board, she says. “At Harvard, they are made to feel they contribute more than the money.”
Then there is the question of competence: whereas American universities manage their money professionally, the British record is more mixed. University administrators tend to like new buildings; donors may be more interested in supporting bright but needy students.
To be fair, British universities are still learning, having begun serious fundraising only in the 1990s. One idea is to recruit more experienced staff from charities and the arts world, says Rebecca Williams, development director at King’s. Warwick and the London School of Economics have both hired fundraisers from across the Atlantic. Cambridge has high hopes for its new vice-chancellor, Alison Richard, poached from Yale. Americans are in overall charge of London Business School, Warwick and (come September) King’s. Oxford has a ten-person development office in New York and rotates British staff through American training courses.
But the sneaking suspicion is that good fundraising is a symptom of success, not its cause. If so, Britain’s tatty universities and demoralised dons may have a long wait for the hoped-for megabucks.
Source : http://www.economist.com/
