Securing Donor Support for Unrestricted Endowments: A Case Study in Higher Education

Abstract:Leaders of academic units including deans, department chairs, research center directors, and others face the universal challenge of providing adequate financial operating support to their programs. These leaders also commonly employ efforts to raise private, voluntary support for their programs through requests to potential donors for unrestricted gifts to be used to address their greatest needs. This fundraising mechanism, generally conducted through an annual appeal to a large population, is expected to generate large numbers of gifts but at smaller levels. This case study reviews a decade of financial data related to an initiative at one school within a major public research university where more than 100 unrestricted endowed funds have been raised, providing vital and permanent operating support to the school and its academic departments. This model has proven effective in not only providing a new source of perpetually unrestricted support, but also in transitioning many of these donors away from small annual gifts toward larger major gifts.