Syracuse University is about to tackle its biggest fund-raising campaign ever – perhaps two or three times bigger than its largest campaign to date – of one-third of $1 billion.

The university does not plan to officially announce the exact goal for another 12 to 18 months, but Chancellor Nancy Cantor and Senior Vice President of Institutional Advancement Tom Walsh confirmed in an interview in her office that the campaign, which will give a much needed boost to the university’s endowment, is in its ‘nucleus phase.’

‘Private universities like Syracuse are very dependent on tuition, so we need to increase our current endowment of about $800 million to help control tuition,’ Cantor said.

An endowment consists of funds or property donated to an institution as a source of income. Schools comparable to Syracuse, like Duke University, usually have endowments of more than $2 billion.

‘We are seeing an increase overall in billion-dollar campaigns,’ said Rae Goldsmith, vice president of communications and marketing at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. ‘It would not be out of the question for Syracuse. A lot of schools are even talking about $2 billion campaigns now.’

Currently, the university as a whole is working together to plan exactly what to do with the money raised and starting a base fund of donations to build momentum and excitement before going public.

Two Syracuse deans said each individual school will be responsible for raising a specified percentage of the whole goal when it is officially announced.

Diane Murphy, dean of the School of Human Services and Health Professions, said the campaign is projected to last approximately 10 years.

‘When we reach 40 percent of what we think is a good goal, we will set exactly what the goal will be,’ Walsh said. ‘We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves by publicly declaring a number just yet.’

The University of Southern California raised almost three times its projected $1 billion goal in its last 10-year campaign. USC’s senior vice president of university advancement, Alan Kreditor, said tripling their goal took triple the work, and it is very possible for Syracuse to reach $1 billion if the effort is put forth.

In order to support its Scholarship in Action campaign, Cantor said, the university must raise money to reach their three goals: to improve faculty quality and hiring, to improve scholarship and access to education for students of all financial backgrounds and to improve experience to engage with the world broadly defined.

‘(Walsh) and I are going to travel around the country to visit with key supporters to ask to help take our vision to another level, critique it and go back and forth with ideas,’ Cantor said.

The fund-raising campaign relates directly to the Soul of Syracuse campaign announced last year, Walsh said.

‘We want to build on historical strengths and make funds permanently available. There are three steps to our success: establish a clean vision for accomplishments, respect the institution’s history and test our capacity,’ Walsh said.

The last large campaign Syracuse engaged in, Walsh said, raised $315 million. He said when they get a definite idea of how much financial support they can expect for large donors, they will set the most aggressive and realistic goal for the current campaign.

‘Each individual school, like Newhouse or Arts and Sciences, is responsible for taking the broad vision collectively created, concretizing it to specific needs of the committee and to match those needs with the alumni’s,’ Cantor said.

Once specific ideas of what do to with the funds within each school are set, it will be up to the deans to make sure they become a reality.

Melvin Stith, the dean of the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, said in a phone call from his home in Tallahassee, Fla., that he expects the announcement to be publicized around March of 2006.

‘Right now, we’re talking to our corporate supporters like Xerox, Bank of America, investment houses in New York City; the places where our students usually end up when they graduate. The School of Management expects to raise most of our portion of the money from these places, as well as other alumni,’ Stith said.

During his tenure at Florida State, Stith participated in two other major fund-raising campaigns that lasted around five to seven years each.

‘Florida State announced their last major campaign on Sept. 10, 2001. It was suspended immediately after Sept. 11 for respect and because the goal would have been impossible to reach with the decline in the economy,’ Stith said.

Goldsmith said a typical campaign is seven years, with the first two or three considered the ‘quiet phase.’

‘Most money comes from major donors. Thirty to 40 percent could be bequests of wills, planned gifts, and these would be gathered during the quiet phase,’ Goldsmith said.

Later, gifts that come after a public announcement, are from foundations, successful alumni, people connected to the institution, the community and people inspired by a goal or project that the institution is working on, Goldsmith said.

‘Ten years from now, we’ll probably be onto our next campaign. If our goal set, after we raise the first 40 percent, is not reached by the deadline we set, we’ll just keep going until it is,’ Cantor said.

‘If we set a goal realistically, we will meet it. It will be tough, but realistic,’ Walsh said.

 

Published on October 30, 2005 at 12:00 pm