The Black Informant

HBCU look to almums to give more

Black colleges seeking more financial support from alumni
By DIONNE WALKER
ETTRICK, Va. (AP) — Making money, administrators at Virginia State University have learned, takes money.

The majority black school has spent millions of state dollars renovating buildings, partly to heighten school pride among alumni they hope will respond by opening their own wallets.

It’s working: Alumni support has risen from 7 percent five years ago to 10 percent, and individual gifts have increased from hundreds of dollars to thousands, development vice president Robert Turner said as he showed off libraries and academic buildings recently.

“This” — Turner said, surveying the hilltop campus — “obviously converts to good will.”

As state and private funds shrink, historically black colleges are refreshing outdated efforts to solicit former students, by adding specialized staff, crafting personalized “asks,” improving campuses and increasingly using Internet outreach.

They’re targeting a wider base — more blacks are graduating — and younger alumni who’ve moved into a broader range of careers.

At VSU, efforts as subtle as adding a donor recognition dinner have heartened alumni like Anthony Spence.

“If I’m going to give my money to a university, I want to be sure that it’s used for the very best,” said Spence, 41, a Miramar, Fla., entrepreneur who’s given about $60,000.

Administrators plan computer network upgrades devoted to online giving at Atlanta’s prestigious Morehouse College, where alumni contributions dipped from about $3.1 million in 2006 to $1.3 million last year.

Wiley College in east Texas will use a nearly $840,000 grant from the United Negro College Fund to help scout 200 major gift prospects a year, create new online giving opportunities and beef up staff.

Wiley, featured in Denzel Washington’s 2007 film “The Great Debaters,” has nine staffers focused on institutional advancement.

“At some of the larger, predominant institutions, they may have an advancement staff of say 20, 30, 50 people,” said Karen Helton, vice president for institutional advancement. “That’s how the Harvards and the Stanfords and the UCLAs generate billions.”

Such measures are commonplace at some mainstream institutions. But they represent a major investment for the nation’s more than 100 historically black colleges and universities, whose resources often are stretched.

The fundraising push by these schools foreshadows an expected slowdown in levels of state higher education funding, at the same time that predominantly white universities are pushing harder to attract high-achieving black students. (more…)

“There is an urgency about this as we look at our network of institutions and look at trying to sustain them,” said Elfred Pinkard, executive director of the Institute for Capacity Building, part of the United Negro College Fund that represents 39 private historically black schools.

Since 2006, the institute has granted more than $8.1 million to 29 member schools for projects that include increasing alumni support.

“There was a recognition that alum of these institutions represented a very important constituency that had not been tapped in any systematic way,” Pinkard said.gi

Fighting to stay relevant

Battle Over Historically Black Schools
By Ryan Grim
wboc.com/The Politico

Key members of the Congressional Black Caucus, along with lobbyists for historically black universities, are blocking a bipartisan Senate effort to expand the number of schools eligible to be a Historically Black Graduate Institution.

The HBGI designation comes with both prestige and federal funding, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and other members of Congress are pressing to use the Higher Education Act reauthorization to assign it to several schools, mostly in their home states.

The co-chairmen of the CBC’s education task force, Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), are actively opposing the effort, arguing that the addition of more grad schools to the HBGI program would diminish the amount of money eligible for those currently receiving funding.

The three organizations that represent the Historically Black Colleges and Universities community are also opposing the effort. The battle between congressional chambers and among competing black schools has led to some serious bad blood, aides and lobbyists said.

“The inclusion of one or two others would open up a new category, and you’d have dozens that become eligible tomorrow afternoon, and we’d have no rational basis to keep them out,” said Scott, who cited the opposition of the United Negro College Fund and the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education. “There seems to be a pretty good consensus around not expanding the list.”

Scott and Davis said they have nothing against the schools that would be added to the list but want to protect the schools already on it. “You can’t run a good program on $50,000 a year. You can’t do what my mother used to do, which is take one block of chewing gum and give us all a piece. It’s a good idea, but it won’t work,” said Davis. “If we can’t get any [more] money, let’s hold harmless those schools that are in.” (more…)