American Attempts to ‘Reinvent Philanthropy’ at Australian University

By HOLLY HALL

When John Semmler left Cornell University for a fund-raising job at the University of Sydney,

in Australia, he quickly discovered that universities down under were well behind the times.

Many charities in Australia have become aggressive fund raisers in recent years, but few of the country’s 39 universities have kept up.

For many years, universities figured they didn’t need to worry about seeking contributions. Since the 1970’s, generous government support has made higher education virtually free to all citizens. While universities may have received an occasional gift or bequest from grateful alumni before that time, there had been little or no sustained fund raising.

“Australians just haven’t thought of higher education in terms of giving,” Mr. Semmler says, “and universities have missed an era in which many charities, in both Australia and America, became much more aggressive in fund raising.”

But now universities are facing cuts in government aid, and with more reductions looming, “we’ve had to reinvent the tradition of philanthropy,” says Dame Leonie Kramer, the chancellor of the University of Sydney, the country’s oldest institution of higher education.

Getting fund raising off the ground at the University of Sydney has been an uphill battle, however, according to both university officials and Mr. Semmler, who has returned to Sydney eight times since his departure in 1994 to provide fund-raising advice.

Now a fund-raising consultant based in Ithaca, N.Y., he says the overseas experience helped start a consulting career. When he left Australia, he was sought out by other Australian universities as well as by American charities.

When Mr. Semmler arrived in Sydney in 1992, the university could point to only one campus-wide fund-raising effort in four decades. In 1952, it sent its alumni direct-mail appeals asking them to give in honor of the university’s 100th anniversary. That campaign was a dismal failure.

“Sending solicitations out cost more than the university got back,” says Sam Ball, the former deputy vice chancellor, who recruited Mr. Semmler from his job as a senior fund raiser at Cornell. Since that disaster, the University of Sydney had not attempted any other fund-raising mailings, even though direct mail works well for many Australian charities.

The university made no effort to keep track of the whereabouts or career activities of its alumni, apart from records of their grades and other achievements during their time as students. As a result, Mr. Semmler walked into a fund-raising job in which he had next to no information about the institution’s most likely supporters.

Mr. Semmler also encountered other obstacles, including trouble winning the trust of University of Sydney officials, many of whom opposed the idea of bringing in foreign help, and a government-appointed board called the Senate, whose members had no experience in raising money and no intention of starting. “I wanted to change the governing structure to include others,” he says, “but I wasn’t successful. It wasn’t doable under the law.”

Another roadblock occurred when Mr. Semmler and Mr. Ball, then in charge of communications, tried to start an alumni association that could foster a closer relationship between the university and its graduates, thus encouraging them to give.

Mr. Ball took the idea to the university’s Senate, because it required a slight change in rules. “I got a lot of opposition,” he recalls. “They said ‘alumni’ was an American term.” But eventually the idea won approval.

Mr. Semmler says he spent most of his time at the University of Sydney concentrating on fund-raising basics: starting an annual fund, identifying people capable of making large donations, and seeking bequests. He also put articles and advertisements in university publications about bequests and the new annual fund.

The amount pledged and received through bequests has grown, and by the time Mr. Semmler left the University of Sydney, the new annual fund was generating close to $200,000 a year from 3,000 graduates. That level of support has been maintained but not increased. Mr. Semmler chalks up the stagnant returns to the fact that his position had remained vacant until the university finally hired a new director of development two months ago.

Mr. Semmler says he did not start the annual fund singlehandedly. Early on he hired another fund raiser, an Australian who had lived in the United States and had subsequently helped some Australian social-service groups raise money.

Having an assistant gave Mr. Semmler time to make the rounds to university deans and other leading officials, learning more about their financial needs, building his credibility with them, and seeking their support for university-wide fund raising.

“He did an enormous amount of research to find out what people thought,” says Dame Leonie. “I learned a great deal about fund raising from him: You have to have a good database, know your targets, be very patient in finding their interests, building relationships, and making them feel part of the institution. All those things, when you say them, sound simple, but they are not.”

In addition to adjusting to the differences in financing between Australian and American universities, Mr. Semmler was also occasionally stymied by a cultural characteristic that he says distinguishes Australians from Americans. He calls it the “tall poppy syndrome.”

Australians, he says, often say that “if any poppy sticks up higher than the rest, it gets cut off.”

Such egalitarian sentiments are admirable in many ways but they can be detrimental to fund raising, Mr. Semmler says. For example, when he advised the University of Sydney to promote itself as being head and shoulders above other universities to help attract donations, his Australian colleagues balked.

“No university would say it was better than the others, they would just say they were different,” he says.

In another instance, Mr. Semmler persuaded a popular university administrator to make a donation to help start a scholarship fund in another department. Mr. Semmler told the administrator that he could help inspire others to give by making the first gift of some $7,000 to the new fund.

“He was very excited, and I was thrilled,” says Mr. Semmler. But when the director of the department heard about it, he talked the administrator out of making the donation.

“This guy’s attitude was that you don’t ask your mates for money, and the dean should not be asked to stand out from his colleagues in this way.”

Even with such setbacks, however, Mr. Semmler says he was successful in generating support for university-wide fund raising among top officials and establishing the basis on which future contributions can grow, although he had hoped to accomplish more.

His former Australian colleagues agree. “When it comes to different cultures, it is exceedingly rare to make a revolutionary change,” says Mr. Ball. “But there was definitely an evolutionary one here.”