Billion-Dollar Drive Appeals to What Donors Want in Tough Times

With $860-million in hand, Indiana University today announces a new campaign to raise $1.25-billion for its Indianapolis campus by June 2013. That announcement follows a celebration last night marking the successful end to another big Indiana University campaign that collected more than $1.1-billion for the university’s Bloomington campus.

Other big institutions like Johns Hopkins and Stanford University have started big campaigns shortly after completing billion-dollar-plus drives, says John Lippincott, president of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. But those institutions didn’t announce the campaigns—they simply began the process of raising money, often known as the silent phase of a drive, in which fund raisers try to raise at least half of the goal before going public.

Indiana University, he says, appears to be the first to conclude a billion-dollar campaign and follow it with the public phase of another billion-dollar campaign.

“Normally you wouldn’t see a public phase start immediately on completion of the previous campaign’s public phase,” Mr. Lippincott says.

He said Indiana University may be thriving in part because it resisted the approach taken by many campuses: raising money for many needs all at once.

“It is intriguing and smart in this economic climate,” says Mr. Lippincott. “At a time when resources are constrained, an all-encompassing campaign would put the emphasis on a big number when donors are more interested in what their money will accomplish. By focusing on the Bloomington campaign, then Indianapolis, it puts the emphasis on what the dollars make possible.”

In the recently concluded Bloomington campaign, for example, fund raisers sought money for scholarships for working students, which reduced the out-of-pocket tuition costs for in-state students by an average of 12 percent, or $1,200.

Last year, when giving to colleges fell by nearly 12 percent, according to the Council for Aid to Education, contributions to Indiana University grew by 43 percent.

Among the reasons for the campaign’s success are two long-time fund raisers. Read this article from The Chronicle archive about the steps they took to help the institution vault into the ranks of the country’s most successful fund-raising institutions.