Presidents of Small Colleges Bank on Fundraising to Survive

This story was originally published in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

This past fall, not long after learning that this year’s budget would be lower than last year’s by about 10 percent, or $1.5 million, Davis & Elkins College got a welcome surprise from its president, G.T. Smith, known to everyone here as Buck: A longtime trustee and his family’s foundation had just pledged $25 million to the 800-student college.

That would be a big gift for any institution, but it’s huge for a college as small as Davis & Elkins, which occupies a series of steep hillsides overlooking downtown Elkins and, before the announcement, had an endowment of just over $30 million.

The trustee, James S. McDonnell III, made $10 million available right away, with the rest doled out in a series of $5-million matches as the college works to raise $35 million from others. The campaign, configured around Mr. McDonnell’s willingness to contribute in a way that would have the most possible leverage, is due to wrap up in 2018 and is being called Secure the Future.

The gift was a vote of confidence in Davis & Elkins in a year that saw the high-profile fight to save Sweet Briar College, which raised questions about the fiscal health of many small institutions and made fundraising even more challenging for some. But the gift also highlights the complexity of fundraising at small colleges, where presidents have an outsize role in attracting donations — one Marjorie Hass, president of Austin College in Sherman, Tex., sums up as being “chief storyteller.”

Depending on the week, “fundraising is between 25 and 75 percent of my time,” says Ms. Hass. “Some of that time is spent traveling from place to place. Some of it is working with donors. Some of it is ‘friend raising.’ And some of it is huddled up with my development officers strategizing.”

“The faculty want you on campus,” says Bryon L. Grigsby, president of Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pa. He usually does two fundraising swings through different parts of the country every quarter, he says. “People want you at this recital and that game, but you need to be off campus so much to be doing development well.”

It’s also a role that many other people on the campus don’t understand. Sharon D. Herzberger, president of Whittier College in Whittier, Calif., was first asked to get involved in fundraising while she was a psychology professor at Trinity College in Connecticut. “I was terrified, because my only fundraising experience before that was going door to door as a high-school student.”

At the college-president level, though, fundraising is altogether different. “It’s forming relationships with people and finding out ways that they want to make a difference, rather than twisting people’s arms,” Ms. Herzberger says. “It’s matching people with the opportunity that would please them. It’s a fun activity, and it has such an impact on an institution.”

Here on the Davis & Elkins campus, Mr. Smith is as likely to be chatting with a high-school student and her parents making an admissions visit — “He’s my secret weapon,” says Sandy Neel, director of admission — as he is to be catching up with the chairman of a local bank. (“Buck has taken the major-gifts program to a whole new level,” says Carol M. Schuler, vice president for development.)

Mr. Smith was previously president of Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and of Bethany College in Bethany, W.Va., and he’s in his second stint as president of Davis & Elkins — his second unpaid stint, since he’s never accepted a salary here. He retired in 2013 after six years in the job, during which enrollment jumped from 511 to 800. He returned this past summer as interim president when his successor left to become president of the Appalachian College Association. Now 80, Mr. Smith has promised that he and his wife, Joni, will stay until Mr. McDonnell’s gift is matched or until the board finds another successor.

A 5-Step Approach

In his spacious office with a view over Elkins, Mr. Smith insists that he has “never identified myself as a fundraiser.” But in the development world, he was among the pioneers of “moves management,” a five-step approach to seeking major gifts where each step is a “move” to be managed. The steps are identifying potential donors, finding information about them, gauging their interests, getting them involved, and persuading them to invest.

But he’s also quick to cite the slogan printed on a box of Eaton letter paper he was given when he graduated from high school: “To get a letter, send a letter.” The first rule of philanthropy, he says, is that if you don’t ask for anything, you won’t get anything. Beyond that, the trick is paying attention: “We listen to what peoples’ passions are, and try to hear where there’s a connection.”

Just recently, he says, Davis & Elkins reconnected with David H. Morrison, a 1979 graduate and retired Boeing Company vice president. No one from the college’s small development staff had ever visited him, Ms. Schuler says, but after he had a long conversation with Bryan Wagoner, an assistant professor of religious studies and philosophy, Mr. Morrison suggested creating a new Center for Faith and Public Policy and volunteered to support it. He has since joined the college’s Board of Trustees.

“Large gifts are so idiosyncratic,” says Robert R. Lindgren, who has been president of Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va., for the past 10 years and before that was vice president for development and alumni relations at the Johns Hopkins University. “Each is its own case study. What’s the dynamic? What’s the family? Who’s the dean?”

“There’s an old bromide in fundraising: People give to people,” Mr. Lindgren adds. “But people give to people because of a vision about where an institution might be heading.” That’s why big donors to small colleges typically expect to talk to the president — “they want to be reassured about the vision and the future of the institution.” And he cautions that “if folks lose confidence in a vision, that can affect fundraising.”

“Leadership is important in any institution, but particularly in smaller ones it’s hugely important, because we don’t have a very long bench,” he says.

He notes that when he left, Hopkins employed about 340 people in development-related jobs — as many employees as Randolph-Macon has altogether. The 1,400-student college has 11 development officers, he says.

In the aftermath of Sweet Briar’s crisis, he says, he and the development officers have been repeatedly asked, “How do you sustain the college’s business model?” That’s understandable, Mr. Lindgren says, because many people who give large amounts do so with a thought to creating something that will outlive them. The idea that a college might instead close is alarming.

Mr. Grigbsy, of Moravian, says he’s also hearing “more questions about the value of the liberal arts, and is it translating into jobs or graduate school?” And donors have learned to ask how much backing colleges get from their own trustees, he says. “That’s the first thing I’ll hear from a donor — what’s your trustee support?” (Many small colleges expect all board members to give regularly.)

A key to long-term success, Mr. Lindgren says, is having a development program that reaches potential donors at all levels. “In this age, where you have these gigantic gifts that are the largest part of campaigns, you have to remember that they all start somewhere. I think Mike Bloomberg’s first gift to Johns Hopkins was five dollars,” he says, referring to Michael R. Bloomberg, the media mogul and former New York City mayor who has given the university more than a billion dollars.

Ms. Hass, of Austin College, agrees. “In the annual fund, part of what you’re investing in is building up a relationship — your annual-fund donors will be your multimillion-dollar donors of the future.”

She also works closely with the development officer who focuses on planned giving. “Most endowment growth is funded by estate gifts,” she says. “Those are less glamorous, and they’re not likely to yield results during the tenure of the people who raise the money. But they’re absolutely essential for the future of the institution.”

“At a small college every gift counts, it literally does,” says Ms. Herzberger, the Whittier president. That can be an advantage, she says, when competing with larger institutions for donors. “We may not get the same press, but we do have the ability to say, Your gift can really have a transformational impact here. You give a million dollars to Whittier, that makes a big difference.”

But a small college’s lack of visibility can also be a hindrance. Maria M. Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif., says raising an institution’s public profile is important because the colleges with the best reputations raise the most money.

“I do an enormous amount of speaking, and a lot of that is about raising visibility,” says Ms. Klawe, who has been president for 10 years and has vowed not to retire until Harvey Mudd is as well known as Caltech and MIT.

Here at Davis & Elkins, Mr. Smith isn’t talking about retiring either. In addition to trimming the budget to keep spending in line with revenue, he has persuaded the board to swear off borrowing and pay for all improvements with donations. He regularly walks potential donors around the hilly campus, where they meet the students and faculty members and, not coincidentally, see classrooms that need upgrades, floors that need new carpet, a roof-mounted air-conditioning unit that is long overdue for replacement. “A donor would say, Yes, for $20,000, $40,000, let’s make this difference,” says Mr. Smith. “Then right on down the hall are four more classrooms the way they used to be. Someone else will say, I’ll take this one on.”

“Buck,” says Ms. Schuler, the development vice president, “has a remarkable ability to connect with people.”

Lawrence Biemiller writes about a variety of usual and unusual higher-education topics. Reach him at lawrence.biemiller@chronicle.com.