April 6, 2006 | Read Time: 4 minutes
FUND-RAISING IDEAS
Getting college students to become lifelong donors is a challenge for many colleges and universities. At the University of California at San Diego, officials decided that giving students a chance to raise, invest, and distribute charitable funds would help make them loyal donors to their alma mater, as well as to other causes. Early signs show their hunch is working.
In 1999, the California institution raised $100,000 from Marc Brutten, the founder and chairman of Westcore Properties, a real-estate investment firm in San Diego, and his wife, Patricia, both alumni of the university, to create the UCSD Student Foundation as a subsidiary of the campus’s fund-raising arm. Students run the entire operation, which mostly channels money to scholarships.
Several other institutions also have student-run foundations. The Georgia Institute of Technology, for example, started its foundation in 1986, also with a gift of $100,000 from a Georgia Tech graduate. The foundation’s endowment is now worth about $735,000, according to E. David Stokes, the institution’s manager of student programs. Of the 334 students who have served as active volunteers at Georgia Tech’s foundation, 89 percent have become donors to the institution since they graduated. They donated a total of $213,355, or about $720 per donor.
25 Student Trustees
At the University of California at San Diego, the foundation has 25 student trustees and about 20 student members who are organized into five committees, with each committee chaired by a student trustee. Just like at other charitable organizations, trustees have the decision-making power at the organization.
The investments, development, and campus-relations committees are open to all students, while the allocations and membership committees are open only to trustees — those who have either gained experience by serving on the foundation’s committees or people who have been nominated to the post because they have been heavily involved in other campus activities or demonstrate an interest in philanthropy.
Students on the investments committee manage the foundation’s endowment and are responsible for investing it. They meet once a week to assess the stock market, decide which stocks to buy and sell, and, with the help of a financial analyst, determine how best to allocate the foundation’s assets. Today the endowment is worth $133,000, including $10,000 that the students have raised. An additional $15,000 raised by the students is paying for scholarship aid to students at the university.
The students on the other committees come up with fund-raising ideas, as well as ways to promote them. They also seek out people who might want to volunteer for the foundation.
The foundation recruits students to volunteer mostly through word-of-mouth, but it also puts up posters on campus, advertises in the campus newspaper, and places a gift bag in every dorm room at the start of each academic year.
Students are attracted to the foundation for different reasons, says Marlene Shaver, the university’s assistant vice chancellor of external relations. Some join because the foundation gives them a way to learn about investments, others are attracted to it because they want to learn how philanthropy works, while still others see in the foundation an opportunity to meet older people who can help them in their careers and elsewhere in life. Trustees of the university’s foundation serve as mentors to the trustees of the student-run organization, and many administration officials work with the students.
Ping Yeh, who graduated in 1999, then stayed for another year to earn a master’s degree in mechanical engineering, was one of the students who was involved in the early stages of the foundation. He served as the group’s first vice president, and later as president while in his master’s program.
One of the first campaigns Mr. Yeh and his foundation peers created, “Change for Change,” asked students to donate their loose change to support the Preuss School UCSD, a charter school that helps middle-school and high-school students from needy families go on to succeed in college. The effort raised $7,000.
Now 30 and working as an applications engineer at Seagate Technology, in Bloomington, Minn., Mr. Yeh says volunteering at the foundation helped him learn how to interact with people at many different levels and how not to be afraid to start something new.
Stefani Martinez, who was chairwoman of the foundation’s membership committee before graduating in 2004, is also putting her experience to work. She is now the alumni-affairs coordinator at the University of California at Merced, which opened in September, and is setting up a student foundation there.
Both Ms. Martinez and Mr. Yeh say they are donating money to their alma maters, plus giving to other nonprofit organizations. While Ms. Martinez declined to disclose the amount of money she has donated to the university, she did say that since graduating she has contributed a total of about $1,500 to educational and social causes.
Mr. Yeh says that since graduating he has donated just under $2,000 to the University of California at San Diego; about $600 to the China AIDS Orphan Fund, a group he helped to create; and $500 to other causes. But, says Mr. Yeh, college students shouldn’t feel like they need to wait until they are better established to start donating to charity: “Even the smallest amounts can become big, if a lot of people donate.”
