How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
Part two in a series on fundraising
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NYU ended its seven-year Campaign for NYU in August 2008. It was a huge success for the university, raking in almost $3.1 billion — far above its $2.5 billion goal.
Now, just two years later, administrators are considering starting another major campaign.
"We're thinking about September 2010," senior vice president for development and alumni affairs Debra LaMorte told WSN. "That will have given our constituents two years to rest."
The new campaign would run on an eight-year schedule. Before, a campaign could last a maximum of seven years under guidelines set by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. However, CASE upped the number in April 2008, citing "rapid growth in the scale of campaigns."
The idea is now in the early stages of discussion, LaMorte said. If administrators decide to start up the campaign in September, that would begin a three-year "quiet phase."
"That's when you go out to all your major stakeholders ... and you say to them, 'The university is thinking about starting up a campaign. These are our goals and aspirations. These are our needs. This is what we're going to be fundraising for. Would you be willing to participate, and if so, at what level?'" LaMorte said.
The university would use the amount raised during that period to determine what its overall campaign goal would be.
"Normally you need to raise between 30 to 40 percent of whatever your goal is," LaMorte said.
The remainder of the campaign would be the public phase.
"That's when you announce, you do the big hoopla," LaMorte said. "And that's when you go out to your regular constituents and you try to raise the balance."
LaMorte hopes that the goal for the next campaign will be higher than the amount raised last time.
"I think it would be a mistake not to increase the goal," she said. "If we did $3.1 [billion] and that's our steady state, the reason why you have a campaign is to stretch everybody, to take fundraising to a new level."
According to LaMorte, having this two-year rest period between campaigns is important for two reasons. One is to give the economy time to recover. However, even now, the economy might not be a huge issue when fundraising, at least according to recent results from other major universities.
"We were not that impacted by the economy," said Daniel Baker, the executive director of university donor relations at Columbia University, who is currently overseeing a $4 billion campaign there. Baker added that he has recently noticed an upward trend in fundraising.
The second reason for the rest period, according to LaMorte, is to give current donors time to pay off their existing pledges.
"In a perfect world, I've been so super nice to them that they're going to come back and want to make additional gifts and commitments to the campaign," LaMorte said.
Still, LaMorte conceded that the break is not just for the donors.
"The two years is really so I can rest," she said.
