Clarity on fundraising

Blake has a post up on fundraising for the University of Georgia that spins off a discussion he had with David Lee, the university's vice president for research. Lee is, rightfully, talking about the need to upgrade many of the academic facilities at UGA, to which Blake raises the understandable and obvious parallel between that need and the large amount of private funds available to expand the Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall and its athletic facilities.

Or, pretty much, why can UGA raise so much for sports, but not have its donors pony up for academic buildings?

It's a valid question, but one that somewhat misses the point.

The UGA Foundation and The Arch Foundation both have vibrant and strong private giving programs that rivals the UGA Athletic Association, but there are two distinctly differing elements that make the outcomes different. The first one is that the UGA Athletic Association sells tickets to events in demand, primarily football, and in order to garner attractive season ticket packages then individuals must contribute larger and larger amounts of funds to the organization.

(In addition, significating fundraising activities for academic events goes on during these football games as well

And, most significantly, the foundations raise large amounts of private funds, but allocates them based on departmental requests to fund scholarships, programs and other academic ventures. If facilities are a stated need - and, as evident by Lee's statement, they are - then those targets are folded into the strategic fundraising plans for the foundations, as well as the individual colleges and departments at the university. A great example of the latter comes from my time at the Georgia Museum of Art as we raised roughly $20 million to build a facility expansion to accommodate growing programming and collections.

The UGA Foundation has $471 million in assets, and they allocate more than $330 million of that to endowments for faculty and academic support. Likewise, The Arch Foundation raised $26 million in FY 2008 and had more than $80 million in assets.

Or, more succinctly put, the funds are there, but they're needed to fund professorships, research, scholarships, programs and the like. If an upgrading of facilities is needed, then you raise money for that too ... and, judging by the efforts of the foundations and other development personnel at UGA, they'll get that money.