Duke raked in just $302 million in private donations between July 2008 and June 2009, a 22 percent drop from the previous fiscal year’s total, Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations, confirmed.
Duke shattered fundraising records during the 2007-2008 fiscal year, raising more than $385 million in private gifts, Schoenfeld said. This year, the development office managed to keep the number of donors steady at about 100,000, but the final dollar tally of the donations lagged far behind.
Turmoil in the markets is to blame for the drop in donations, Schoenfeld said.
“There’s no question that the economy took a toll on fundraising at Duke, as it did at many places,” he said. “People who make major gifts cut back considerably last year. The timing of certain major gifts was such that some of them just didn’t occur during this fiscal year.”
William Conescu, executive director of Alumni and Development Communications, declined to be interviewed for this story, referring all questions to Schoenfeld. Conescu recently replaced Peter Vaughn, who retired.
Donation figures have not been standardized according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, which would have yielded different figures.
Schoenfeld noted that Duke’s record-breaking fiscal year 2007-2008 also coincided with the Financial Aid Initiative, a $308 million fundraising effort. The campaign reached its goal in January, and universities often witness fundraising slumps after the conclusion of such a major push, he said.
More donors than usual delayed the payment of their pledged gifts this year, but not to a significant extent, Schoenfeld said. Donors also seemed to favor one-time gifts rather than multi-year commitments given the turmoil in the markets, he added.
Private gifts comprised 16 percent of the University’s budget during the 2007-2008 fiscal year, according to the Annual Report. Donations support everything from academic programs to scholarships to capital projects at Duke, Schoenfeld said.
Duke is among the leading fundraisers in higher education, placing 13th in a listing of universities ranked in order of donation totals released in January by Voluntary Support of Education.
Duke is certainly not alone in its fundraising troubles. Administrators at universities nationwide predicted a four percent drop in fundraising totals on average, said Rae Goldsmith, a vice president of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.
“Anecdotally we are hearing some people saying they are down, some saying they are flat, and some people saying donations have increased,” Goldsmith said. “Everything we hear is all over the map.”
Duke administrators expected a drop in donations after a historic fundraising year and prepared accordingly, Schoenfeld said.
“None of this is a surprise,” he said. “We anticipated a shortfall this year and we’ve been planning for it for a while, much the same way that we were able to predict the decline in investment returns.”
But various parts of the University are feeling the pinch.
Three years ago, administrators at the Sanford Institute of Public Policy set a goal to raise $40 million by this October to aid their transition from an institute to a school, Sanford Dean Bruce Kuniholm said. In a March interview with The Chronicle, Kuniholm said he hoped to raise the amount by June. With just weeks until the new deadline, the school has raised $37.5 million, but it has had to work hard to get there—especially this past year.
“If you look at the last three years, they all look like they’re relatively equal, but people really had to stretch to help us meet our goals,” Kuniholm said. “The last year was tough. If it weren’t for the economy, we’d have long ago surpassed our goal.”
Student need strikes a chord with donors in the economic climate, and many schools have made scholarships the focus of their campaigns, Goldsmith said.
Financial aid has also been a focus of Duke’s fundraising efforts, but not simply because administrators think it is a cause that donors will be more receptive to, Schoenfeld said.
“Ultimately it’s all about where Duke is going,” he said.
Duke’s fundraising has shown early signs of recovery. Private gifts began to pick up at the end of the fiscal year, and donations to the annual fund so far are running 27 percent ahead of the same point last year, Schoenfeld said.
He added that the University received more gifts from overseas donors this year, which he predicted will be a key source of fundraising growth as the University expands its boundaries with ventures like Fuqua’s Cross Continent MBA program.
“We’re hopeful that the historic path that Duke had been on will pick up again this year,” he said.
Reflecting on the recession that followed 9/11, Goldsmith recalled that higher education fundraising recovered, though it took time.
“It took about two years for things to start coming back—it took a dip one year, the next year it was flat and the next year it was back at record levels,” she said. “Donations do come back.”
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