Blog
Stewardship of Catholic Advancement Projects
William J. Acton, Senior Partner at Advancement Partners
There is a fine line between providing prospects an opportunity to knead the dough…and simply turning over the whole baking project to them
Advancement professionals are keen to throw around jargon. Words like endowment, stewardship and my personal favorite – cultivation. I never really know what to think when someone tells me that a giving prospect “needs more cultivation.” People are not plants. Getting people to attend Breakfast with Santa with their kids or sending donors a birthday card will not help them “grow” closer to your school, nor move them to “stretch” in their philanthropy. They are not bad things to do, of course! But if your definition of donor cultivation is being nice to or with them…or getting them to attend a reunion where they kick around old times with classmates…well, that’s not going to cut it in 2024.
Replace that word cultivation with the word engagement and now you're getting somewhere. The expectations of giving prospects, large and small, are off the charts relative to a generation ago. Prospects want a whole lot more than just contact with the school and feel-good moments before they step up to give. They want to review school financials, understand and weigh in on your institutional priorities, know what the key strategies are for facing the future. They bring their own ideas of what should be most important in your work. To use a metaphor, they want to put their hands in the bread dough and knead it for a while before they finalize or even consider any kind of pledge decision.
But there is a fine line between providing prospects an opportunity to knead the dough…and simply turning over the whole baking project to them. Because many of them…want to do just that. They want to tell you how to do your job better. If there are any followers/readers of previous blogs (you must be out there somewhere!), you’ll recall that we’ve written about this before: everyone outside our offices is an expert when it comes to advancement. If you’re an advancement professional, you’ve no doubt had board members or alums or parents of all backgrounds tell you how to do your job. I guess everyone thinks they know how to run a school because they’ve, well, gone to school.
- "Yes, I see the budget shortfall in your funding model. But you can’t raise tuition! Now, our grade school ran a great walkathon. I think we should try that."
- "If we gathered all of the hockey alumni together they’d pitch in and build a new rink to honor our great coach. Let’s organize a happy hour at Cheers; they’ll all come and donate!!”
- “Your marketing is terrible. You should get some ads on the radio and lease some billboards by the highway – that will increase enrollment.”
So how do we straddle that fine line? Well, by being good stewards. People often don’t embrace all that stewardship means in leading and advancing a school’s mission. It means…
- providing stakeholders opportunities to truly partner with you in ways that make sense
- managing the donor relationship
- leading and managing your projects and programs in mindful and realistic ways.
Stewardship begins with clear communication and shared goals – things like who does what, what is the process for decision-making, what are the budgeted costs for projects, who decides institutional priorities. It is important to have these details ironed out and clearly communicated BEFORE you start asking major gift prospects to invest in your school.
Sadly, we have seen the result of not having this kind of clarity. Allow me to share two stories…
A few years back, one high school had worked through their planning thoroughly and had identified science labs as the top campaign funding priority. Donors were stepping up, the campaign was moving confidently towards victory until…one of the very top prospects told the president that while they supported the labs, they really wanted to renovate the parking lot. They were the school’s largest lifetime donors. All their children graduated from the school. All of their grandchildren attended or would someday attend the school. Nobody wanted to risk offense and besides…these donors were offering to fund the parking lot project completely – $300,000.
And so while it all made sense – project fully funded by one donor and the parking lot really did need an overhaul – it created issues. First of all, it meant $300,000 less for the labs (which were a $2.5 million project). Second, as others learned of the “new” campaign element that was added, they began bringing their own elements to the case. One donor asked if he could have his $100,000 pledge redirected to build tennis courts for the school – an estimated $800,000 project. He “promised” the school that they would find the rest of the funds – i.e. $700,000 – from donors who would “never” be interested in supporting the science labs. The school, unfortunately, agreed. That decision then encouraged a small group of football fanatics to come forward about redoing the bleachers and field turf – a $2 million proposition. And then along came the hockey families who wanted to redo the locker rooms at the arena the school used (but did not own, by the way.).
So guess what happened??
That’s right…the parking lot did in fact get finished. No tennis courts or hockey dressing rooms got done (perhaps the incremental funds and pledges “restricted” to those elements are still sitting in an account somewhere?). The science labs basically were broken into “Phase I and Phase II,” with Phase II still to be completed because, yes, the football field “jumped” over the labs and everything else in the priority ranking.
All of this left a sour taste in a lot of mouths, even though the campaign raised the most money in school history.
And then there is the more recent story of the college that received a $25 million pledge, with naming rights, to build a planned $57 million performing arts facility. According to reports, there was in place a “gift agreement” attached to the pledge. Fast forward 10 years – through the planning, designing, redesigning, more planning and pledge paying – and the building is fantastic and up and running, albeit at a ballooned cost of $109 million and the donor suing the college for the return of $21 million of his pledge.
Talk about a sour taste!
While none of us can know everything that transpired to turn a $25 million donor into a litigant against his alma mater…or how you turn a $57 million building into a $109 million one…I think we can all agree that there are important lessons all of us can learn from this truly awful circumstance. The donor was intimately involved in the design of the building, and these processes ultimately drove the final cost to nearly double. These cost increases meant more money needed to be raised, which of course slowed down the construction timeline which, of course, then also drove up the actual construction costs. The changes and delays and increased costs no doubt created a huge amount of anxiety and concern in all parties – to the point where the donor began questioning the stewardship of the school and their use of his funds. And so…love turned into lawsuit.
Not enough can be said about good stewardship – taking care of your school and your stakeholders. It calls on leaders to be clear with their donors – and to get out in front of them, where they can. It means saying ”not yet” when someone asks about tennis courts after a thorough planning process has determined that already…and also “that’s the cap on our budget” when a donor wants “more” added to a project. Sadly, sometimes donors walk away, but that is a very rare thing if we are strong leaders, who engage our stakeholders and communicate clearly. Philanthropic investors expect nothing less.
Posted on: December 16, 2024