Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Donations, Fund-Raising, and Development

  • Establish Life Honorary Status for major donors and encourage more major donors
  • Solicit donations for classroom and facilities upgrades; put donors’ names on doors
  • Increase fund-raising efforts for arts productions
  • Seek corporate sponsorship
  • Involve wealthy business leaders on advisory councils to attract funds
  • Ask corporations to create scholarships
  • Encourage companies to support the college by providing supplies or money
  • Get future employers to pay costs of student education in career-oriented or vocational programs
  • Obtain corporate donations of maintenance supplies and equipment
  • Obtain computer lab donations; have corporations donate used personal computers for student use
  • Solicit donations or grants for staff development
  • Solicit corporate donations to make buildings handicap-accessible; place placards on buildings to acknowledge donors
  • Put public service announcements for donations on local or education television and radio channels
  • Solicit pro bono services from community businesses; offer courses to their employees
  • Ask local people to donate time to teach classes and volunteer their services
  • Obtain more local news coverage
  • Produce more publicity for college to attract more students and more donations
  • Increase use of students in Public Relations
  • Use trustees and other appropriate persons to improve community relations by participating in more community events
  • Establish quarterly goals for fund-raising
  • Pay internal fundraisers incentives based on achieving established targets (e.g., performance and funds raised)
  • Build alumni data base for fund-raising
  • Hire professional fund-raisers and pay them based on performance and funds raised
  • Ensure development positions are more than self-supporting or replace incumbents
  • Encourage departments to raise their own funds for projects outside the current budget
  • Have Foundation pay its own costs
  • Engage campus deans in fund-raising
  • Establish alumni fund-raising committees linked to schools or programs
  • Establish annual fund for college endowment
  • Develop program to increase Foundation income
  • Use alumni to solicit funds and other support from their communities
  • Initiate bequest giving
  • Use Trustees for fund-raising externally
  • Have local merchants become college boosters and provide discounts to those with college IDs
  • Establish a more effective grants office within the college
  • Hire a professional grant writer
  • Build relationships with foundations, grant administrators, etc.
  • Invest as appropriate (e.g., “seed money”) to develop sources for new contracts, foundation grants, etc.
  • Sell lists of student names and addresses (at registration, offer students the opportunity to take their names off the lists)
  • Participate in grocery store scrip and receipt programs for schools
  • Enhance current revenue with vocational education grant money
  • Pursue talk-show opportunities on local radio and television stations
  • Organize fund-raisers such as parties, balls, auctions, raffles, garage sales, book sales, concerts, bake sales, bingo games, etc.
  • Hold flea market on weekends
  • Involve popular faculty more in fund-raising and development
  • Sponsor a telethon

Curtsy while you’re thinking what to say. It saves time.
- Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

When patterns are broken, new worlds can emerge.
-Tali Kupferberg

3 comments:

  1. Private colleges and universities have pursued development activities as a means to supplement their costs for decades. Public colleges and universities are newer to the development field. Development of an ongoing stream of donations requires time to build. Institutions should monitor and ensure that their investments in development activities are yielding the results desired.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Glad you are enjoying the blog, Margaret. Gayla

    Gayla Kraetsch Hartsough, KH President

    ReplyDelete
  3. The following ideas were part of an email (October 3, 2009) from the Community College League of California (prepared by Scott Lay, President and Chief Executive Officer, Orange Coast College '94):

    -- Seek external support from large foundations
    -- Enhance college foundations and alumni outreach (in the State of California)

    ReplyDelete