Rudolph Joseph Besikof
Published: 2004
Total Pages: 596
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A 2008 statement from the Foundation for California Community Colleges in the Chronicle of Higher Education revealed that two-year institutions provide education for approximately half of the nation's undergraduate students (Wiessner, 2008). However, when it comes to benefiting from dollars that are raised from donors for postsecondary schools, community colleges generate only 2% of the total funds that are raised (Lanning, 2008). For the community colleges that are effective as fundraisers, what are their best practices? Within them, presidents are described as the "living logos" of their institutions, but what roles do they play in successful efforts? T study endeavored to answer the following research questions: (1) What kinds of preparation or ongoing training, if any, do community college presidents say has helped them to develop fundraising skills? What preparation do they identify as the most helpful? (2) How do community college presidents rank fundraising in importance among all of their duties, and what percentage of their time is spent on fundraising? (3). What activities constitute the work of fundraising that presidents do and, among those activities, which do they find to be the most effective? Which give them the greatest amount of difficulty? Why? (4) How do the college presidents of successful fundraising community colleges interact with their respective college foundations and/or their development offices, and how involved are members of foundations and development offices in the colleges' mission and long-range planning? I conducted case studies of three Midwest community colleges as well as a cross case analysis. To identify the research sites, I used the Council for Aid to Education's Voluntary Support for Education Survey, which provided more relevant statistical data than IRS Forms. Specific amounts such as Alumni, Corporate, and Employee Giving totals were available. Some state systems required all of their community colleges to complete the survey, and I identified one of them for my study. I chose three within it that were consistent fundraisers, which is to say that their overall money raised or foundation, alumni, or corporate totals gave them an average ranking in the top five. With these criteria, three community colleges that all had similar enrollment numbers emerged. Each community college visit included document study and observations, but the main source was interviews. At each community college, I spoke with at least ten people who included but were not limited to the college president, the executive director of the Foundation, Foundation staff members, Foundation Board of Directors members, and faculty. Interviews ranged from 25 minutes in length to nearly two hours. To better allow for more detailed elaboration on the part of the presidents and executive directors of the respective Foundations, I used the "elite interview" format, a semi-structured protocol employed by Kezar in her 2006 study of college presidents. Doing so allowed for more anecdotal answers as well as deeper insights into the beliefs and perspectives of these individuals who, by virtue of their higher positions, had unique perspectives on fundraising and community college leadership issues. Despite the similarly consistent numbers from the VSE survey, the three colleges could not have been more different. One was located in the center of a large urban area and had a Foundation staff that contained four employees. Its executive director, in addition to his foundation duties, was a dean over the entire development effort at the college, which included having the Public Relations and Marketing Department report to him. Another college was in a nearby suburban area. Its Foundation staff was composed of three full-time employees and a part-time grant writer. Its executive director was listed on the same organizational level as the vice presidents. The third college had a district president who presided over several community colleges in a rural area. At the one, I learned that the chief executive-level campus fundraiser was a provost, which led me to include her with the three presidents in my study. Its foundation staff was the smallest of the three community colleges, with only two 50% employees. The executive director, in the rest of her assignment, directed the college's Institutional Research Office. As she was new to the position, I also interviewed the former executive director, who had been employed at 100%. Interviews were transcribed and coded into an average of approximately 75 different themes per site. After analyzing them through a series of matrices, I reported my findings by addressing each of the four research questions directly. From those, I was able to note best practices of the presidents and make recommendations for both them and the fundraising effort as a whole. Concerning the preparation and professional development in the area of fundraising for presidents, I found that the presidents of the two urban area colleges came strictly from Academic Affairs and had little or no training in fundraising, while the president and provost at the rural area college did. In fact, the president of the rural college gained meaningful presidential-level exposure to fundraising while serving as a provost. She also mentioned that her most meaningful professional development came from face-to-face dialogue with another president, while her provost sought it in other areas. For one of the urban presidents, his professional development came directly from his experience working as president, while the other reported being heavily involved in it since he has similar teaching and learning expectations of others. Looking at the four leaders, I saw efforts to fill needs in professional development in ways that seemed to be consistent with their beliefs and their own needs. In terms of the importance of fundraising, data showed that they all devoted roughly a fifth of their time to it directly. The three presidents all answered questions about time spent on fundraising with responses about time not only with donors, but also in the state legislature. This was curious since they had not been asked about political involvement but only fund raising importance or practices. Concerning practices in fundraising, not all of the presidents asked their major donors for money all the time. Responses ranged from minimal asking on the part of the president of the suburban college to asking nearly every time, which was what the president of the downtown community college did. Though they did not all ask with the same frequency, they all included their Foundation Executive Directors, either to make the ask or to lay the groundwork for them to appeal to the potential donor. Other common practices included their interactions with their Foundation Boards of Directors. They attemded all or nearly all meetings, gave reports about college news as well as their own endeavors with the legislature, stayed in meetings to answer questions and clarify issues or concerns, and personally emailed and met with each board member regularly. The campus level leaders nearly always attended fundraising events as well and foundation leaders reported that they were available at any time in the cultivation process. Finally, each of these leaders emphasized some type of partnership with potential donors in speaking to them. In all three cases, I saw the presidents involving foundations in the mission of the college. As previously mentioned, their executive directors were involved in central leadership. They included the elevated positions each of them held, along with their service on groups such as hiring and planning committees outside their respective Foundations. Having provided these findings, I was able to make several recommendations. (a) Presidents are only as effective in fundraising as their development teams. Ultimately, my data showed that this higher-level relationship was more important that who was asking for money. (b) Future presidents are advised to accept responsibilities that fall outside Academic Affairs and, if possible, should hold positions with responsibilities similar to those of provosts; they should also have some interaction in the political arena, for my study concluded that fundraising meant fundraising and networking with members of the state legislature. (c) For college presidents and Foundations building their college's fundraising efforts, the internal giving campaign should be the first step. Each college had a positive statistic about internal giving should present to the public. (d) Since the alumni effort is cumbersome, colleges should employ faculty and program-level employees as cultivators and networkers and compensate them. The focus of these efforts should be programs of study or college organizations such as campus clubs. (e) Foundation Boards of Directors should have a limited number of members, and their meetings should be run efficiently rather than serving as social functions. The most active participant in meetings should be the president, who also meets personally with each member on a regular basis. (f) In order for feasibility studies to be valued by presidents and their Foundations, there must be contextual similarity to their own community colleges. (g) State community college systems should align audit work and other financial reporting to make it more streamlined with actual tax forms. In order to provide more data, this reporting should also be aligned with the VSE. The findings were used to identify best practices of how community colleges do their fundraising despite having limited resources. The findings and recommendations may assist presidents, community colleges, and state systems as they become more responsible for generating revenue and providing opportunities for the students of both today and tommorw.
