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January 9, 1997

Carol Carter

University Times:

How would you characterize the current state of Pitt fundraising?

Carter:

Pitt's fundraising program is certainly long-established and has a good history to it. Like any program, it's had ups and downs. But I think Pitt has a lot of untapped potential, and there are many people who are waiting to see how things are going to unfold [at the University]. They want to be supportive but first they want to wait and see how the new chancellor is taking on his responsibilities, etcetera.

One thing that I believe is a key to fundraising is getting a group of volunteers involved in your program, so that they feel a sense of ownership in the projects you're undertaking. And volunteers make gifts. Then they ask others to make gifts, and then some of those donors become volunteers too. And you build the program that way. That's one thing I hope I can do: help Pitt build its volunteer base so it's not just a staff-driven type of fundraising program.

Foundation support for Pitt remains strong, but as Chancellor Nordenberg has said, individual givers are a "greatly untapped" source of contributions here. At Carnegie Mellon, one of your specialties has been individual giving. Will this be something you'll address here? Exactly. There are finite numbers of foundations and corporations, but there's an infinite number of potential individual friends of Pitt. Some of them will be alumni, some will be parents of students, some will be people in the community who care about the institution. It's almost limitless. And that, as I see it, is the future of fundraising for Pitt and almost any other not-for-profit organization.

Donations to Pitt totaled $41 million last year, an all-time high here. But according to the Fisher Report [prepared by a panel of education consultants headed by psychologist James L. Fisher], that figure was only half of what a university like Pitt should be raising each year. Does that sound like a fair criticism to you? I wouldn't like to say until I take a closer look at things. But I would think that an institution the size of Pitt could raise $80 million or more per year because there are so many points of potential support here for the external community. I don't know that anybody's ever come to an institution and doubled its annual support in one year — I don't think people should look at it with that kind of a timetable. But certainly, Pitt has great potential and I wouldn't think that that [$80 million per year] would be an outlandish figure for the Fisher Report to put on the table.

With state and federal funding sources drying up or remaining stagnant, how does that affect what you do? Well, that's why you have to lean on the institutions like the foundations and corporations that have supported you in the past, and then work on this almost unlimited resource of individual donors. Because the governmental types of support are certainly shrinking, you have to focus on areas where there is good potential.

More specifically, at this point I haven't examined exactly what Pitt is doing, but one of the things we fundraisers find is that if you ask most people why they haven't given before, it's because they haven't been asked. I would hope that at Pitt I can make sure that institutions and people get involved, see the needs we have, and come forward to support the University to the best of their ability.

Fundraisers have this thing, the various steps that you have to go through for fundraising. I like to think of it as a six-step process. The first step is identifying your prospects. The second is, you have to qualify your prospects — determine what their potential might be from some background research. You have to begin to cultivate your prospects, get them involved and interested in the institution, and find out what parts of the institution they would be most willing to support. Then you have to solicit them, as the fourth step. Next, you have to close on them to get a gift. And then sixth, you have to be good stewards of their support. Because I contend that the first gift is not the ultimate gift that a foundation or a corporation or an individual will give to Pitt. If you are good stewards of that first gift, then you can continue to cultivate them, soliciting, getting another gift, and once again stewarding that gift. It's a cycle that can build upon itself successfully.

At most universities, there are certain areas like athletics and professional schools that tend to attract more gifts than, say, the arts and sciences, which must be harder to raise funds for. How will you address that? There are programs that are more glitzy, perhaps, at any institution. I think you have to make sure that you have people working in each of the schools who can focus on their best prospects. And someone centrally — I would presume this will be my responsibility — has to be a clearing house, or referee, to determine what school or program has first dibs, let's say, at a prospect. You have to be fair so that the schools that have been the have-not schools have an opportunity to cultivate and solicit their best prospects. Then if they're not successful or if they don't take the opportunity, perhaps another school or department or college would have the opportunity to go after that prospect. Someone has to be the police chief or whatever to make sure that things are happening with the prospect, that the prospect isn't sort of over there sitting on a shelf and nobody's paying attention.

Deans are supposed to be advocates for their schools, but I would imagine you've got to restrain them at some point.

Sometimes you do. You don't want to put a heavy yoke on them but sometimes they have to be patient and wait to see if there is more potential for another school that doesn't have so many great prospects.

Do you have a strategic plan or any specific goals at this point for Institutional Advancement? I'll need to sit down with Mark early on and talk about the basic points of a strategic plan for Institutional Advancement. At this point, I don't have any specific goals. I certainly want to work with Mark Nordenberg, and he has some definite ideas, I'm sure, about the contacts that he has among the trustees. Certainly, we want to get the trustees extremely involved in this whole process as early as possible so that they can help us identify good new prospects, so that they can make their support available in an area or areas that they're interested in. Many of them, I would hope, will serve as volunteers to go out and ask others for support.

How would you gauge the level of trustee involvement in Pitt fundraising? I don't know the exact level of the Pitt trustee involvement. I know that there is great potential there and a number of people who want to be more involved in terms of giving. I've heard that through Mark. I think that the trustees have to lead the way at any institution, and that's one thing I've worked on at Carnegie Mellon. That's a major first step at any institution — your board needs to be supportive and very pro-active. I know that Mark wants to work on that very intently from the beginning.

Can you project when Pitt might launch its next, major capital fundraising campaign? I know that Pitt is anxious to move into another campaign. The last campaign was the [$225 million] bicentennial campaign, which ended not long after I left Pitt in 1989. I imagine some of the people who pledged during that time are just finishing paying off their pledges, so in the cycle of capital campaigns that's usually the way things work. You might be on for five or six or seven years, off for a couple of years while you're planning for the next one, and then moving forward toward the next campaign.

I think everybody at Pitt is probably ready for a new campaign as soon as the trustees and Mark Nordenberg and other officials feel that they can go forward and assure success. I mean, you need to have your ducks in a row. You need to have done the preparation to make sure that you are ready. But you don't want to drag your feet, either.

There's never a perfect time for a campaign, but I think that both Carnegie Mellon and Duquesne are further along [in their current capital campaigns] so the timing might be right for Pitt's campaign to start in a couple of years or in a year or so. I don't know when, exactly.

What was the attraction of this job for you? One attraction is that I live in the community and I know that the University of Pittsburgh has great potential and, professionally, I don't think that that potential has been reached or tapped in recent years.

Another attraction is Mark Nordenberg as chancellor. I believe he's a man who believes in Pitt No. 1 and puts his personal agenda in the No. 2 spot. That is the way we should look at working for non-profit institutions. They are No. 1 and we who work for them, our professional agendas are No. 2. Without question, Mark cares about Pitt as an institution and cares about its future. And I think that was the biggest attraction for me.

Filed under: Feature,Volume 29 Issue 9

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