Harvard is very good at fundraising. It has the largest endowment of any school in the country — and, indeed, the world — and to some extent, it’s because it has had a long time to build it up.
Harvard is credited with holding the nation’s first fundraising drive in 1643, when only eight of the 13 colonies had even been established. Since then, it has fostered a culture of giving, soliciting donations from alumni and other philanthropists to continue increasing its wealth. The university’s endowment, at the end of the 2014 fiscal year, was $36,429,256,000.
In the last eight years, Harvard has received six donations of $100 million or more, most recently accepting $400 million from John Paulson for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which now bears his name.
When Bernadine Douglas served as vice president for external relations of Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona, she helped bring in a $1.5 million gift that was the largest in the university’s history. Douglas now serves as vice president for alumni and college relations at Berea College in Kentucky. She said Embry Riddle had a storied history but not one based on philanthropy. The university started as a business, and its students long maintained the corporate mindset.
“Our struggle at Embry Riddle was always moving our alumni beyond the transactional frame they had for their education,” Douglas said.
While a $1.5 million donation could seem like a drop in the bucket at an institution like Harvard, it meant a great deal to Embry Riddle, which operates on a different scale entirely. That, it could be argued, is true across higher ed. NYU gave naming rights to its engineering school for a $100 million donation that was announced this month. Paul Smith College, on the other hand, was ready to change the entire institution’s name for $20 million — though a judge blocked the small, private college’s request.
Paulson’s $400 million donation to Harvard was widely ridiculed as a generous gift to an institution that did not need the money, prompting a discussion of the “wealth gap” in higher education. The vast majority of students attend schools that do not benefit from regular, multimillion dollar donations. But Douglas prefers to get beyond the “perception of lack.”
“I think there is enough to go around because I think you have enough people that care about the state of education and accessibility and affordability that they’re willing to step forward,” Douglas said, adding that she doesn’t slight well-known institutions that more often get major donations. “I don’t feel a sense of lack because they get a $100 million gift. I celebrate that.”
Philanthropy has always played a pivotal role in the system of higher education in the United States. Tuition revenue simply cannot cover the actual cost of educating students, and alternate funding must fill the gap. At public schools where state funding has covered a smaller and smaller proportion of the total cost, greater philanthropy can balance the scales, relieving the pressure on families. But it takes work to get that.
One element Douglas sees as a distinguishing factor of schools like Harvard and Yale is the institutional awareness about the importance of giving.
“And they probably get that it is not only the responsibility of the development office or institutional advancement office,” Douglas said. “It’s all our responsibilities — from the president to the facilities person.”
Like with so many things, developing the right culture is a key first step.
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