Donor conflicts are rare, officials say

Jennifer Knight

Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2001 | 11:18 a.m.

Philanthropy means power in Nevada's higher education circles. Without it, many buildings would not be built, and university programs would be not be realized.

So when a donor lodges a complaint against the UNLV president, regents listen.

Gaming millionaire Stanley Fulton, in a letter to the Board of Regents July 31, said that he has donated $8.4 million to other institutions because he has concerns about UNLV President Carol Harter's leadership.

University system officials have been scrambling for answers ever since.

Fulton said he is not alone in his criticism of Harter. Other donors, who Fulton mentioned in his letter to the regents, such as Lied Foundation Trustee Christina Hixson, car dealership owner Cliff Findlay and members of the Reynolds Foundation too were withholding money from UNLV.

University system officials say they will look into the allegations.

Fulton's complaint, although unusual, is an example of the sometimes tenuous relationships that exist between college and university presidents and high-powered donors. Those relationships can be demanding or without strings, fund-raising experts say.

"It's a very mixed bag," Harter said. "There are some donors that are extraordinarily generous and ask very little, if anything, in return."

One of UNLV's most recent public embarrassments involved a building -- the Lied Library -- that was funded largely by a donor. Saddled with cost overruns and construction delays, the building took a year longer than expected to complete and is $3.6 million over-budget. This is in addition to $5 million in outstanding labor claims, which have resulted in a lawsuit.

That project was funded by Hixson, who didn't attend the library's opening.

Hixson, sources say, also expressed concern over Harter after it was announced that UNLV would start a women's golf program. She worried that the new women's program might compete with men's golf for funding.

Harter said the newly created women's golf program came as a result of overwhelming support from within the university.

Although Hixson refused comment, Mike Meyer, a friend of Hixson's who heads the athletic department at the Community College of Southern Nevada, said the incident was a misunderstanding.

"She just wants to make sure that the money for the men's golf endowment would not be used for women's golf, and that's all it was," Meyer said.

Even factors outside a president's control can affect an institution's relationship with donors, say experts.

The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation decided not to donate $25 million in funding to UNLV's College of Business because of leadership issues and decisions made by the Board of Regents, according to a Nov. 7, 2000, letter written by foundation president Steven Anderson.

The two key decisions were: The approval by regents to purchase a Lake Tahoe lodge for research purposes and the their decision to start the Nevada State College at Henderson.

Donations at UNLV remain consistent, however. Harter during the past year has raised more than $20 million while spending about $150,000 to entertain donors, said John Gallagher, executive director of the UNLV Foundation.

"The bottom line is, if there's a wholesale drop off in average donors, we haven't seen any of that," Gallagher said. "As a matter of fact, this year was the strongest annual year in small donations ever."

Conflicts between philanthropists and the institutions they benefit are unusual, though not unheard of. Big-ticket donors who fund projects that bear their names certainly don't want to be embarrassed by anything that the college or its board does, Meyer said.

Such an incident occurred at the University of Utah in 1989, when a controversy over the naming of a college prompted a donor to take back a $15 million gift. The university had planned to change the name of its medical school to honor a large donor, but faculty members, students, alumni and other donors protested the move.

The donor rescinded his offer, saying that the university could not handle such a large gift, according a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

For the most part, fund-raising experts say that donors expect two things: honesty and respect. They ask for little else.

"In 99.9 percent of the cases, the motivation that a philanthropist has is to do something good for the world," said Scott Nichols, dean for development at Harvard Law School. "The very meaning of the word philanthropy is people loving, and there has to be some love there before there is any giving."

Whether Fulton's complaint against Harter forces action from the Board of Regents remains unclear, say university officials. Still, Fulton said he made the complaints out of a love for the school.

"I love Las Vegas," he said. "I love Nevada. I think I used to love UNLV."