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Public universities begin private fundraising

Schools looking to increase funding in national recession

Many public universities across the country are opting to weaken ties with the state and treat fundraising like private institutions in order to increase their freedom in raising money and gain financial support in new ways.

The University of Michigan, for example, has taken on a more privatized method of fundraising and now receives more money from fundraising and private sectors than they receive from the state.

According to Judy Malcolm, senior director of executive communications in the Office of University Development at the University of Michigan, the state gave $320 million to the school this year, a slight decrease from the previous year.

On the other hand, Malcolm said the school raised $342 million during the last fiscal year from July 1 to June 30, while “for every one of the past years our state funding has decreased slightly.”

Malcolm added a slight tuition increase and a large fundraising campaign started in 2004 have drastically helped the school’s fundraising efforts.

“We kicked off the campaign in 2004 with the goal of raising $2.5 million and ended the campaign raising $3.2 million, so we didn’t start some sort of different plan in the fall when the recession really began,” Malcolm said. “In some ways, that makes us different than schools that aren’t in a campaign and that were suddenly faced with the downturn in the economy.”

Although the University of Wisconsin is still working to gain help from the state by vying for education funds in next year’s budget, their fundraising efforts have also been top tier, according to UW Foundation President Sandi Wilcox.

“We’ve been in the major fundraising business for a long time, and quite frankly we usually beat Michigan,” Wilcox said.

According to Wilcox, UW ranked second for the greatest amount of private donations received by a public university last year. The University of California-Los Angeles took the top rank.

Wilcox added the development work of any good public university is very comparable to that of a private institution.

“But there’s a significant difference in the culture in that when students show up at a place like Stanford or Yale, the day they arrive they’re told they will be responsible 30 to 40 years down the road, and we don’t do a very good job of telling our students that,” Wilcox said. “I don’t know if you’ve ever had a faculty level stand up and say, ‘You’re fortunate enough to be here because of the donations of people who came here before you.’”

Wilcox added while fundraising is good, it will still be stunted as long as students use a profane cheer during home football games that uses “the F word and the S word.”

“We’re trying to raise money for need-based financial aid, and as long as the students have that cheer in the stadium, they have no idea how many people they turn off in terms of donors,” Wilcox said. “It’s embarrassing, and every home football game we have major donors there and they just can’t believe it.”