Monday, March 5, 2007 | 7:18 a.m.
When UNLV launched the public phase of its $500 million fundraising campaign in September 2005, officials invited 600 guests to a sit-down, three-course dinner featuring Angus beef filet in a shiitake mushroom sauce and shrimp scampi.
The gala for top-flight donors and community leaders took place at the Thomas & Mack Center, which transformed itself for the dinner party. UNLV staff similarly dressed up Cox Pavilion for then-President Carol Harter's State of the University address announcing the campaign to faculty and staff the same morning.
At the time, university officials wouldn't say how much the day's activities cost. But now, six months after the Sun's formal request for information, the university has finally divulged it: $179,664.
That includes the dinner, a campuswide reception, student performers, blinking UNLV pins as favors and pyrotechnics.
That price tag was $40,000 more than what any other president had spent on entertainment costs for the entire year.
All told, Harter spent more $427,000 in her last year as president to host community and campus events, wine and dine donors and community leaders, and otherwise promote the needs of the university.
Having spent, on average, about $160,000 a year in the "quiet years" of the campaign, Harter said the spike in spending during the 2005-06 school year was because the aggressive fundraising campaign went public.
The campaign dinner also doubled as the foundation's annual dinner to honor donors, an expense that usually does not come out of the president's so-called host account.
"When you do a capital campaign, you obviously increase the amount of activity you are doing in the community, and the most elaborate events are those to kick off the campaign," said Harter, who became executive director of UNLV's Black Mountain Institute, a literary think tank, when she stepped down as president in June.
In comparison, presidents at UNR and the Community College of Southern Nevada spent $137,000 and $130,000, respectively, during the same school year on hospitality and campus events. But they also raised nowhere near the $42 million in cash and $16.3 million in pledges that Harter collected in her last year as president, nor was either in the middle of a fundraising drive.
As of January, the campaign had raised $175 million in cash, $80 million in pledges and $82 million in bequests, for a total of $337 million since 2002.
Still, the costs incurred by Harter bothered Nevada System of Higher Education Chancellor Jim Rogers, who questioned how effective a 600-person dinner would be at developing relationships with individual donors.
"This is a lot of money to spend for something that I am not sure you could prove any cause or effect," said Rogers, one of the university's biggest donors. "I don't think donors want money spent on them. They want time spent on them. I don't think they want the fanfare."
UNLV Foundation officers estimate that when fundraising expenses are totaled, including salaries for staff, the university spends about $1 for every $8 raised. The industry standard is about one-to-four.
"Every year we look at the costs of raising money, and we make sure that the money that we raise is a satisfactory multiple of our costs," said Ted Quirk, chairman of the UNLV Foundation Board.
Harter said she considered every community event or lunch with a donor as a chance to tell the university's story. It may take years, she said, for those investments to pay off with large donations, but in the meantime the university is cultivating a cheerleader.
"I haven't had a single experience where it has been an instantaneous love affair," Harter said. "It is always a courtship and a long process."
Foundation trustees set aside about $250,000 a year to be spent at the university president's discretion. The foundation separately spends $175,000 to $200,000 a year on its annual dinner for donors.
Harter used the money on a wide variety of events, including new faculty orientation, recognition lunches for faculty, staff and students, and student support initiatives such as an annual dinner for Native American students hosted by the Harrah College of Hotel Administration.
Harter also bought tables at selected charity events, especially if someone connected to the university was being honored. Table buys and contributions to other entities, such as the annual Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership Conference at UNLV, topped $16,800 in 2006.
In addition to the campaign dinner, other pricey events included the annual holiday dinner and the film premiere for PBS's American Experience documentary on Las Vegas. Each cost about $22,000.
"It is rare that you would see the president taking someone to lunch for the sake of going to lunch," said Schyler Richards, associate vice president of University and Community Relations. "There is a purpose behind all of these."
UNR's largest expense in 2006 was $50,000 for football tailgate parties. CCSN spent the bulk of its money on faculty and staff events, $30,000 each for two convocations and $22,000 for a holiday party.
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