How One Small Liberal-Arts College Is Revamping Its Fundraising

Photo by Charles Cahoon and Ron James

Julie Tucker graduated from Bennington College in 1989. She stayed in touch with a close-knit group of friends over the years but lost her connection to the college. She never went to a reunion and wasn’t a donor. Yet in 2015 she re-established ties with her alma mater.

That year the school organized an event to raise money for a scholarship honoring a former instructor and later expanded it to a second scholarship honoring an alumnus who was an AIDS activist. For the inaugural event and every year since, Bennington alumni get together and collaborate to write, produce, and perform six short plays in 24 hours.

Tickets sell for $60 to $15,000, with most people choosing to pay $150. The college created the high-priced tiers (including multiple tickets and a cocktail reception with the president) to allow for larger gifts.

Tucker, an Emmy-winning casting director, has directed one of the plays each year.

“I was able to give back with my time, energy, and availability,” she says. “I think there is something unique and remarkable about participation as a way to give.”

Traditional fundraising can be alienating, but the plays are different, she says. They offer a visceral experience. And working with professionals and amateurs on such a tight timeline is a lot of fun.

Plus, the money raised — $160,000 so far — goes to specific scholarship programs. “It reconnects you to why you were there to begin with,” she says. “And it can lead to further financial giving.”

Though Tucker hasn’t donated to the college yet, it’s a high priority for the future.

The 24-hour plays are just one of Bennington’s recent efforts to diversify its sources of donations and tap into the interests and values of community members — part of a new strategic plan that Mariko Silver began after she was appointed president, in 2013. The plan, which focused on financial sustainability, among other things, has led to changes on the college’s Board of Trustees, a shift in how Bennington engages alumni, and a new focus on its core mission.

The Vermont-based college counts many well-known writers and artists among its graduates and faculty members. Its emphasis on self-directed learning made it a pioneer in progressive higher education when it was founded, in 1932.

Despite its arts focus and progressive origins, the college had taken a traditional approach to engaging graduates through an alumni association. But few alumni attended reunions. “It was not working,” says Paige Bartels, senior vice president for strategy, philanthropy, and partnerships. The association was disbanded in the 1990s.

Recently, though, the college started rethinking how to involve alumni. It created alumni cooperatives during the 2014-15 academic year. The cooperatives, now in eight areas across the country, are run by local volunteers, who decide how to interact with their alma mater.

As Bennington reimagines its fundraising, Bartels says, “we are really thinking about the strengths of the institution.”

Facing Strong Headwinds

Bennington, with fewer than 800 students and about 13,000 alumni, faces the same challenges that confront small liberal-arts colleges across the country. Many other similar colleges are struggling to maintain enrollment and bolster their endowments. Since 2010, 34 private nonprofit colleges have closed, according to the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

These institutions face plenty of challenges, says Will Wooton, a former president of Sterling College in Vermont, and the author of Good Fortune Next Time: Life, Death, Irony and the Administration of Very Small Colleges. The number of college-age students has been shrinking, while big universities have grown larger and more popular, “sucking up a lot of the students,” he says. So, to attract students, many small colleges discount their tuition, eating into their endowments, he says.

“Those headwinds are out there,” Bartels says. “That is part and parcel why we think creatively.”

Although Bennington has an international reputation and many wealthy alumni (for years it was America’s most expensive college), its endowment is small — just $17 million in 2013, when Silver became president. That year it discounted its tuition by 59 percent and fundraised just $5.7 million overall.

Bennington College

Turning the Tide

Today things are looking up. Bennington has averaged about $16 million a year in annual giving over the past five years. It started a $150-million campaign in 2014 with the goal of adding $100 million to its endowment. It has raised $92 million since 2015, and the endowment has reached $51 million.

The increase in donations results from a number of factors, says Matt Rizzo, vice president for institutional advancement. The college developed its fundraising priorities with input from alumni and other community members; board members brought in several large donations; and the college increased its fundraising staff.

But Bennington remains aware of the challenges it faces.

“Too many colleges stick to an old model,” says Audrey Kintzi, vice president for development and alumni relations at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota. It’s a liberal-arts college that expanded, adding a graduate program and online-learning initiatives. “The number of donors is falling off; they are not giving like they used to,” she says.

Like Bennington, St. Mary’s has involved alumni and people in the community. It has a work-study program that places students at a local business. And it looks for opportunities to get alumni on campus and engaged with students and one another.

“The hands-on stuff is critical — having the opportunity to come back and be a part of the school, to feel it, taste it, smell it,” Kintzi says. The college tries to engage everyone, regardless of how much they can give. It seems to be working: A recent campaign raised $73 million from more than 9,400 donors.

Bennington, to further engage donors, looks for ways to support students directly and even link them to donors. For example, students have to leave campus for seven weeks a year and often work at unpaid internships at arts organizations in big cities — a financial hardship for many students. So the college is finding ways to offset the costs.

Last year it won a grant from the Lucille Lortel Foundation for fellowships to support students seeking internships in theater in New York. “The school approached us.” says George Forbes, executive director of the foundation. “They had this interesting idea about creating access and opportunity, something we truly believe in.”

Though the grant was small, $30,000 a year, the foundation is committed to its relationship with the students.

Forbes and other staff members meet with the students three times during each term to answer questions and discuss off-Broadway theater. The foundation also gives the students tickets to about a dozen plays, and invites students to dinner with the entire board. “We try to squeeze in everything we can,” Forbes says. Through the modest grant, Bennington is building a relationship that it hopes will last for years.

Another of the college’s programs gives aid to students interning at museums in New York through a grant from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. A well-known abstract expressionist painter, the late Frankenthaler attended Bennington and supported the college throughout her life.

Like the Lortel foundation, the Frankenthaler does not just write a check. In addition to its annual $100,000 grant for the program, the executive director, Elizabeth Smith, a former museum curator, teaches a weekly class in the foundation’s conference space. “We are all trying to give them exposure and knowledge of various aspects of the art world at the undergraduate level,” says. “It’s a wonderful opportunity.”

In 2015 the foundation gave $5 million to Bennington’s visual-arts program. “Because Bennington was Helen’s alma mater, and she was passionate about the school, it was not a difficult decision for our board,” says Smith. “We should be involved with Bennington deeply.”

Focus on Core Strengths Pays Off

Bennington’s focus on the arts in its fundraising pays off in other ways, too. In 2018 the college began its Art for Access program, which encourages donations of artworks that can be sold to fund scholarships. Many of its graduates are artists or have art collections. The college started the program by auctioning five works from its collection, including one by Frankenthaler. The sale generated more than $3.1 million and prompted gifts of new works of art from longstanding supporters and new donors as well as a significant bequest of an artwork.

The college also recently received a $4-million gift to support the Poetry at Bennington program, which brings established poets to the campus for short-term residencies that include readings and workshops with students.

“We are lucky,” says Bartels, the senior vice president. “Our faculty and alumni are enormously influential and successful artists, and that has really attracted different kinds of gifts.”

In order to survive, small colleges need to look beyond their graduates, says Wooton. “In no cases can the alumni body support these places,” he says. According to a 2018 survey by U.S. News & World Report, on average, only 11 percent of graduates give to their colleges.

Colleges should build ties to their communities, says Wooton. They can recruit local leaders to the governing board and pursue initiatives and partnerships that strengthen institutional connections to the community.

Bennington has done just that and gone a step further. Its county has lost 4 percent of its population in the past decade, and some small businesses have closed. Poverty in the county is at 12 percent. The college has a history of working with neighboring towns. For example, it worked with residents to address a water-contamination problem and provided tutoring at a local high school. It is involved in a nearby redevelopment project, too. And this spring the college received a $1-million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to work on food-security issues in the area.

The college is reimagining its network, looking beyond alumni, Bartels says. “We are asking how Bennington can engage those with a shared mission.”