Development Fund-Raising
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No Date
________________________________________________________________
development
Here in lovely
looking
for other ideas or gimicks that have been popular in
other places. What can you suggest?
Frederick
L. Thompson, PhD
American
Collegiate Insititute
My main advice would be to
get as much training as possible for the person, specifically in European
fund-raising, which is different from
Also, you must educate your
Board not to expect immediate results.
Laying the groundwork for donations is a very long-term process. Cultivating alumni can result in donations
many years down the road. So don't judge his or her effectiveness by the annual
bottom line of donations versus salary.
We find combining this role with alumni relations and public relations
is very logical. Ideally, the person
needs some clerical assistance as well.
Finally, you, yourself,
must give the development officer a lot of support, overtly. And the person
must be passionately committed to the school and its program if at all
possible.
Rick Spradling
We just appointed a
Director of Admission and Development.
It is a part time job, but the two areas cross over naturally. I would
envision in a few years separating the jobs, but it was an easy
"sell" to the board to fold the two in together. Our thinking is that
admission activities do
have
slow points in the year and that's when the focus will be on development. It is
not ideal, but it is a start. We are in the process of listing goals, tasks,
and prioritizing. I sent Karen Williams, our Director of Admission and
Development, to admission and development workshops over the summer. She would
be glad to network with others, I'm sure, and can be reached at <karenw@asb2.kappa.ro>
Really, the justification
is simple: All tuition driven schools could use sources of income other than
tuition to keep tuition increases lower, provide scholarships, more extensive
professional development, improve libraries and technology, add to facilities,
etc. etc. The most
successful
and enduring private schools in the States started development operations
thirty or forty years ago. Some of them now have endowments in the hundreds of
millions of dollars. Now that would be nice!
Regards, Fred Wesson
From: "Dr. William Gerritz" <bill@ASH.NL>
Organization:
Subject: Re: Development office
We did a little study last
year of revenue sources beyond tuition - annual giving, alumni solicitations,
and corporate grants. We did a cost benefit analysis of the first two and then
set them aside. The return on investment for ASH would be much too small. Plus
we would be investing precious time and energy of current staff. We could
simply increase tuition by .5 or 1
percent
and have more discretionary income without the hassle.
We did pursue corporate
giving and since June have landed four grants totaling 95,000 dollars. We
counted staff time in writing the grants and the return was 3,000 dollars per
staff hour!
Give me a phone call if you
want more on the particulars of our little study.
Bill
On the topic of
development: Frank Klein, Director of External Relations, Aiglon
College, told some of us at a workshop at ECIS last year that the initial costs
for setting up the development operation at Aiglon
were 37 cents on each dollar raised, and that in a mature operation, such as
the one he headed at the American School in Japan, the cost was 11 cents for
each dollar raised.
Those who might wish to
seek advice from Dr. Klein on start up of development operations can reach him
at: <fklein1@compuserve> (at least a year ago that was his email) or by
fax at 41-24-4957710, or by phone at 41 24-4951164.
My personal opinion is that
it is likely that initial investments, while not necessarily leading to large
amounts of funds raised at the beginning, are a good investment in the future
health of a school.
Fred Wesson, Director,