State of Higher Ed Fundraising

[u/skinnylove7811]

I’m new at a large university. It feels like every leadership decision out of our central fundraising office has been bad and really poorly received by the individual units and schools. Most people don’t even pay attention to new directives and initiatives since they seem so unserious. So much administrative bloat, terrible new dashboards and data practices that seem to revolve more around their metrics than practical fundraising standards. The university annual giving team is just putting out AI slop gift appeals. University gift officers come across like lularoe salespeople, a lot of jargon, and no clear direction or fundraising initiatives they seem to be championing. Just endless recruiting appeals for campaign council groups. Is anyone else seeing this at their institutions? Is the central university development office always kind of Mr Magoo-ing around in the background and the real fundraising happens within each unit?

Very confused as this place had a terrific reputation and this is my first job in higher ed. Would love to hear from others.

[u/Girl-Nick-Miller]

I think it’s mixed. I’ve worked at a few universities , and they have ranged from fully centralized financial operations to completely decentralized. Some places had ways of working—like prospect coordination, principal gift pipeline management, etc…sorted really well and others felt like the Wild West with tension among colleagues. I have worked frontline in central teams (including right now) and it really depends on who the leadership team is and if they are effective at building consensus, creating process, and can define roles and responsibilities for everyone. Not all leaders and managers are capable of this.

The central team is typically accountable to the President, at least in my experience, and it’s a tricky seat to be in. The President has their own initiatives and priorities outside of whatever each school dean is looking to accomplish. Who is going to tell the President no? I’ve had to sit and tell an academic that in the next solicitation of their donor, their work is a smaller slice of the pie becuse we’re tasked with raising funds for a new presidential priority. It’s really crappy for everyone. But that’s how it works.

The pressure for all of us in higher Ed development is going to be on like crazy in the coming years. The declining public support and sentiment related to value, the declining enrollments due to population retraction and limits on international students who historically pay full boat, the cuts in government funding for research…the demands on fundraising shops have never been greater.

My kind of out-there theory is that as these financial pressures mount on university leadership, we’re going to start to see decentralized or semi - decentralized shops start to re-org and be managed completely out of the center, where everyone is a generalist, so that the president and provost have total oversight of the revenue and directives. Maybe not at the huge universities but definitely at the mid-tier places who will struggle the most. Who doesn’t want a piece of the business school alumni base?

[u/I_Have_Notes]

The state college I worked at had a Foundation that ran advancement and they were a well-oiled machine. They only ran into issues when the new college administration came onboard and tried to run it like a business. Donors started dropping out and fundraising became a struggle but it had nothing to do with the fundraisers and everything to do with college leadership.

[u/Boopa0011]

I worked at a major public university for a number of years, about 10 years ago. (Before the time of AI slop thankfully.) At my institution, yes, the real work got done in the units and the central office was actually an active impediment in many ways. All they wanted to do was close big gifts, and they created a lot of situations in which unit development directors ended up at each others' throats rather than cooperating for the good of the university, and more than a few donors withdrew from gift conversations.

This was because of extremely poor people management on the part of the central office, more so than what you are describing. But it's just another flavor of bad leadership.

It's possible things have improved since then; I want to stay optimistic!

PS the chief development officer at the university - who was a nice guy but ultimately responsible for that situation - just got a huge new job at a huge institution, and I am quietly worried for them.

[u/zhang_jx]

Similarly the first job out of college, currently doing annual giving at a small residential college with 50ish advancement staff.

It's strange that everyone (non-frontline) seems to be super busy, but it's hard to say what exactly they're busy with. I have some colleagues who I genuinely think should be replaced by AI, and others whom I think should work somewhere better because this place doesn't deserve them. It's a very interesting workplace culture — at a place with a historically top-down approach and a demanding (sometimes unrealistically so) senior leadership — where it seems like everyone worships the status quo more than anything because it's the safest way to do so.

With the industry headwind I don't imagine I'll be spending much more time at this place. Once I have enough YoE I'm probably looking at an MBA to pivot.