The Art of the Giant Campaign

University of Michigan

Tamara Rogers and Jerry May entered the fundraising record books this fall. Rogers led the Harvard University campaign that reeled in $9.6 billion, smashing the $6.2 billion mark Stanford had set with its drive that ended in 2012.

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A few weeks later, May’s campaign at the University of Michigan cleared $5 billion, a new high for a public university.

Both Rogers and May are stepping down from their posts after decades-long careers at their respective institutions. Rogers, who graduated from Harvard in 1974, first joined the university as an assistant in the student employment office. She’s leaving to work as a consultant and spend more time with family. May is retiring after nearly 40 years in higher-education fundraising, with almost three decades at Michigan.

Rogers and May talked to the Chronicle about the keys to their campaigns:

A booming stock market. “I recommend that to everyone,” Rogers says.

Donors who were rested and ready. Harvard (No. 4) hadn’t run a comprehensive campaign since 1999, an effort that raised $2.65 billion. “In a funny way, there was almost pent-up demand,” Rogers says, of the campaign’s 2013 launch. “Volunteers certainly weren’t feeling exhausted or fatigued in any way.”

Engaged leadership. Drew Gilpin Faust, who assumed the Harvard presidency in 2007, worked early in her tenure to forge relationships with the deans and other academic leaders who would be key to the campaign, Rogers says. (Faust retired on July 1.)

At Michigan (No. 38), academic department heads and deans were also key to the campaign, which launched publicly in 2013. Deans often dedicate about 20 to 40 percent of their time to fundraising during a campaign, May says.

Indeed, when Michigan provosts and deans are hired, they are evaluated as fundraisers, with May helping to recruit and screen them. Other officials consider whether candidates are good academic leaders, May says. His job is to “assess whether this person is going to be a good fundraiser.”

A digital-first approach. Harvard’s campaign organizers created a case statement but were not wedded to it. “Many institutions are wondering about the value of case statements in a time when digital communications are very mutable and changeable as one goes along,” Rogers says.

An inclusive and decentralized campaign structure. The drive was Harvard’s first to involve every school on campus, and each made its goal. “Each dean pitched in to figure out what was needed for their school and to identify their priorities and donors in advance,” Rogers says.

A small-gift push. Near the end of the campaign, Rogers says, there was “a surge of giving for undergraduate scholarships and a lot of people encouraging each other to give. That was real momentum.”

At Michigan, students gave $2.3 million, largely through social-media and crowdfunding efforts.

An army of volunteers. More than 40 committees, staffed by more than 1,400 volunteers working at all levels, helped drive Harvard’s effort.

Michigan, which had 1,600 people outside the college help with the campaign, had success recruiting wealthy donors to volunteer. They made introductions, hosted get-togethers, and even made solicitations. “The more engaged they got, the more money they gave,” May says.

Altogether, volunteers donated nearly $1.6 billion.

Donors who weren’t alumni. At Harvard, the campaign committees of eight schools had at least one co-chair who was not an alumnus of that school and was not married to one, Rogers says. This helped spur giving directed beyond a single school: Most of the gifts of $10 million or more supported more than one school. Ten percent of giving over all came from donors who hadn’t attended Harvard.

Michigan had success with non-alumni parents. Several hundred gave $100,000 or more. “I think that will scale up even larger in the future,” May says.

Alamy

Strong International Fundraising

Michigan targeted donors living outside the United States. In fiscal 2018 alone, international donors gave or pledged $33.3 million.

People from 173 countries donated to Harvard’s campaign, reflecting the institution’s global profile. The university identified campaign volunteers in many countries and organized Your Harvard events across America and the world that featured panels of speakers and messages from Faust.

The events were not explicitly focused on fundraising but aimed to make far-flung alumni feel connected to the university and the campaign.

Rogers’s team also sought the advice of philanthropists in some nations where charitable giving is a new trend. “We were able to bring in those philanthropists and discuss the campaign and take their advice about how to work in their setting in order to bring people close to Harvard.”

Staffing up — with the right people. When May started his fundraising career at Michigan in 1979, he remembers the development department taking up half an office floor — with probably about 30 staff members total. Today, there are roughly 550. “That’s been a huge change,” May says.

Both Rogers and May say the key to any campaign is hiring — and retaining — the right staff. Fundraisers have to be good with people but also strategic about which donors they invest time with, May says. They must also find creative ways to woo donors, particularly those who aren’t likely to give.

Michigan and other colleges worked with the Council for Advancement and Support of Education to develop a “competency model” to guide fundraising hiring. The model suggests that during interviews candidates should be asked how they would handle different fundraising scenarios.

For its campaign, Harvard hired additional fundraisers to focus on gifts of $10 million or more and to solicit contributions that benefit the entire university or projects that covered more than one school, such as stem-cell research or behavioral-economics scholarship.

In a hot job market, and with the Boston area full of big hospitals and colleges, attrition proved a constant challenge. “We lost people all along the way,” Rogers says.

Rogers, who worked as a recruiter in the 1990s, doesn’t always look for traditional candidates. “Hiring people who come from admissions, from finance, or consulting, from a range of different backgrounds can be very, very successful,” she says. “They can also bring new thinking; they can be imaginative.”

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the year Tamara Rogers graduated from Harvard. It was 1974, not 1970.