On Vice President for Development Robert Shepard's desk sits a small blue plastic bucket filled with Werther's Original candies.
On one side, it reads "The Campaign for Duke" and on the other, "Duke Libraries". Shepard said the University librarian, David Ferriero, had them made as a reminder that the capital campaign still has individual targets - or buckets, as fundraisers call them - to fill, despite reaching its overall $2 billion goal.
But while administrators are working hard to fill every last bucket, they are also starting to look past Dec. 31, 2003, and to a post-campaign Duke.
"It's not [a question] we've spent a whole lot of time thinking about, because we're like marathon runners," said President Nan Keohane. "When you're working your way to the end, you don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about what you're going to do when you sit down by the fire afterwards."
Top universities have employed various strategies for post-campaign fundraising - from immediately launching a new campaign to focusing on narrow targets.
The Johns Hopkins University, for example, followed up its $1.52 billion 1994-2000 campaign with the start of a new campaign two weeks later, a $2 billion effort that will run until 2007.
By contrast, Stanford University's $1 billion campaign in the 1980s has been followed by no major school-wide campaign, but a series of smaller initiatives for key projects.
Indeed, the joke among many observers is that top universities only have two fundraising modes - open campaign and quiet campaign.
Yet Shepard said that Duke would not likely launch into a new campaign anytime soon. Keohane said several projects would be key to maintaining a sense of momentum after the campaign, including renovation and reassignment of West Campus social space into a student village, later rounds of Perkins Library renovation, the creation of performing arts space off East Campus in the tobacco warehouse acquired two years ago, and the balance of funding for the new multidisciplinary French Science Building.
Keohane said that as president of Wellesley College, her $150 million capital campaign ended and went into a less-than-focused development effort. She added that it would be important for Duke not to lose momentum following its own successful campaign.
"There was a wonderful sense of euphoria [but] there was also a sense a of letdown because it's much different when you don't have that wonderful spur of the campaign," she said. "In some ways, it's easier to raise money in a campaign because nobody's under any illusions about why you're there to see them and you a have a very strong case to make."
Shepard said that he did not expect the day-to-day operations of the Office of University Development to change, but that the campaign would gradually be replaced with one or a series of initiatives.
"Anyone who's lived through a campaign knows that the loss of momentum or the apparent loss of momentum - the campaign as an organizing principle - can be a real challenge," Shepard said. "That rallying point goes away."
Steven Rum, development officer for the Medical Center, said his office will not lose a beat in fundraising.
"We're all going to celebrate, but the next day it's back to work. The needs are never-ending," he said. "The single critical thing that will change is the strategic planning for the future campaigning. We've got to take away what we've done right and done wrong and put into place the metrics for the next campaign."
Administrators agreed that the most stunning way in which the campaign has changed fundraising at Duke is what Keohane and others have termed the "Big D" mentality. In contrast to the previous campaign, from 1984 to 1992 that raised just $565 million, this campaign has centralized fundraising so that no school can approach a major donor without approval from Keohane and John Piva, senior vice president for alumni affairs and development. Fundraising strategies are coordinated to ensure donors are not approached from too many fundraisers for competing projects.
"If you go to other schools there's a lot of backbiting and hiding of donors and not sharing of information," Rum said. "We meet on a regular basis, and share problems and try to determine what's in the best interest of Duke."
One significant change in post-campaign Duke life will be the time that Keohane and academic officers spend on fundraising. While they will not totally abandon the fundraising circuit, many said they will not do nearly as much post-campaign. Keohane has said, for example, that she hopes to teach a class next spring and spend more time on campus.
William Chafe, dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, said that 25 percent of his time is spent fundraising, but he expects to cut that time in half after the campaign ends. He noted that last week, he left Wednesday night for fundraising events in Seattle and left for Miami Thursday night for fundraising events there through Friday, getting only four hours of sleep in between.
"I think [administrative] teaching will increase, and hopefully, life will be a little more relaxed and less strenuous," Chafe said.
Pratt School of Engineering Dean Kristina Johnson, one of the University's most prolific fundraisers - raising over $200 million - did not expect to cut her travel at all. She pointed to further faculty hires, scholarships and renovations to Hudson Hall as reasons to keep working to bring in more donors.
"I don't see it changing a whole lot," she said. "One of the main focuses for a dean should be to garner resources for outstanding faculty and students."
In the meantime, however, the blue library pail will remain on Shepard's desk, reminding him not only of the library's needs but of financial aid, Arts and Sciences and faculty development as well over the next 11 months.
And although some officials have hoped for as high a finish as $2.5 billion, Shepard was a little more cautious about the campaign's final number.
"I would like to be north of $2.2 billion, but I don't know how far north."
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