Universities Go Down Path of Campaign Funding

Two years ago Melbourne University quietly embarked on a campaign to raise $250 million. More than $80 million has been collected, and by October, the university expects to have more than $100 million locked in.

Monash University has already hit that milestone, with more than $110 million in the bank - more than half of the $200 million they hope to collect as part of the Monash+ push instigated in May 2008.

Fund-raising is big business for universities as they move to supplement government funding with annual donations and major campaigns.

''Everyone's been waking up to this in the last five years in universities in Australia,'' Melbourne's deputy vice-chancellor (university affairs) Warren Bebbington said. ''The fact is that the government hasn't fully funded universities for many years now and we're faced with closing the gap. Philanthropy is one of the ways of doing that.''

At Deakin University a foundation was established in 2008 to co-ordinate fund-raising. The inaugural chairman is former Victorian premier Steve Bracks. Swinburne University's development office runs a community appeal each year and Victoria University aims to launch a significant campaign in 2013.

The University of Sydney collected more than $56 million in donations in 2008, but is not at present running a large-scale campaign.

But Australia trails well behind the United States, where universities aim to fund 8 per cent of their budget from philanthropy. Here no university draws more than 2 per cent of its budget from donations.

Monash University's vice-president (advancement), Ron Fairchild, heads up the Monash+ campaign. He said the biggest challenge was convincing donors the university needed the money. ''There still tends to be a feeling that the government should be providing all the funding. To many people, universities aren't seen as a charitable institution,'' he said.

''I'm not sure that the university sector has put its best foot forward in the past in presenting a compelling enough case to draw the significant level of funding that is essential.''

In recent years retired veterinarian Bill Riches noticed a steep decline in rural veterinary science students. ''I talked with a few of my friends who were still in practice. The students have got to do work with them and over the last three or four years there was only one from a rural background,'' he said.

So in late 2008 Mr Riches donated $100,000 to Melbourne University to start an endowment, with the support of former colleagues. Each year one student from rural Victoria receives $5000 towards their expenses. ''When you start investigating it the actual costs are so much harder than for the city students. The boy who got it this year said he wouldn't be able to do it without it.''

At 72, Mr Riches had never donated to the university before, and had never been asked.

It's the job of Melbourne University's director of development, Ross Coller, to cultivate relationships with donors like Mr Riches.

''[The development office's] part in the university is to engage alumni, friends, the community and others in the work of the university and expose them to what we're doing,'' he said.

When the university's campaign began one of the first jobs was having students phone alumni to talk up the university and ask for financial support.

Mr Coller said Australian universities had never really spent time and money in fund-raising the way they were now, leaving alumni relations languishing.

The big drawcard is student support. Scholarships form the foundation of the Melbourne and Monash campaigns, and most annual giving at other universities tends to be directed towards student support.

Professor Bebbington wants Melbourne University to achieve a level of student support that echoes Stanford University in the United States. ''Financial reasons are never a reason not to go to Stanford,'' he said.

At Monash the model is the University of Toronto in Canada, where $C1 billion was raised in a campaign that ended in 2005.

''I believe we are just scratching the surface of the impact donations will make to Australian universities in the future,'' Mr Fairchild said.

This piece was originally published in The Age. You can read it here.