1. CAEI CONFERENCE 2012 – BRAZIL
ALLIANCES FOR INTER-AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION:
PHILANTHROPIC ORGANIZATIONS
FUNDRAISING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION: TEN UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES
It is a great pleasure to be here with you in Brazil and a great honor to share this stage
with Governor Aleman, Mr. Slim, and Dr. Padron.
I am John Lippincott, president of the Council for Advancement and Support of
Education – also known as CASE. CASE is one of the largest associations of
educational institutions in the world, with nearly 3,500 members in 70 countries.
We are a not-for-profit, non-governmental membership organization, supported primarily
by member dues and fees.
CASE is headquartered in Washington, DC and has offices in London, Singapore and
Mexico City. We formally established CASE America Latina last year and currently
have some 50 member institutions in this region.
CASE focuses on alumni relations, fundraising, communications and marketing in
support of schools, colleges and universities. We provide our members with
professional development, research, publications, standards and advocacy.
Let me begin by congratulating the conference organizers on recognizing the important
role that philanthropy can play in support of universities in the Americas and of their
collaborative, international efforts.
I am not going to talk with you about the responsibility of philanthropists. We have two
major donors on this panel who not only understand that responsibility, but have
demonstrated it through their corporate, foundation, and personal giving. Instead, I
want to talk about our responsibility in seeking private support on behalf of our
universities, whether it is for internationalization efforts or other purposes. With that in
mind, I’d like to share with you ten principles of fundraising drawn from CASE’s work
with universities around the world.
But first, I want to offer a brief note about vocabulary. I recognize that in Latin America
the word “philanthropy” is strongly associated with the concept of charity and with
religious traditions of serving people in need. And in that regard, I fully agree with Mr.
Slim and others, who have suggested that donations to education are more
appropriately described as “private social investment.”
For the purposes of today’s discussion, I will use both terms interchangeably. When I
speak of “philanthropy” or of “private social investment,” I am talking about individuals,
foundations, and corporations contributing their own resources to advance a common
good – in this case, higher education.
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2. And that leads to the first of the ten principles I want to share with you today regarding
fundraising. For higher education to be successful in raising private funds, it must make
a compelling case for private support. That compelling case must connect the
personal interests and passions of the donor with the capabilities of the university or a
consortium of universities.
Often the case centers around the role that universities play in addressing a public
good. Everyone in this room recognizes that societies benefit enormously from a
broadly educated citizenry, and both Governor Aleman and Mr. Fuentes have spoken
eloquently on this point. High levels of educational attainment translate into robust
economies, productive workforces, and vibrant democracies.
Universities also contribute to the public good through their research agendas –
research that addresses such issues as public health, economic development, cultural
enhancement, and environmental preservation.
And universities contribute to the quality of life in their localities through direct and
indirect community service programs.
You also know that, despite the obvious and enormous public good our societies derive
from universities, governments around the world are finding it increasingly difficult to
fully finance higher education access and quality, as both costs and demand escalate.
And therein lies the central argument for fundraising in support of higher education:
private donations can serve a public good by supplementing – not replacing –
government funds to enhance quality and access at colleges and universities. Of
course, each university or consortium must customize this general case to fit with its
vision and the donor’s passion.
The second principle I want to emphasize with regard to fundraising on behalf of higher
education is the importance of a comprehensive approach.
A high-performing program of sustainable fundraising is based on individual giving,
foundation giving and corporate giving. Over-reliance on any one of these funding
sources leaves an institution highly vulnerable to changes in the capacity, willingness,
and priorities of a particular donor or donor community. So let me say a few words
about all three sources.
Individual giving to higher education normally comes from alumni, families of students,
community leaders, and other friends of the institution.
The proportion of philanthropic support an institution receives from individuals will vary
widely. In a mature market, such as the United States, with a strong tradition of
philanthropy and well-established alumni programs, individual giving often makes up
more than half of all donations.
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3. Here in Latin America, individual giving to universities is still an emerging trend. We are
fortunate to have two individuals on this panel who are helping to lead that trend
through their own contributions to universities from which they and their family members
graduated. We also have the wonderful example of an individual’s gift nearly a decade
ago to Austral University in Argentina that I believe still holds the record as the largest in
the region.
Some individual donors are motivated by a spirit of giving back to the institution, a
sense of repaying the institution for what it has done for the donor in the past. Others
will be motivated by their belief in what the institution can do in the future – for individual
students or for society at large.
Individual giving is rarely if ever motivated by the need to replace government funding or
to close a gap in the operating budget; indeed, any sense that the institution is in
financial trouble will discourage most donors from investing at all.
Donors want to have impact, and so they will give to institutions that they believe can
deliver results. Donors also want to feel they are in a partnership with the institution and
the government, and that each is doing its fair share. This is true of individual donors as
well as foundations and corporations.
So let me now turn briefly to foundation giving. Given the many different types of
foundations, this is a complex subject worthy of a session unto itself. I’ll just say a word
or two about what I would describe as private, active foundations in the tradition of the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or Ford or MacArthur or the Carnegie Corporation or
the Tinker Foundation, whose mission is to promote social development here in Latin
America.
These major foundations are increasingly focused in their grant-making on
predetermined projects, programs, and priorities. For universities, that means doing the
research to find the connections between a foundation’s areas of emphasis and the
institution’s areas of expertise.
In the case of the Gates Foundation, making that connection is particularly challenging.
Gates does not accept unsolicited proposals, so their program officers will approach a
university or consortium only after it has demonstrated a high level of capability in an
area of importance to the foundation.
The good news is that education is high on the list of funding priorities for foundations
throughout the Americas. A recent survey of Brazilian foundations, for example, found
that 81 percent included education as a major focus for their grantmaking.
Like foundation giving, corporate giving is moving away from a generalized sense of
social responsibility to a much more strategic and mission-driven approach.
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4. Fortunately, universities are particularly well-positioned to identify connections to the
corporate mission, including through workforce development, applied research, and
technology transfer.
Universities would do well to approach corporate giving as if it were venture capital by
making the case that the donation will offer a substantial return on investment in the
form of measurable and sustainable impacts.
In much of Latin America, corporate giving is currently the dominant form of private
social investment in higher education.
Among notable and commendable examples are the efforts of Banco Santander, both
through its Santander Universities program as well as through the consortium it
sponsors, Universia. As one representative of Santander Universities recently put it, the
bank firmly believes that “the best way to invest in the future is to invest in higher
education.”
The third principle I want to highlight is that fundraising needs to be strategic. I have
just talked about how corporations and foundations have become more strategic in their
giving. Similarly, universities and consortia need to be strategic in their asking.
In particular, they need to establish a clear linkage between the funds they are raising
and the mission and vision for the institution or the organization.
The emphasis on mission and vision not only provides inspiration to prospective donors,
it helps ensure that gifts truly advance the organization and not simply the agenda of a
given donor.
A clear set of priorities for private support, a clearly articulated case statement, and
clear donor agreements can help an institution avoid potential conflicts – with the donor
or with internal constituencies – and to avoid gifts that end up costing the institution far
more than the value of the donation.
The fourth principle I want to emphasize is that the fundraising program should be
integrated with other aspects of an institution’s external relations program. Alumni
relations, community relations, communications and marketing all have a role to play in
setting the stage for fundraising efforts.
When all of these functions are focused on the same goals, articulating the same
messages, and engaging the same key constituents, there is far greater likelihood that
financial support will follow. We are seeing, for example, some very successful and
innovative alumni relations programs at Mexican universities, which have in turn led to
successful fundraising campaigns.
The integration of external relations programs ties into my fifth principle, which is
engagement. Study after study demonstrates a high correlation between active
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5. engagement with an organization and giving to the organization. Not only are
volunteers more likely to give, they are likely to give more and more often.
Engagement can take many forms. In addition to hands-on involvement in the work of
the organization, engagement may involve serving on governing and advisory boards,
offering informal counsel on a periodic basis, or making connections with other key
constituents.
At minimum, engagement requires ongoing communication to ensure that individual
donors or the representatives of foundations and corporations feel well informed about
an institution’s progress in general and the use of their gifts in particular.
In the interest of time, I am going to move quickly through the remaining five fundraising
principles and will be happy to address any of them in more detail during the question
and answer period.
Fifth on my list, then, is that successful fundraising programs are long-term. They
require upfront investment and a commitment to maintaining the effort over time. After
all, most major gifts to universities result from many years of donor cultivation.
The fundraising effort must not only be long-term, but also highly professional, number
six on my list. That means hiring dedicated staff, providing them with the necessary
training, and following best practice in the field.
Related to best practice is my next principle and that is ethical practice. Successful
and sustainable fundraising depends, first and foremost, on a relationship of trust
between the donor and the fundraiser. Trust is earned and maintained through the
consistent demonstration of honesty and integrity in all interactions with donors and
prospective donors.
I commend the work of the Group of Institutes, Foundations and Enterprises here in
Brazil and the Mexican Center for Philanthropy, with which Governor Aleman is
affiliated, for their efforts to promote ethical fundraising.
Trust is also engendered through accountability, which is my next principle.
Accountability means that institutions deliver on what they promise, that they measure
what they deliver, and that they are transparent about what they measure.
Successful fundraising also depends on careful research. As noted earlier, corporate
and foundation giving is usually targeted to specific areas; therefore, fundraisers need
to spend the time to discover those areas of interest.
Similarly, they need to conduct research in order to understand the willingness and the
capacity of individual donors to make a gift. While this kind of research requires an
expenditure of time and money, it saves time and money in the long run by enabling
fundraisers to focus their efforts on the most likely prospects.
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6. To this point, in a major fundraising campaign at an American university, 1 percent of
the donors will contribute almost 90 percent of the money. Therefore, knowing who
might be among those 1 percent is extremely important.
My tenth and final principle is that successful fundraising requires a culture of asking
as well as a culture of giving. Latin America has a strong culture of giving, although not
necessarily in support of higher education. That can change.
We have seen dramatic progress, for example, in private giving to higher education in
the United Kingdom in recent years. This occurred for two principle reasons.
The government launched a program to match private gifts to universities with public
funds, and those incentives proved very appealing to donors.
The other reason for growth in giving to higher education in the United Kingdom is that
universities there have been working closely with CASE to develop a culture of asking.
Let me conclude these ten principles, then, with the single most important point I want
to make: the greatest predictor of fundraising success is the number of times an
organization asks.
There are many reasons for optimism that these ten principles of fundraising can be
successfully applied in support of the internationalization of universities throughout the
Americas and, specifically, in support of universities here in Latin America.
Not only is wealth growing in this region, but so too is philanthropy.
One study indicates that the share of social investment in Latin America from
corporations and foundations tripled between 2004 and 2007.
Moreover, as I noted earlier, education is a major priority for that investment. A recent
Brookings Institution study found that Latin America tied with the Asia-Pacific region in
contributions to education from U.S. corporations.
And there are a growing number of examples of successful university fundraising
campaigns in Mexico and elsewhere in the region.
There is also plenty of evidence that foundations, corporations, and individuals will fund
international efforts.
Often these are based at a single institution and take the form of study abroad programs
and regional research centers – like the Rockefeller Center on Latin American Studies
at Harvard with which Mr. Slim and Mr. Aleman have been associated.
There is less evidence of private support for consortial and multilateral efforts.
It would appear that most of those programs are currently funded by government
agencies interested in regional development, trade, and cultural exchange.
It is not that these efforts are unworthy or unappealing to private funders.
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7. In fact, many foundations look for evidence of collaboration in the proposals they
receive, although that collaboration may be within a national rather than an international
framework.
Nonetheless, there are some encouraging signs; witness the support from the Ford
Foundation and Lumina Foundation for CONAHEC, one of the sponsors of this
conference.
And while I am optimistic about the potential for fundraising in support of inter-American
university consortia, I see three primary challenges in meeting the ten principles I
outlined earlier.
One is clear leadership.
In order to have the kind of strategic approach and the kind of engagement I described,
it is important that there be an individual with the credibility and the responsibility to
represent the consortium in working with potential funders.
The second challenge is consistency.
In order to conduct the kind of highly professional, ethical, transparent, and focused
fundraising I have described, the members of the consortium must themselves be
consistent in the application of those principles and in their articulation of the purposes
of the program.
The third challenge is sustained commitment.
Participating institutions must demonstrate that they intend to remain actively engaged
with the consortium for the long-term in order to convince potential funders that the
project represents a good investment of their resources.
If those challenges can be addressed, then I think the potential to increase the level of
philanthropic support for collaboration among universities across the Americas is
enormous.
And while most of that funding will likely come from foundations and corporations, I
would not rule out the potential for funding from individuals who have a strong
connection to and belief in the purposes of the consortium.
Your cause is a noble one. Engaging universities in North-South alliances to address
pressing social issues and international understanding – or as Canada’s Governor
General David Johnston put it “the diplomacy of knowledge” – holds enormous promise
not only for our hemisphere but for our world.
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8. Therefore, I applaud you on the purposes of this conference and on your recognition
that philanthropy – or private social investment – will be essential to the success of your
efforts. Thank you.
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