HealyHoya
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
Victory!!!
Posts: 1,059
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Post by HealyHoya on Jun 26, 2007 10:21:22 GMT -5
No time for a deep dive into this excellent thread but any discussion of characteristics/skill-sets for a future GU president must have proven ability to fundraise in the top-2. plain and simple, end of discussion.
alums, esp. big-hitters who hold sway, won't put up with issues of embarrassing endowment, financial mismanagement, poorly kep books, etc., anymore.
we'll take secular pres/jesuit pres from tiny college who doubled endowment in 10 years over brilliiant published, admin experienced vp from ivy university in a second.
fundraising is key.
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Jack
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 3,411
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Post by Jack on Jun 26, 2007 13:20:46 GMT -5
But what is entailed in being a good fund-raiser? Sure, some of it is developing relationships, knowing who to target, knowing what to say. But isn't a lot of it having a product people want to invest in? And that gets back to having a vision that is both lofty in aspirations and grounded in concrete plans. Utraque unum.
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FormerHoya
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
Posts: 1,262
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Post by FormerHoya on Jun 26, 2007 15:52:55 GMT -5
<-- Doesn't know what he ^ is saying.
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hoya01
Century (over 100 posts)
Posts: 169
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Post by hoya01 on Jun 26, 2007 21:22:25 GMT -5
But what is entailed in being a good fund-raiser? Sure, some of it is developing relationships, knowing who to target, knowing what to say. But isn't a lot of it having a product people want to invest in? And that gets back to having a vision that is both lofty in aspirations and grounded in concrete plans. Utraque unum. Interesting question Jack. I've been told that MSB Dean George Daly is a much better fundraiser than his predecessor, Chris Puto. I do not know how accurate that is. I do remember Daly had an impressive record as Dean at NYU, although I believe McDonough's gift came while Puto was Dean.
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Post by reformation on Jun 26, 2007 21:44:54 GMT -5
Another way to look at what Jack is saying is that part of making the University better is knowing what to spend(or target the fundraising ask) on. I've heard a lot of people at Gtwn argue for instance that the money raised and funraising effort to build the performing arts center would have better directed towards building the science center a few years ago rather than a few years from now. I have no knowledge whether that was a real choice for gtwn between the two projects, but it is illustrative of the choices that the pres must make and its impact on the univ.
With regard to fundraising specifically I think Jack is also right that it is more than glad handing. This is especially true when one is trying to get donors to give larger sums of money. Large donors generally give money to universities to support true"excellence" in research, scholarship, or athletics.
For instance donors would be more likely to endow an additional coaching slot or scholarship for a sport to make it a top 10 or 20 program than as part of a more general appeal for an athletic program that has either no or modest objectives. Similarly on the academic side the elite universities frequently make pretty specific pitches regarding the impact of the donors money to upgrade certain activities. A year ago Columbia hired a bunch of econ profs(8, I think) at once to upgrade to top 10 rank a dept they thought was strategic to the university's mission-they were more effective in fundraising and getting the talented prof's by approaching both donors and prospective prof's in a strategic manner.
A lot of what I've mentioned above is just common sense and you don't need a Phd to figure it out; however, you do need to be aware of what is going on at your competitors and have enough confidence to take firm actions and avoid the "that's the way we do things here" exceptionalism groupthink that occurs at a lot of univ's(especially Gtwn)
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