The Donor Investor Imperative Study

This study examines key opportunities for advancement leaders to engage deans, department chairs, and faculty members in order to make the case for investment in higher education to the donor investor.

Over the past decade, higher education fundraising has outpaced other causes thanks to ever-larger comprehensive campaigns and increasing numbers of million-dollar gifts to institutions of all types and sizes. However, the emergence of a new breed of philanthropist, the donor investor, threatens this success.

These donors seek transformational ideas with world-changing impact, and they want to make deep connections with the individuals doing the work. Today’s donor investors will invest in innovation anywhere. However, there is increased competition for their philanthropy across the nonprofit landscape. To sustain fundraising success into the future, advancement leaders need to work with academic partners to source big ideas for fundraising and present a compelling case for support.

The rise of the donor investor

Over the past 10 years, higher education raised more philanthropic revenue than any other cause. However, chief advancement officers increasingly struggle to source the types of funding opportunities that will compel a current donor to make their next stretch gift. Strategic plans often lose what makes an institution unique in favor of broad priority areas. Deans prioritize short-term needs over long-term visions. Donors have higher expectations than ever in terms of impact, ideas, and personal connections. Advancement staff cannot meet these expectations (or meet future fundraising goals) without engaging academic partners.

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What only academic partners can do

In an increasingly competitive market for philanthropic support, we need to move beyond the strained relationships of the past to effectively partner with academic leaders. Deans, department chairs, and faculty members have exactly what donors want—compelling ideas, transformative impact, and compelling connections. Yet, academic partners are often unaware of how to package and promote their own ideas, or that advancement can be instrumental in fundraising success.

While the current environment is fraught with challenges, advancement leaders have a unique opportunity to build relationships with faculty members and donor investors. To jump start faculty engagement with advancement, three areas are crucial—big ideas, impact, and the donor-facing pitch. Focusing here will enable advancement leaders to build the necessary groundwork for long-term principal giving success.

See the Challenges

Source visionary ideas

Donor investors seek multidisciplinary high-impact projects, but academic leaders often focus on meeting their immediate needs and increasing their unrestricted funds before the next budget crisis. Implementing a transparent process to source ideas across campus can help cutting-edge faculty think big, communicate with advancement, and begin to build successful working relationships with development staff.

Step 1: Get the right people to buy into the process

For the big ideas process to succeed, advancement and the academic enterprise need to coordinate each step. As such, engaging with the provost is critical. The provost should serve as the face of the process, even though advancement coordinates each step behind the scenes.

This provides academic credibility for advancement’s work and ensures that winning big ideas are aligned with the president and the provost’s priorities. Other senior leaders on campus should lend their talents to the process, from the chief business officer determining how ideas should be funded, to deans encouraging faculty participation.

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Step 2: Define what is and what is not a big idea

For this process to succeed, everyone on campus needs to understand what is and is not a big idea. The University of California, Davis (UC Davis) clarified what was expected of big idea proposals by publicizing short lists of criteria that mark big ideas (and ideas that would not be considered as such). Creating and publicizing this list enabled the idea selection committee to quickly sort proposals based on which ones met the basic criteria and which did not.

A big idea should

• Transform the University and the world
• Make the University unique in the marketplace
• Focus on where the University is good but could become better
• Include areas where the University is emerging as a leader

A big idea should not

• Be defined solely by a capital project
• Bundle together smaller ideas
• Solely feature a naming opportunity
• Lead to slow, incremental improvement

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Step 3: Create your RFP

After determining the baseline criteria for a big idea, consider what other questions faculty should answer to explain their ideas to the selection committee. These questions should be included in the RFP and should be based on the criteria that will be used to select fundraising priorities from all of the proposals that are submitted.

The RFP should encourage faculty to explain their ideas in terms that the selection committee and other non-experts can understand, which will enable advancement staff to eventually promote the priorities to prospective donors.

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Step 4: Promote the process

The best criteria and RFP are useless if faculty members do not know they exist. To start promoting the big ideas process across campus, create a website with the criteria and other critical information. At UC Davis, this site is hosted on the Development and Alumni Relations webpage. This was an intentional decision designed to build stronger relationships between advancement and the academic enterprise. Additionally, the website included an endorsement from the Chancellor, demonstrating that the process was an overarching priority on campus.

The site also featured details about who could participate, the steps in the idea selection process, and contact information for further details about the process. When creating your big ideas website, be sure to explain how ideas will be selected in order to build trust among skeptical faculty members. Additionally, providing contact information for further questions shows that advancement is open to working with faculty members and will allow faculty members to submit the best possible proposals.

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Step 5: Choose the best ideas

Lines of communication shouldn’t close after idea are submitted, and that includes sharing how ideas will be selected to become fundraising priorities. A transparent scoring system allows big ideas to be chosen while avoiding questions of bias and unfairness. At the College of Charleston, ideas were selected based on two phases of scoring. First, ideas had to meet baseline big ideas criteria—strategic plan alignment, disciplinary distinction, and need for philanthropy. The proposals that met all of the criteria were moved to the second scoring phase, when a weighted points system was used.

During this second phase, each criterion was assigned a maximum number of points, and each member of the big ideas leadership committee gave a numerical score for each idea. This scoring took place during a group meeting, allowing for an open discussion of each proposal’s merits.

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Step 6: Clarify outcomes and next steps

Following up with every big ideas participant is crucial to the success of the process. At UC Davis, the provost sent a thank-you note to every participant and development officers held one-on-one meetings with participants to share feedback. If faculty members asked, they could see numerical scores and qualitative feedback from the selection committee. This added value for faculty, who rarely receive comprehensive feedback for grant proposals. Faculty were also encouraged to edit their proposals and resubmit them in the future.

The big ideas process at UC Davis far exceeded advancement’s expectations. Of the 196 proposals that were submitted, 46 fully met all of the criteria for big ideas and could have served as stand-alone campaign priorities. The projects that were not selected as campus-wide campaign priorities became unit priorities, or were shelved for potential donors who are interested in that specific research area. Faculty now have a positive perspective on working with advancement, which will make the process possible again in the future.

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Communicate the impact of big ideas

Merely having big ideas is not enough to attract donor investors to your institution. As competition for philanthropic funds increases, stakeholders across campus (not just advancement staff) must be prepared to present information about projects and share outcomes data with donors over time. Advancement staff must bridge the gap between donors and the projects they support on campus.

While donors in the past assumed that colleges and universities were the best places to address global issues, today’s donors are willing to consider a wide range of organizations before making a gift. As a result, it is increasingly important that stakeholders across campus, not just advancement staff, are prepared to present information about their projects and share impact data with donors.

Learn About the Challenge of Finding Big Ideas

Perfect the pitch

While advancement staff can facilitate connections across campus, donors do not only want to make friends in the development office. Donors want to hear new projects described by the experts who will be leading them, but faculty members are often unprepared to pitch their ideas to donors. Creating practice opportunities ensures that faculty understand their role in donor conversations and succeed when meeting donors in-person.

On every college and university campus, there is no shortage of subject matter experts conducting innovative projects who can engage with donors. Plus, the skill set required to engage with a donor is already part of the toolkit that academic leaders bring to their work every day. This enables faculty members to have the high-level conversations that move the gift process forward. Donors excitedly engage with academic leaders because of their ability to discuss their ideas, even if the conversation has a few awkward moments.

Engage the People Doing the Work

Maintain momentum

To achieve long-term success with principal and transformational giving, academic leaders must understand that they play a crucial role in the process. Faculty members who have successfully raised money are often willing to work with advancement again, but getting more academic partners on board requires showing their importance using quantitative measures, instead of describing one-off faculty fundraising success stories. As campaign goals grow, increasing numbers of provosts are considering establishing development goals for deans and other academic leaders.

Goals can serve a dual function—they motivate deans to work with advancement in the present while providing data over time that can be used to show how the involvement of academic partners helps increase long-term fundraising revenue and can decrease the timeline for major and principal gifts. At the University of Oregon, deans are expected to spend 50% of their time fundraising, but which activities counted within that was often unclear. Advancement staff determined key areas where deans should focus their fundraising time. They ensured that the results were consistently reported back to show progress, both overall and with the top 25 prospects for each division. Over time, deans will be able to see how their efforts have led to improved fundraising outcomes for their units and the institution as a whole.

Strategies to Keep the Momentum Going

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