Sunday, Sept. 24, 2006 | 7:28 a.m.
Las Vegas Sun
By Christina Littlefield
How does UNLV go about raising a half-billion dollars? We're not talking car washes and bake sales.
To get the ball rolling on its $500 million campaign, UNLV Foundation officials drew up a list of current donors who, they hoped, could be tapped for more.
The list included more than 150 people who research indicated had the resources to give $1 million or more, according to former and current foundation employees. Based on their estimates, the group had the potential of donating the entire $500 million.
The staff believed it could close deals by February 2005 with at least 40 donors who alone could meet half the goal.
Development officers and UNLV officials were then assigned to specific donors, based on the donors' area of interests.
And then the schmoozing began.
The fundraisers invited their prospective donors to athletic events, tours on campus, lunches. If an occasion dictated, they sent flowers. All the while, the foundation representative was singing the praises of a specific college or program and talking about how private donors help elevate the university with their directed gifts.
Developing the courtship may take two years before leading to a proposal: Will you please donate? It's called "the ask," and the fundraiser might actually be so forward as to suggest an amount - one, for instance, that would fund a project that reflects the donor's interests.
"It's almost anti-climactic because you've been building them up, and you've brought them to a place where they are already beginning to think about what their commitment might look like," said UNLV's chief fundraiser, John Gallagher. Then come the details: might the entire gift land in one lump sum, for instance, or be paid in annual installments over five or 10 years?
The foundation hopes one big donor will help to land another, because at that level of giving, peer pressure and shared connections can be more effective than cultivating big donations with the hired help.
Bill Boyd, for instance, was approached for his initial $5 million donation to the law school by then-President Carol Harter. Boyd then worked with Gov. Kenny Guinn to convince media mogul Jim Rogers to donate $1 million to start the school.
Both Rogers and Boyd later upped their donations to close to $30 million, $20 million of that to come after their deaths. Harter and Don Snyder, the campaign's chairman and one of Boyd's former top executives, were tapped to ask Boyd for the larger gift.
Snyder's pitch was that Boyd could establish what it would cost to name a school. Without a naming policy in place, UNLV had sold Boyd the naming rights for the law school for $5 million. If Boyd would give $25 million more, that would mean the next donor would have to cough up $30 million or more to be a school namesake.
Having seen what his first gift had already done for the university, Boyd was an easy sell, Snyder said. UNLV has had the best success in the past raising money for buildings, such as for the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs, because donors can see where their money goes. Scholarships are the next easiest sell because they directly benefit students.
The greater challenge, fundraisers say, is getting people to donate money to improve a program or to help recruit top scholars to the university.
Raising money for the Harrah College of Hotel Administration, the College of Fine Arts and athletics is easier because those programs have higher profiles in the community.
The trick to all good fundraising, College of Business development officer Mark Jennette says, is to "stay on message."
And be patient while closing the deal.
"It's a slow, tedious process," says Richard Flaherty, dean of the business college. "Nothing ever happens as fast as you would like it to."
Despite some big gifts early on, such as the pledges from Rogers and Boyd and a $38.7 million pledge from the Greenspun family, owners of the Las Vegas Sun, UNLV fundraisers have struggled to bring in the seven- or eight-figure donations they expected. And with a $166 million fundraising shortfall, that would be a lot of car washes and cake sales.
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