When selected as St. Bonaventure University’s 21st President, Dennis DePerro, Ed.D., announced plans to run a capital campaign in his first few years.
Bob Van Wicklin, vice president for university advancement, is the cabinet member in charge of all university philanthropic and fundraising activities.
Van Wicklin explained that although the cabinet met last year to discuss priorities that would be highlighted in a comprehensive capital campaign, before the campaign can be launched, the university must complete a feasibility study to determine what the fundraising goal should be.
“We have a lot of exciting opportunities and needs at Bona’s, and our fundraising team is working every day to raise funds for the university,” said Van Wicklin. “They raised over $8.5 million in the last fiscal year.”
The study would look at factors such as the capacity of the university’s donor base to give and their current affinity for the university and for some of the priorities identified by the university.
Van Wicklin said the study currently underway will give the university a better idea of what specific goal should be set.
One of the potential goals of the capital campaign is to increase the university’s endowment.
St. Bonaventure’s current endowment account is worth around $67 million, said Van Wicklin. The endowment holds funds that are used both for specific and general purposes.
Restricted accounts, which fund scholarships, awards and donor-restricted funds are held and managed by the university and its investment managers, and the earnings from those accounts are used to fund their associated programs and scholarships annually, said Van Wicklin.
“The endowment is absolutely critical to our financial aid efforts,” said Van Wicklin.
Donors who set up scholarships offer a base fund of a minimum $25,000 that is added to the endowment. Then the earnings from that endowed account are given to a student that the university identifies as meeting any specified criteria, said Van Wicklin.
“So the scholarship exists and is awarded forever in your name, your legacy at Bona’s,” said Van Wicklin. “Then you can add funds to the endowment over the years or through your estate plans to increase the value and thus increase the amount of the annual award.”
The yearly draw from unrestricted endowment funds are used to fund the university’s annual budget and critical operations, said Van Wicklin.
Another priority identified for the campaign is the creation of the new School of Health Professions.
“So far, the costs to set up the School of Health Professions has been funded 100 percent by donors, enough to run the start-up costs of the program for last year and this year,” Van Wicklin said. “The advancement department will work to ensure that we have funds to run the program and build the required labs for future years as well, and it will certainly be a priority in our campaign.”
The exact timeline and goal of this capital campaign will be decided based on recommendations from the feasibility study, said Van Wicklin.
Typically, a campaign has three phases and lasts seven to eight years, Van Wicklin said. According to Van Wicklin, the first phase is the campaign preparation phase, the phase St. Bonaventure is in now.
Then second is the “silent phase,” during which the advancement team seeks to close lead gifts for the campaign, typically about half of the stated goal.
The final phase is the “public phase,” that begins where you have a public kickoff event and then work to raise the rest of the funds, said Van Wicklin.
“So the campaign is really a community-wide effort that will rely very heavily on the collective support of our alumni and other friends of the university,” Van Wicklin said.
The campaign will rely on the generosity of alumni.
“Alumni typically donate two-thirds of what we raise every year,” said Van Wicklin. “Our last comprehensive campaign concluded in 2009 and raised $95 million. Over half of our 27,000 alumni gave a gift to that campaign, and, in a typical year, 20 percent of our alumni give to the university, which is more than double the national average and higher than our peer institutions and other colleges and universities in Western New York.”
killenmk15@bonaventure.edu
