College officials will announce today a $115 million fundraising campaign, the largest and most comprehensive money-raising effort in the institution’s history.

The college will not publicly release that campaign goal until later today, but according to a Sept. 25 draft of the campaign brochure, “The Campaign for Ithaca College: Making a World of Difference” obtained by The Ithacan, the $115 million goal includes $17 million for the School of Business and $20 million for the Athletics and Events Center.

College officials declined to comment on the exact amount raised to date, though it is expected to be more than 70 percent, or $80 million, according to a source close to the campaign.

The college will officially kick off the campaign at 12:15 p.m. today in Ford Hall with an address by Robert Iger ’73, president and CEO of The Walt Disney Company. Receptions around campus will follow at 5:15 p.m., capped off by the announcement of the goal and the amount raised to date at a private gala in the Ben Light Gymnasium.

The six-year campaign, which began June 1, 2001, and is slated to end December 2007, was one of nine priorities outlined in the college’s institutional plan adopted in February 2001.

Shelley Semmler, vice president of institutional advancement, said the campaign will enable the college to become less reliant on tuition and debt by increasing private support from alumni, parents, friends, corporations and foundations.

The college is “woefully behind its competitors” in terms of alumni donations and the size of its endowment, said Graham Stewart ’81, former director of alumni relations.

“The college is almost completely dependent on tuition, and that’s a dangerous place to be,” said Stewart, who resigned Sept. 22.

Tuition, room and board, and fees made up 92 percent of the college’s operating budget last year, according to the brochure. But as the college needs new buildings, old buildings need repair and the cost of higher education increases, the college needs to raise money to stay competitive.

The campaign plan

Colleges and universities rely on donors to fund major projects the institutions couldn’t otherwise fund themselves. A comprehensive capital campaign combines several projects under one distinct fundraising effort.

The college’s campaign will bring in money to fund building and expansion needs outlined in the college’s master plan adopted in 2002, as well as other academic and financial aid programs.

To meet those objectives, the college developed a strategic campaign plan, which included an internal campaign readiness assessment in summer 2003. The assessment analyzed the college’s fundraising infrastructure, prospects for donations and volunteers.

Kirk Swenson ’96, former director of the Capital Campaign who resigned Aug. 30, said the assessment helped refine the way the college presented the campaign to potential donors.

For example, up until about a year ago, the college was asking potential donors to fund a field house, a project now known as the Athletics and Events Center.

The “field house” name didn’t accurately reflect the purpose of the building, said Kristen Ford, former director of special campaigns in charge of the project.

“‘Field house’ was an older term,” said Ford, who resigned Jan. 5. “We met and talked with various alumni and that word brought along with it various visuals and different meanings for many people.”

After conversations with trustee Mike Serventi ’72, the name was changed, Ford said. College officials could only speculate on whether the original, inaccurate name prevented some donors from giving to the project.

Peter Irwin, an individual giving officer on the campaign between March 2005 and February 2006, said fundraising for the Athletics and Events Center was the most challenging. According to the brochure, the campaign will fund only $20 million of the estimated $35 million project, leaving the college to foot the rest of the bill.

“People buy into a new business school or increased scholarships,” Irwin said. “But it’s hard to understand the need for increased and enhanced sports facilities for such a small college.”

The assessment was also used to determine which projects were likely to be funded and which projects the college would have to pay for itself.

For example, the study determined that the college could raise money for the School of Business and the Athletics and Events Center, Semmler said, but not the planned Gateway Building or other expansion projects outlined in the master plan.

The Gateway Building, expected to be completed by summer 2008, will house administrative offices and will be paid for by the college.

“We needed to weigh our needs versus the feasibility,” Semmler said.

A silent search

Once the strategic plan was in place, the campaign entered a silent, or leadership, phase. During this time, between October 2004 and October 2006, the college attempted to solicit the largest donations from the people most likely to give and shifted its final goal accordingly.

“Basically we go top-down, inside-out,” Semmler said. “We start at the top of the gift pyramid and begin to identify the number of million-dollar-plus givers, the number of $250,000 givers, etcetera, all the way down the chart.”

The two building projects were made possible by lead gifts, or initial infusions of money that allow architectural planning and construction to begin.

The college received a $10 million gift June 6 for the Athletics and Events Center from two foundations affiliated with Ithaca College trustee Caroleen Feeney ’86. The money comes in three parts: $1 million from the French American Charitable Trust and two donations from The Atlantic Philanthropies—a $5 million outright gift and a $4 million challenge grant.

In 2004, the college received a $7 million gift earmarked for the new business school from Dorothy Park, widow of Roy H. Park and president of the Park Foundation, which supports scholarships in higher education. She later gave an additional $3 million.

The campaign’s 24-month silent phase is unusually long, Semmler said, because the college wanted to get as far ahead as possible before publicly announcing the goal.

“We haven’t done this before,” she said. “We don’t have a history, so we really don’t know what to expect from the [14-month] public phase.”

Semmler declined to say how much the college had already raised.

Weighing the goal

The college may have to rely more on smaller donors to reach its $115 million goal, according to a 2004 national study by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

The percent of total dollars raised from the top-10 percent of donors hit its lowest mark since 1996–97, averaging out at 72 percent, according to the 2004 CASE Report of Education Fund- raising Campaigns. That average is down 15 percentage points from 2003–04.

That’s a problem for an institution that has historically focused its efforts on the top-5 percent of potential donors, Stewart said.

“We basically ignored the rest of the population,” he said. “Now, here we are knocking on doors, seeing people that haven’t had a connection with the college for 20 to 30 years, and they’re looking at us like, ‘Where have you been?’ They were frustrated.”

To make up for lost ground, the college hired individual giving officers to be “boots on the ground,” Stewart said, spending 100 percent of their time traveling and talking with alumni.

Irwin was one of those officers and said the college’s poor legacy with many alumni was quickly apparent.

“During the first couple of meetings, they said there was good progress in talking to the college,” Irwin said. “But all of a sudden, right when the college was moving them into a position to increase their giving, the ball was dropped for whatever reason.”

College officials are also attempting to increase support from corporations and foundations to meet the goal. But the nature of the college doesn’t make it a strong contender for corporate money, said Paula Davis, former director of corporate and foundation relations.

“When you’re a smallish institution that’s primarily undergraduate, centrally isolated and not a target for corporations, support is limited,” said Davis, who resigned March 16.

Semmler said corporate donations are expected between $3 million and $5 million.

The CASE study also indicates the college’s goal falls short of the average size of campaigns dating back to 1997–98.

The 2004–05 average campaign goal was $175 million, down from $236 million in 2003–04, the report stated. The last time the average size was below the college’s goal was in 1997–98, when it was calculated at $88 million.

But among Associated New American Colleges, a grouping of similar-sized colleges and universities regularly used as comparison, the goal is about average.

The latest campaigns at Hamline University, Hampton University and Mercer University totaled $150 million, $250 million and $261 million, respectively. But campaigns at University of Evansville, University of Scranton and Valparaiso University totaled $60 million, $35 million and $75 million, respectively.

While comparisons help for bearing, Semmler said, capital campaigns really come down to priorities at individual institutions.