The University of Michigan recently announced a record-breaking fundraising effort, garnering $3.115 billion dollars since 2000 to increase scholarships, professorships and building projects.
According to Judith Malcolm, senior director of executive communications in the office of development, every school, college and unit of the university has been involved in some aspect of the effort of “The Difference Campaign.”
Malcolm added the campaign’s goal was set at $2.5 billion initially, and the fact it reached more than $3 billion was pleasantly surprising.
“The University of Michigan has a much longer history of funding than probably any other public school in the country,” Malcolm said. “We were the first public school to have a goal of $1 billion in a campaign, and we surpassed that. So, that gave us a kind of advantage going into this campaign. We knew we could raise more than $1 billion.”
Sandy Wilcox, president of the University of Wisconsin Foundation, said the last time UW accomplished a similar long-term capital campaign was in 2005 when the university raised nearly $1.8 billion.
Wilcox said the foundation is taking a “breather” for now with the long-term projects, but they are always making an effort to attract donors.
“We don’t get money — people give it — and it’s a long-term process of getting people involved,” Wilcox said. “Nobody has to give anything, so it’s a matter of just convincing people that it’s the right thing to do.”
According to Wilcox, the foundation raised $144 million as of the end of October this year compared to $138 million at the end of October in 2007. But, Wilcox added the foundation is seeing a smaller level of donations coming from lower- and middle-income donors.
“Primarily, we see our role as getting people involved with the university to the point that they want to become shareholders,” Wilcox said. “Most of it is face-to-face, and most of it is at the higher level of donors. There is no magic or science to what we do, it’s just a matter of getting people involved.”
With a $4.2 billion state budget shortfall announced Thursday by Gov. Jim Doyle, the need for philanthropic support to make up for the cuts in higher education is apparent. But Wilcox said the university has dealt with such economic issues in the past successfully.
“We’ve been through this before, we’ll be through it again, and I imagine we’ll come out of it soon,” Wilcox said. “And when we do, people will be positioned to help even more. But the state’s situation has little to do with what we do.”
According to Malcolm, public universities experienced a period of time when the amount of money the state was providing was a much higher percentage, but more and more state legislatures are cutting back higher education to the bare minimum.
“Wisconsin is an excellent school, and they’re facing the same problems as we are,” Malcolm said. “We have learned if you want to provide financial aid for students, if you want to do research, you’ve got to raise money. Philanthropy and private support are only going to get more important.”
UW Director of Financial Aid Susan Fischer said it is difficult to compare the University of Michigan to UW because of differing politics and laws.
“Michigan has a lot more money to give to students based on financial need. We are not looking at apples to apples. But, we are all interested in the same thing, which is to get as many students out of school with degrees as possible.”
Note: The original version of this story should have said the UW Foundation raised $1.8 billion in its last long-term capital campaign. We regret the error.
