North Carolina Newspapers

November 1995 Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina • 13 Colleges Continued from page 1 ment officer and a secretary, at most - and that most are not reaching their potential. “I can only count a dozen that I would put up against any indepen dent college or university of similar size,” he says. “There’s another dozen that have the potential but they aren’t getting there because of the handicaps they are putting on their development offi cer.” According to Bernhardt, an effec tive community college development program should be raising $100,000 to $1 million a year, depending upon its size and the local economy Regardless of the size of their schools and the employer base in their area, Bernhardt says, the best programs share a few basic charac teristics. 'The most important is a col lege president who is accessible to the development office and intimately involved in all aspects of the office’s program. Also important is having founda tion board members who not only give money but can fill in for the staff that most development programs lack. The most effective programs also resist the temptation to load up devel opment officers like Judi Smith with too many other duties. “1 see so many development offi cers who have other duties, and then the president and the trustees won der why they aren’t raising any money,” Bernhardt says. “Development has to be a real pas sion for the entire campus.” He suggests that an important barometer of a program’s success, particularly at smaller schools, is a campus fund drive. “A campus fund drive gets every one involved in the program and it sends an important message to out side donors that the college believes in what its doing.” While it breaks Bernhardt’s com mandment against giving its chief fundraiser too many other duties, Anson Community College meets his recipe tor success in other ways. Two years ago, the college’s new gung-ho president. Dr. Donald Altieri, revived the school’s dormant foundation, appointed Smith its director and st^ed a campus fund drive. “Every trustee and eveiy employ ee has contributed,” Smith says of the home-grown effort, which raised $6,000 in 1994. “We figure if we don’t support ourselves, we can’t expect anyone else to.” There are signs that the strategy is beginning to pay oft. Smith and Altieri have raised $250,000 since April for a new classroom and learn ing center. The Anson County Board of Commissioners has promised another $250,000 for the project, and Smith is confident that the college will be able to raise the $2 million in private funds needed to match $2 mil- Uon in state money tor the building. If development programs like Smith’s are in the minor leagues of community college fundraising. Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte has hit the majors. With 62,000 students, the school is the largest two-year college in the state. Pounded in the mid-1960s, the foundation’s board of directors includes representatives from NationsBank, First Union and IBM, as well as Charlotte’s Blumenthal and Belk foundations. “We have all the big guys,” says the foundation’s director, Brenda Lea, who competes with the Ukes of the University of North Carolina at Chariotte and the Queen City’s Davidson College for donor doOars. If the bottom line is any indica tion, Central Piedmont is more than keeping up with the competition. The school’s annual giving campaign rais es “about a miliion doOars a year” for schoiarships and other programs. Lea says. The foundation is also in the mid dle of a capital campaign to raise $4.6 miilion by the end of the year for new technology and other programs. With a pacesetting gift of $500,000 from NationsBank, the foundation raised $32 million as of the end of September. The college’s 1988 cam paign raised $1.8 milUon. Despite her program’s success. Lea says, the challenges she faces aren’t that different from those of smaller community colleges. Central Piedmont doesn’t have a strong alum ni base to count on for support, and the college’s impact on the local workforce is stiU unknown to too many employers. “Many people in management aren’t in touch with the Idnd of employees in their company who may get their training at CPCC,” says Lea. “We go to companies and they are surprised by the number of their employees who have taken classes here.” The key to the success of commu nity college fundraising. Lea says, is to understand the needs of employers in the school’s region and to base fundraising campaigns on those needs. If employers need computer training for their workers, for exam ple, a community college might think about a campaign for new computers. With these kinds of tie-ins, says Lea, it is easier to convince employers that they aren’t donating money, but rather are investing it. “I like to think of it as enlightened self-interest,” she says. Lea concedes that Charlotte’s large base of wealthy employers makes it possible for her to raise the kind of money that Judi Smith at tiny Anson Community College can only dream about. But Lea insists that focusing on the needs of employers is a winning strategy for community col leges - regardless of size. Sitting in front of her beloved com puter, Smith and Lea share some thing else besides fundraising strate gy; They aren’t going to take a back seat to other colleges and universities anymore. “We aren’t as quiet as we used to be,” boasts Smith. “We’re blowing our own horn more and more.” Coastal Continued from page 3 The North Caroiina Coastai Ffederation’s “Coastal Review ‘95,” which was released during the forum in October, summed up the situation with a coastal report card: Hunt and his administration received a “C- minus,” the General Assembly a “D,” local governments a “D-(-,” and citi zens a “B.” “It’s a sense of frustration that we’re not moving forward fast enough to really address the issues we’re fac ing,” says Todd Miller, the coastal fed eration’s executive. “Somehow I don’t think we’ve translated what I think is deep pubhc concern about tie envi ronment into effective pubhc poUcy” As Richardson Preyer, a former U.S. Congressman who headed the Coastal Futures Committee, said dur ing the forum, “It’s really up to us to do the rest of it.” By educating foundation repre sentatives about the pressures faced by the coastal region, the forum con veners hoped to raise their aware ness and interest. “That was the purpose, and that was the positive outcome,” says Pricey Taylor, a trustee and treasimer of one of the convenors, the Kathleen Price and Joseph M. Bryan Eamhy Foundation in Greensboro. “Whether that gets channeled into something is yet to be seen.” But the coastal forum already appears to have triggered some momentum. After seeing the dead fish from the Neuse River and hearing about the toxic algae that is killing them, Tom Lambeth, executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation in Winston-Salem, another convenor, faxed a message to Hunt. The letter stated concern about the problem and asked “that [Hunt] and his people look hard at the infor mation they were receiving.” Joe Kilpatrick, the Reynolds foun dation’s assistant director, says bet ter-informed funders are more likely to be motivated to do something about the problems. “These funders, more often than not, are civic leaders, and they have considerable poUtical influence that goes along with it,” he says. “It’s nat ural for them to put their political influence into play to protect the coastal environment.” A key challenge will be to take action other than making grants, says Bill Massey, the Bryan founda tion’s executive toector. “What I heard a number of pre senters explain is that it is not a ques tion of money,” he says. Instead, the problems stem from the way the system is set up, the way regulatory agencies are run and the inability of various, overlapping authorities to coordinate their efforts. By demonstrating the breadth of the problem, conveners also hoped connections between the various phil anthropic interests of the foundations and coastal initiatives would attract new supporters. “I thiiik any time you have a prob lem as complicated as the coast, there’s lots of different ways you can participate in the solution,” says Mary Mountcastle, president the Reynolds foundation’s board of trustees. Several funders contacted after the forum say they will be looking into ways to support coastal protec tion Initiatwes. For example, Elizabeth Fentress, executive director of the North Carolina Community Foundation in Raleigh, is interested in bringing the message to more people. “I would hope a wider net of edu cation would be cast and we would be happy to play a part in that,” she says. The fallout of the Neuse River fish kills - which took place both during and after the forum - demonstrates that when individuals and groups come together and voice strong con cerns, state officials will eventually respond. On Oct. 6, state authorities declared an unprecedented health warning for the lower Neuse River. The next week, the Hunt administra tion and state Sen. Marc Basnight announced three new initiatives to begin cleaning up the Neuse River and other waterways. The action included the temporary closure of a 10-mile section of the Neuse near New Bern to commercial fishing. But as funder Fred Stanback said at the close of the forum, time is run ning out to take action. In 20 years, he said, one will still be able to fund sym phonies and the arts. “If you don’t save these beautiful natural places, they’re going to be gone forever. You only have one chance to save them. Music will be around forever.” In addition to the Reynolds and Bryan foundations, convenors of the forum included the North Carolina Community Foundation, the Blumenthal Foundation in Charlotte, Fred and Alice Stanback, and L. Richardson and Emily Preyer. The North Carolina Coastal Federation in Newport helped to plan the program and provided logistical support. The other environmental groups involved in the forum are the Neuse River Foundation in New Bern, the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust in Wilmington, the North Carolina Environmental Defense Fund in Raleigh, the Pamlico-Tar River Foundation in Washington, and the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill. Grantmaking Continued from page 6 time of large-scale change.” The report uiges foundations to reorient their grantmaking towards support of community oiganizing as an antidote to proposed cuts in feder al safety-net programs and restric tions on nonprofit activities. Other suggestions from those interviewed tor the report include raising the 5 percent charitable pay out rate required of private founda tions; estabhshing a “sunset provi sion” to limit the life of foundations; and creating a commission to report on foundation practices and recom mend changes. Although he had not seen the com mittee’s report and could not com ment on the details, Tom Lambeth, executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation in Winston- Salem, has not noticed any general ized reluctance to fund grassroots organizing. “I’ve just come back from a three- day meeting with folks that are fund ing in the environmental arena and I found, if anything, more people are talking about those kinds of issues - even foundations that are not charac teristically involved in that kind of advocacy for the environment,” he says. As to whether foundations should respond more actively to policy changes in the political arena, Lambeth says they should first remember their role as independent organizations. “I think we need to have a thou^tful response,” he says. “We ou^t to be deciding how we respond and not being told how to respond or swallow somebody else’s idea about what our role is. We exist as unique kinds of institutions and the excuse for our existence is what we ou^t to be constantly asking ourselves about. 'That is, why were we created and are we becoming something other than those institutions?” For copies of “Foundations in the Newt Era,” contact the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, (202) 387-9177. USE VIDEO TO: • Build your membership base • Educate the community • Recruit and train volunteers • Create compelling PSAs • Transform your fund-raising! SCOTT BARBER 924 Chapel Hill Road Pittsboro, NC 27312 (919) 929-3058 CAN HELP SECURE VIDEO FUNDING!!'.! 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