UVa making final push in $3 billion campaign

Robert D. Sweeney has less than eight months to raise roughly $600 million.

If he can pull it off, he’ll bring to a close a $3 billion fundraising campaign for the University of Virginia.

“I get up every day with this thing seared into my consciousness,” said the university’s senior vice president for development and public affairs.

He’s aware it’s a tall order. The campaign was, to use his phrase, on the money, until the economy slid in September of 2008. The aftermath of the collapse was the most difficult fundraising period of a nearly-four-decade career, he said.

His office brought in a relatively low $17.6 million per month in that period, Sweeney said. The campaign, stretching from 2004 through the end of 2011, required about a million-dollar-a-day pace for officials to keep up.

Now, the campaign has run through about 91 percent of its allotted time, but brought in less than 81 percent of the goal.

Sweeney considers that striking range, and an impressive performance, given the circumstances, he said. Since Thanksgiving last year, the money has started to flow again, with monthly totals bouncing back and planned giving (bequests and the like) picking back up as well.

“Our alumni love that place with a ferocity that is a marvel to behold,” Gordon Rainey, a former rector and the national campaign chair, said.

Rainey said that support comes not just from alumni, but from families, former patients, foundations, corporations and others.

And though officials are going after every alumnus, it will take some large gifts to drive the campaign home, Sweeney said, adding that development officials are in talks with people about gifts in the 8- and 9-figure range. Smaller gifts, even en masse, are unlikely to get it done, he said.

“It might be off-putting, but it’s simply the fact,” Sweeney said.

The hitch is that people with the kind of money that could drive the university to its campaign goal tend not to be motivated by things like campaign goals.

“Because of their size, they’re motivated by transformational effect that they may have on the university or a very specific program that a donor would be interested in funding,” Sweeney said.

When the university had raised $2 billion, in September 2009, the top 10 gifts made up about 30 percent of that total, and the top 100 made up 60 percent. At that time, the university had received more than 400,000 individual gifts and pledges.

To get to the $3 billion goal, Sweeney said, development officials are aiming for two more gifts on the same scale as that of Frank Batten Sr., who donated $100 million that went to create the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, and 10 gifts in the range of $10 million.

In part, they’re hoping to do that with the help of UVa President Teresa A. Sullivan, who took over in August. The campaign, kicked off by then-president John T. Casteen III, is now being reframed to reflect Sullivan’s priorities.

Sullivan is focusing her efforts on what’s called the “heart of the Grounds,” Sweeney said, both in terms of programs that heavily affect students and faculty and in a geographic sense.

Sullivan has brought new energy and “been extraordinary out on the road,” Sweeney said.

The president has already been in front of 40 of the university’s top 50 prospects, either individually or in small-group settings, Sweeney said.

“We’ve had her literally all over the country in the last year, meeting with our alumni in our various communities, where she has made a most favorable impression,” Rainey said.

Rainey also pointed to the growing role philanthropy plays in the university’s budget.

“As public support declines, it’s just critical that philanthropy become more and more a reliable and dedicated revenue stream,” he said.

Dean Meredith Jung-En Woo of the university’s College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, discussed the impact such donations have on the school’s educational efforts.

“Their support is crucial to help us offer new scholarships, fellowships and professorships, as well as new and improved facilities and programs that will expand the boundaries of knowledge in the humanities, social sciences and sciences,” she said. “Most important, it ensures that our students continue to have the kind of profound educational experience that we’re committed to delivering.”

To that end, the university has, in addition to Sullivan, Sweeney and Rainey, roughly 200 development officers and hundreds more volunteers around the country soliciting donations.

It’s a massive effort that’s among the largest handful of campaigns yet conducted in academia, Sweeney said, putting the university in the company of the likes of Stanford, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania.

“We’re in the game,” Sweeney said. “I’m both proud and sometimes taken aback by that.”