While the new contributions may pale in comparison to the campaign’s ambitious goal of $1.75 billion, President Tilghman cautioned against measuring progress by looking at the past four months.
“I think this is a very lengthy process, and so talking about it on a monthly basis has almost no meaning whatsoever,” Tilghman said in an interview earlier this week. “This is pretty much what I would have expected at this point. We certainly have some conversations underway with some very significant alumni, parents and friends.”
The University held a kickoff celebration in Jadwin Gym on the first day of the public phase, and several more events are planned throughout the world.
Tilghman will head a delegation of administration officials and alumni on a trip to East Asia tomorrow for the international kickoff of the University’s capital campaign. The weeklong trip will include events in Singapore and Hong Kong and an alumni symposium in Shanghai led by Tilghman and Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter ’80, who is currently on sabbatical in China.
Campaign kickoff events will also be held in London, New York, Boston and Chicago in the coming months, and similar events have already been held in San Francisco and Seattle.
“I feel as though the campaign is just beginning,” Tilghman said. “One of the things that we all say to each other every day when we’re talking about the campaign is that it is a marathon, not a sprint. So four months into it we are off the starting block and just starting to get up to normal running pace.”
Early performance
While not many large gifts have been announced recently, there are ongoing discussions with potential major donors considering gifts totaling more than $400 million, Vice President for Development Brian McDonald ’83 said.
One such donation, announced yesterday, is a $5 million gift from Mark ’84 and Jane Wilf that will fund construction of a new dormitory in Butler College and support the Center for Jewish Life.
‘Aspire’ officials hope to collect 10 gifts of more than $50 million, 20 gifts at the $10 to $50 million level, 30 gifts at the $5 to $10 million level and around 60 gifts at the $1 to $5 million level, Director of Development for Campaign and Individual Giving Michele Minter said. In all, the University expects to receive roughly 500,000 gifts, and only 3,000 of them will be worth more than $50,000.
One of the campaign’s co-chairs, Bob Murley ’72, said that he expects a number of major gifts to be announced in the near future. Murley coordinates the campaign with fellow co-chair Nancy Peretsman ’76.
“We have some very important conversations in progress with several of our alumni who have the interest and hopefully the inclination to donate truly transformative gifts to the campaign,” Murley said. “I am hopeful and cautiously optimistic that we will have some good news to share with our alumni and the [University Board of Trustees] in the months ahead.”
The lack of major announcements in the first few months of the public campaign does not indicate that ‘Aspire’ is performing poorly, McDonald said.
“If we were hearing a thud, that would be very significant,” McDonald said. “But the good news is that we’re continuing to receive the same extremely positive response from the much wider audience that we had received from the trustees and the relatively small group of key donors and volunteers with whom we’ve been having conversations for more than two years.”
Murley added that the recent economic downturn doesn’t seem to be affecting donations.
“What has continued to amaze me is that this is a challenging economic environment, and we have continued to do well in the face of it,” he said. “Nancy and I are very fortunate to have an extraordinary team, and our alumni continue to support Princeton in all kinds of environments.”
Proceeding on track
The progress of Princeton’s campaign is right on target with fundraising efforts at comparable schools, said David Shufflebarger, managing partner at Alexander Haas Martin & Partners, a consulting firm that specializes in capital campaigns. Princeton is one of 28 colleges and universities each currently seeking to raise more than $1 billion, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.
“Now is the slow and steady progress through the early part of the campaign,” Shufflebarger said. “You’re going to have up months and down months. The best way to look at a campaign is not one month, four months or eight months, but on a yearly basis.”
Fellow consultant Barbara Strand, a partner at Bentz Whaley Flessner Consultants, said that she likes to see an institution reach 40 percent of its goal during the quiet phase. Princeton raised about 35 percent.
“It may be that there are some gifts in the wings,” she said. “Knowing Princeton, I suspect it’s just fine.” To date, Princeton has raised nearly 38 percent of its goal.
Strand also suggested that poor economic conditions may be affecting the timing of gifts.
“It may be that people who want to donate a great deal might not when their stock is down,” she explained. “And people who have some money, but not a great deal, are much more likely to be cautious about spending.”
‘Aspire’ and the endowment
Both Tilghman and McDonald said that the most frequent question asked by alumni is why Princeton needs to raise new resources given the size of its endowment, which is currently valued at more than $15.8 billion.
“Even Princeton can’t afford to do everything that we want to do going forward without additional support from donors,” McDonald explained. “It might be possible for the University to find a way to pursue a single initiative. But it would be absolutely impossible to do everything that we hope to do without donor support and frankly without high levels of donor support.”
Tilghman said that the endowment is already being mobilized to the greatest extent possible to support various projects at the University. Endowment spending contributes to about 45 percent of the University’s $1.2 billion annual budget.
Shufflebarger said that it is important for University officials to explain the role of the endowment in the budget process and to show prospective donors that the University will be a good steward of their money.
“It’s important to understand that Princeton is not going to run to the bank and spend that $15 billion tomorrow,” he said. “You only spend a portion of that during any given budget year.”
To justify raising enormous amount of money, however, Shufflebarger said universities like Princeton must make a strong case for why they need additional funds.
“If you’re not planning anything, then you don’t have a compelling case,” he said. “They’ve laid out a very compelling list of needs at Princeton.”
Administration officials went to great lengths during the planning stages of the campaign to develop a Table of Needs, which is a priority list compiled by the University outlining the major projects for which significant funds are required, McDonald explained.
“Everyone I’ve spoken with has been extremely impressed with the obvious level of thought and planning that has gone into enumerating our priorities for this campaign,” he said. “The overwhelming majority [of potential donors] feel that they’re exactly the right priorities. I’ve heard nothing but support for what we have proposed.”
A volunteer-based effort
The lead-up to a fundraising effort of this magnitude is often years in the making.
By her third year as president in 2004, Tilghman began working with faculty, trustees and administrators to establish areas where she felt the University should focus in the future, McDonald said.
Tilghman said that she spent roughly 10 to 15 percent of her time over the last year on campaign-related activities and plans to keep that percentage the same throughout the campaign.
“That number surprises most people,” she admitted. “Most people have the perception that this is all a University president does.”
The difference at Princeton is the extent to which it depends on volunteers talking with alumni about the importance of contributing, Tilghman said, explaining that “the consequence is that it reduced my involvement in what would otherwise be done by the president.”
Murley said he is constantly involved in campaign activities.
“I would say that rarely a day goes by that I’m not having a conversation or a meeting with someone, either at the University or [with] one of our alumni about how things are progressing,” he said.
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