The Job in Which Every Single Dollar Matters

Lori A. Cortez fell in love with community colleges for the first time, she says, when she was a low-income, first-generation student attending Delta College, in Michigan, thanks to scholarship support. She fell in love all over again when she joined Sauk Valley Community College, in rural Illinois, after completing a doctorate in higher-education administration.

In her role as dean of institutional advancement, Cortez works to raise money so students in strained financial circumstances can further their education and “break the generational cycle of poverty,” as she did.

In part to make up for a reduced share of support from state funds, two-year colleges have been turning more attention to fund raising in recent years by creating new jobs like Cortez’s or by expanding existing development teams.

Marc Westenburg, director of the Center for Community College Advancement at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, or CASE, says that, even though community colleges have made progress in development staffing, they have a long way to go. A CASE survey of 122 community-college foundations in 2014 found an average of 4.9 full-time-equivalent staff members, with only 1.3 of those devoted to development.

Those administrators come from a variety of educational and professional backgrounds, Westenburg says, including sales or Chamber of Commerce work. Fund raisers need the skills both to build relationships with potential donors, and to know when and where to ask for gifts, he says. “You really do truly need the right person in that position because having the wrong person in that position can damage your institution’s reputation and your relationships with donors that the next person will have to spend that much more time repairing.”

A commitment to fund raising appears to pay off, at least modestly, for community colleges. The 104 public two-year colleges that participated in CASE’s latest Voluntary Support of Education survey reported an 8-percent annual increase in the amount of private gifts received in the 2018 fiscal year. The colleges raised an average of just $1.7 million, compared with $74.4 million at four-year public research or doctoral institutions.

Among challenges faced by community-college fund raisers is that they may be juggling other responsibilities along with development. But, as Cortez observes, the colleges are used to doing more with less.

When Cortez took her job, in 2016, she initially focused on the farming community as she sought support for the college’s revived agriculture program. Sauk Valley’s president, David M. Hellmich, encourages employees to participate in local volunteer efforts, which strengthens ties with the community and shows “that we are there for them,” Cortez says.

Sauk Valley floated the idea, she says, of trying to raise $20 million for an endowment to support a Promise program, which would cover tuition and fees for up to three years for students who met certain criteria, like performing community service in high school. Community members were “excited and interested” in the program, Cortez says, but thought the fund-raising goal was too ambitious. “So we had to take the needle back, and now we’re looking at a $10-million endowment,” she says.

Some community colleges are much further along than Sauk Valley in fund raising. Mitch Andrews, vice president for institutional advancement at Tyler Junior College and director of the TJC Foundation, in Texas, says the college had seven advancement employees when he arrived, in 2002, with only two focused on fundraising. Now it has 15.

Last year the college received its largest gift ever, a $19.1-million bequest from Virginia and Jim Gatewood. The gift will sustain an honors scholarship program that Virginia Gatewood first endowed after her husband’s death in 2001. She also underwrote the creation of a garden on campus in 2005 in memory of her late husband, who was a petroleum landman.

The Gatewoods’ relationship with the college, Andrews says, was cultivated over many years, a testament to the investment the college made in employing advancement officials over the long term.

Largest Private Gifts to Community Colleges

Note: Grants from foundations are excluded.

Sources: Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, “Largest Gifts to Community Colleges,” The Chronicle of Philanthropy, “Big Charitable Gifts” database

More college leaders are deciding they don’t want to be left behind. In December, Denise Hurst, who was a regional manager of the Massachusetts State Lottery, became the first-ever vice president for advancement and external affairs at Springfield Technical Community College, in Massachusetts. She and her newly hired team are busy identifying the alumni and industry leaders who have a vested interest in the college and its students.

It is important to share with those potential donors, s

able and an acceptable education.” The dollars can remove barriers, she says, “whether that means giving someone enough money to buy books for a semester, or to close the $500 gap in their bills,” or to p 00000170-d184-d79d-a1f5-dbfdf177000a
ay for public transportation or a babysitter so the student can attend class.

Kristen Bennett, vice president for institutional advancement and executive director of the foundation at Trinity Valley Community College, in Texas, paints a similar picture for donors. Every dollar they give, she tells them, might go as far as $100 donated to a larger four-year institution. As she runs her one-person office, Bennett, who was once vice president for advancement at the now-closed St. Catharine College, keeps her focus on major gifts and planned giving, which she feels give her the highest return on her investment. One of the rewards of her job is hosting dinners at which scholarship recipients meet the donors who supported their education.

Seeing the impact of her work is all the more meaningful to Bennett because she, like Cortez, was a first-generation student.

Cortez is inspired by the transformation she sees in students when they receive scholarships. “College may not be talked about in their household,” she says. “When they hear that somebody who didn’t even know them wants to invest in them, there is a change in mentality of ‘I’m going to do better, I’m going to do more.’”

Julia Piper, an editorial associate, compiles Gazette. Email her at julia.piper@chronicle.com.

Correction (3/11/2019, 11:05 a.m.): The average amount of $74.4 million in private gifts raised in the 2018 fiscal year was for public research or doctoral institutions, not for all four-year public institutions. The text has been corrected.

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