VIII. FUNDRAISING CAPABILITY

The vitality and success of the just completed campaign reveal the remarkable strength achieved by Wesleyan’s fundraising organization - both volunteer and professional. Our goal now must be to become one of the most successful fundraising schools among our peers to offset our relatively small endowment per student and to fund the initiatives of the current plan. We will build on the foundation established in the Wesleyan Campaign to further develop our organizational structure and communications program. We have great capacity to expand the number of our donors and the size of their gifts.

Since the close of the Campaign, we shifted resources considerably, eliminating positions, reallocating responsibilities, and strengthening the ties among important operations within University Relations. WAF remains the centerpiece for the future. Our work raises the question of whether Wesleyan should substantially increase its investment in University Relations, with the expectation of receiving gift income equal to at least twice the investment in the short term and more than 10:1 in ten years.

Our current ratio of dollars raised to investment is approximately 5:1. We believe there is still fertile ground for fundraising growth. A preliminary look at our data base shows that we still have untapped potential capacity of over $400 million from donors who have not yet given up to their capacity. Therefore, an investment of $3 - $5 million over the next three to five years should yield a return of $9 - $25 million in four to eight years. Recognizing that successful fundraising depends on the positive engagement of a broad spectrum of alumni and parents, these funds should be invested broadly across the university relations organization, and even beyond.

We have explored three different fundraising scenarios for the next ten years. The first projects what would happen if we proceeded with current levels of investment in fundraising. These fundraising levels would allow us to fund current operations, generate an operating surplus beginning in 2007/08, and raise new monies for strategic initiatives. However, they would not be sufficient to fund all of our strategic priorities. The second scenario assumes an additional investment in University Relations that would yield additional gifts. And the third scenario simply adds to the second scenario an additional fundraising goal of $31.1 million in 2005/06, rising over five years until reaching $44.9 million. During the next few months we will explore the implications of these alternatives further so as to determine which course to follow.

There is no doubt, however, that to achieve our goals, we will engage more alumni, parents, and friends in ways that are helpful to the university and rewarding to the individual. We are exploring ways to create councils or working groups on topics of interest to alumni and parents. We will replace the Campaign Council with a development committee that will work with the president and vice president of university relations and in consultation with senior staff to help determine individual strategies for project-based fundraising and for very large gifts. An immediate challenge is how to prioritize post-campaign priorities for fundraising: current operations (through an increased WAF for Fund for Excellence model), Campus Renewal Fund, endowment, and restricted dollars for future projects.

There are donors in America who have made extraordinarily large gifts to universities, although rarely to colleges. Very large gifts to Wesleyan’s endowment would be truly transformative. Without unrealistic hopes that could compromise Wesleyan’s day-to-day financial stability, we should nonetheless develop a complete business plan to let potential donors appreciate how large the impact of transformative gifts would be at Wesleyan.