<p>I’m surprised that no one so far has mentioned that many of the top schools on the list are in the midst of major fundraising drives. </p>
<p>Also, while most schools might rely on support from institutions, alum influence is still the main driving force for donations. It would be a serious mistake to assume that alums only account for 26% of an average school’s fundraising amount. Institutions and corporations are often influenced by alums of the recipient school. </p>
<p>Berkeley is a great example of a school that has raised an unusually high amount of money this year through alum support in a fundraising effort. It has no med school, but has very dedicated alum for a public school. 65% of its donations come from alum compared to 5% or so at schools such as UC Davis.</p>
<p>Columbia, Penn, and Duke are all in the midst of major fundraising campaigns. I wonder when UChicago will jumpstart its next major campaign and why there hasn’t been a single campaign for the past decade or so.</p>
<p>Thanks truth123. As I suspected, alumni donations and the per capital figure is only a fraction of the story. Ostensibly, donations from foundations and non-alumni really seem to lag at UChicago. As like last years thread, I’m really curious to know why this is the case, and no promising theories have yet been raised in this thread. There were some misleading opinions (eg phuriku and poplicola) focusing too much on alumni donations - which are only part of the larger picture. Any other ideas?</p>
<p>My opinion was not misleading. Fundraising is a multifacet process. Having a strong medical center certainly benefits Hopkins’ fundraising endeavors. Having strong engineering and industry ties benefits Stanford’s fundraising efforts. High alumni donation rate drives a large portion of Princeton’s fundraising machine. I don’t think you are right to discount the important of these factors. I also don’t think you are methodically sound to find a single reason or develop a single theory to explain these fundraising discrepancies. I was merely talking about a core component of an institution’s fundraising endeavors (alumni donation). Rather than solely focusing on the amount, it is important to look at donation per alum instead.</p>
<p>Your most recent elaboration bolsters your earlier point - that alumni donation is important, but a piece of the puzzle (and certainly, a piece that’s quite significant). (Your earlier posts, at least to me, didn’t seem to explore fundraising as a multi-faceted process, but rather focused on the alumni donations piece pretty much exclusively). </p>
<p>There seem to be systemic deficiencies in UChicago’s fundraising performance. Perhaps, as others have mentioned, its because alumni interest bleeds into foundational support, and if UChicago alums are more apathetic, the foundational support will be too. Maybe that’s the reason.</p>
<p>You also raised the issue of fundraising campaigns, and you’re correct that many of these schools are in major campaigns. The timing of a campaign - as well as the existence of a campaign - is of key significance. Usually, UChicago plays catch-up here too, because it’s major campaigns start AFTER the campaigns at other major universities. Here’s last year’s article on the issue:</p>
<p>As seen there, the development office itself has issues at UChicago. THe unexpected resignation of a key leader in the office probably isn’t good, and the fact that the last campaign lagged and was extended isn’t a good sign either. </p>
<p>It’ll be great if UChicago announces a new $5B campaign. The last campaign was bold too, but unlike many of its peers - who generally exceed the goals of a campaign (see Stanford, Penn, Yale, etc.) - UChicago doesn’t have the best track record here, at least over the past 15 years or so.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why looking at donation amount per alum matters more than the total amount for a major research university. Having a giving culture is great, but at the end of the day, major research universities want as much cash as possible to fund as much cutting edge research as possible - money’s the lifeblood of the institution.</p>
<p>So, if Hopkins has a steady supply of unrestricted money from Mayor Bloomberg, but less donation per alum, I’m not sure that matters too much, frankly. As long as Hopkins gets its $500M per year and rising, it’s fundraising is generally successful.</p>
<p>For similarly sized institutions with similar goals, I think the total amount of money raised per year matters a heck of a lot. That money relates to how much cutting edge research you can do, additional faculty you can bring in, etc.</p>
<p>Schools at the end of the day, want MORE - more money, more research, more lab space, etc. Whether the source of more comes from a few mega wealthy alums or many alums matters less than the amount accrued, year after year after year. Moreover, the fact that UChicago lags bigtime in getting government funds certainly doesn’t help either.</p>
Correction: Duke just announced a major fundraising campaign at the end of 2012 and it officially kicks off in the Summer of 2013 I believe. Obviously, the school has been securing commitments in gifts and donations for the past year as part of the “silent phase” of the campaign. I expect Duke’s fundraising numbers to be extremely high (probably top 5) when the CEA issues its report for the 2013 FY.</p>
<p>For one U. of C.'s med school is relatively small. It’s also likely that fewer Chicago alums are MD’s compared to other universities: Penn, Columbia, JHU etc. There can be little doubt that MD’s are big sources of contributions. Take a look at UCSF - $329M. </p>
<p>On another note, $255M would solve most LAC’s money worries for a very long time.</p>
<p>rhg3rd: Not sure whether MD giving rates is a key factor - I’d imagine most of the money given to medical schools/plants is from foundations, not necessarily specific MDs. Most of the money to UCSF probably does not come from MD alums, but probably from major foundations interested in giving to a hospital system.</p>
<p>UChicago, institutionally, is about the same size as Duke, Yale, and larger than MIT or Princeton. All these schools exceed (or, in Princeton’s case, at least match) UChicago’s fundraising efforts.</p>
<p>Agree with Cue7. As a physician, I know many if not most of MDs are not that well off especially after all the loans they have to pay back…and they don’t start making any “real” income until they are in their 30s. In general, they do not have the “deep” pockets that technology gurus, entrepreneurs, hedge-fund managers, Wall-street types, or CEOs to make a big dent in terms of individual contributions…there may be exceptions…but they are rare.</p>
<p>Also many of the Chicago grads tend to be in academic/research medicine which may not be as lucrative as private practice.</p>
<p>I would dare say that UoC alumni are not nearly as succesful than their peers when it comes to the private, non-academia sector. However I think this will change in due time, in the next decade or so, due to the changing nature of current UoC students and recent alums.</p>
<p>As seen in other posts, success of alumni is only one piece of the puzzle. It looks as if donations from foundations, corporations, and non-alumni are big, big pieces of the puzzle too. Presumably, for whatever reason, UChicago lags there, too.</p>
<p>I dunno ManhattanBoro - Morton Schapiro’s been at NU for 3 or 4 years now, and their fundraising performance lags even behind UChicago’s. They only raised $250M last year, and, organizationally, they are larger than UChicago (larger hospital system, larger college, more schools, etc.).</p>
<p>Maybe it’s something about the midwest that dampens giving? All the major midwestern universities (UChicago, NU, and Wash U) struggle. Maybe most of the foundations/corps are based on the east and west coasts, and just give more to universities there?</p>
<p>Does anyone know if targeted gifts are included in the overall generic fund drives? For example, was the $300 million Booth gift counted in that total, or the new Arts Center, Library Addition, Named Research Buildings, Hospitals, etc.? I think I heard they are not, but I am not sure.</p>
<p>I’m no expert idad but I think Booth “pledged” $300 million to the UChicago so presumably the school collections chunks of that pledge gradually rather than all at once so it gets counted little by little.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t give money to my grown children directly to go out but if I were to babysit my grandchildren (wishful thinking because we don’t have any yet) so they can have a night out I would indirectly be doing so. Doesn’t it work the same way with targeted gifts? Cue7’s Midwestern mentality point may be on the right track.</p>
<p>The article doesn’t do much in the way of confidence-building. It discusses the relatively paltry amount UChicago raised last year ($255M) and mentioned the school is in it’s “silent phase” of the new capital campaign.</p>
<p>No target goal for the new campaign was given.</p>
<p>Hopefully, the campaign will be in the $4.5 - $5B range to keep up with the Joneses (Penn just raised $4B, Yale raised $4b years ago, Stanford raised $6B), but, I’m not too hopeful. </p>
<p>The new campaign needs to be big - especially with a few years of lackluster fundraising going on for the school. It’s not inspiring that in a “silent phase” year of fundraising, the school only raised $255M.</p>