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UO development does good

58/12/2011: from the Greg Bolt RG story: 

Almost two-thirds of the money raised during the 2010-11 fiscal year was
for academics. Donations for academics totaled $73.3 million, and
athletics donations totaled $43.6 million.

8 Comments

  1. Anonymous 08/12/2011

    I wonder how much of the $73 million for academics will go to lessen tuition increases? Not very much is my guess. I don’t think public universities can keep raising tuition at recent rates, especially in an economy in crisis. They need to redirect some of that private giving to alleviating the tuition effects of increased operating costs. That will require changing the thinking of donors and development staff.

  2. Anonymous 08/12/2011

    Dog says

    Yes, but how much of the 73M is actually earmarked
    for a real academic cause?

  3. Anonymous 08/12/2011

    How much of the 73M goes to the 100 people staffing the Development office?

  4. UO Matters 08/13/2011

    Very roughly, about 10 million. Hard to say more accurately, many development people are now sprinkled around – CAS, HC, etc all have a few. But this is not bad at all, even considering the rent they are now paying for their Ford Alumni building. Pay $10 million, get $73 million!

    But then you should add in the costs of the UO Foundation. How much is that? Not sure, the data they have released – and that only because of IRS rules – is very out of date.

    All in all, the Register Guard article is unusually sophisticated in its description of some of the problems of higher ed fundraising.

    Many UO donors want to give to fund scholarships for low income kids. But it is hard to give money to these students without just crowding out their Pell grants, etc. It is surprisingly hard to give money away, effectively. Unless of course you are just buying better football seats – the DAF makes that easy, and for some bizarre reason it is just as tax deductible as giving for scholarships.

    And as we have reported before, the athletic department’s fundraising success comes at the cost of lower donations to the academic side.

  5. Anonymous 08/13/2011

    UOMatters says: “It is surprisingly hard to give money away, effectively.”

    Yes, that is exactly my point about the need to reorient the private giving programs — both on the UO side, and the donor side. But the onus is mainly on the UO side, to recognize the problem and do something about it.

    It’s not just “poor kids” who are being squeezed by ever-rising tuition. Everyone knows that the middle class has been going nowhere in this country, and now it’s going down.

    Places like UO can’t just keep raising tuition by rates well above the rate of growth (is there any?) in the average middle or upper middle class family’s income.

    Think about it: this year’s tuition hike — to finance more non-academic professionals plus “secret” salary raises? — will raise maybe $20 million per year? And maybe half that if you discount a reasonable tuition hike?

    Yet there was $73 million in private giving to academic! Where in the hell does all that money go? What good does it do?

  6. Anonymous 08/18/2011

    Where does it go? It goes to buying supplies, paying professors grad students and support staff, maintaining buildings, getting new or upgraded equipment. It goes to running the University. Unfortunately, many if not most donors prefer to earmark their funds to very, very particular things. This is something fundraisers don’t have a lot of control over. Nobody is “convincing” people to give so much to athletics – they do it because they want to. If fundraising staff could convince a $5K athletics donor to give to Journalism or AAA instead, they would do it.

    Also, FYI, 100 people to raise more than $100 million is pretty bare bones compared to most universities, or even compared to big foundations and nonprofit orgs.

  7. Anonymous 08/18/2011

    Why do athletic donors want to give the $5k? Do they get good seats, etc, out of the deal? Why does the University allow Athletics to sweeten the pot for donors and reduce incentives to give to academics?

  8. Anonymous 12/06/2011

    most really big donors to academics are very savvy about their money, where, it goes, overhead, etc. most just want to give back for what the up gave to them, they are often much more idealistic about what they are doing and hard headed about how they do it than we are as faculty. most of their giving goes into permanent endowments, so of $100 mil for example only about $4mil is avail to spend each year. ever heard of williams teaching grants, rippey scholarships, knight chairs, etc. that’s the sort of place the money goes. just my experience with fundraising. by the way, some academic depts are very good at working to rause funds from their slums. :)

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