October 26, 2006 | Read Time: 3 minutes
As the economy has improved, so have the capital-campaign prospects of charities, as reflected in the fund-raising
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results of many organizations in The Chronicle’s Philanthropy 400 survey.
Seventy-five of the charities in the survey were running a campaign last year. Among the 62 who reported how much they raised in campaign contributions in 2005, the total was $6.3-billion.
Leading the most ambitious campaigns, those seeking $1-billion or more, are colleges and universities. Twenty-five institutions on the Philanthropy 400 are in the midst of such campaigns.
Several of the campaigns had been in a “quiet phase” until recently, amassing gifts before announcing exactly how much they planned to raise.
In the last few weeks, universities have unveiled campaign goals that are among the most ambitious in fund-raising history:
Stanford University (No. 16) is seeking $4.3-billion, while Columbia University (No. 33) hopes to raise $4-billion. Yale University (No. 41) and the University of Virginia (No. 80) are both seeking $3-billion. Those four campaigns are scheduled to end in 2011.
But colleges and universities aren’t the only charities starting billion-dollar campaigns. In May, Ducks Unlimited (No. 126) announced a campaign to raise $1.7-billion by 2010 and said it already had commitments of $500,000. And the Nature Conservancy (No. 20) is now considering a campaign that would seek to raise more than its last big drive, which took in $1.2-billion.
Keeping Fund Raisers
Many charities on the 400 are changing the approach they used to take when a campaign ended: Instead of getting rid of all the extra fund raisers they hired, they are keeping them — and managing to raise as much or more in the years immediately following a campaign as they did during it.
Children’s Hospital Boston (No. 230) completed a campaign to raise $311-million last year. Janet Cady, president of the hospital’s fund-raising arm, says that Children’s will raise even more this year than it did last year, in the final year of its campaign, and she is holding on to all of the development officers she hired to run it.
“Two years before the campaign ended, we were planning the next five years,” Ms. Cady says. “There has been intentional effort to ramp up and invest in growth post- campaign.”
The same is true of the Nature Conservancy, which has raised more money this year than ever before, on top of $475.1-million last year, a nearly 9-percent increase over 2004.
After completing its last campaign in 2003, “we took steps to institutionalize major gifts of $100,000 or more,” says Angela Sosdian, the charity’s planned-giving director. “We created a principal-gifts team and instituted training for all new fund raisers.”
Diverse Goals
A growing number of campaigns are no longer focused on a single goal, such as a capital or endowment drive. Now many institutions are running comprehensive campaigns that fold capital projects, endowment, annual giving, and programmatic needs into one all-encompassing dollar goal.
While such campaigns have long been the practice among private universities and big hospitals, other organizations like environmental groups have begun imitating them in recent years, says Jack Murray, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (No. 226), which is in the planning stages of a comprehensive campaign that will seek at least $400-million.
The organization’s last campaign, he notes, was a drive to raise $20-million for endowment.
One reason for the movement toward comprehensive campaigns: “Capital needs are becoming increasingly difficult to engage donors around,” says Ms. Cady of Children’s Hospital Boston. In addition to capital needs, the hospital’s comprehensive campaign solicited gifts for endowment and general operating expenses, as well as patient care, research, education, and other community projects.
Donors, Ms. Cady says, “are much more interested in the work of doctors, research, science. They expect the institution to cover costs of bricks and mortar. You have to have a broad array of opportunities, and comprehensive campaigns offer that menu.”
