More community college presidents pursue fundraising
An article at Inside Higher Ed profiles the president of Lord Fairfax Community College in Virginia, who appears to be breaking new ground in private fundraising efforts. Its goal for 2007 alone is to raise $1 million, while its foundation already has $9 million in assets. The college is just beginning to explore the potential of its large alumni network.
“The fastest growing area in community college development right now is in the alumni affairs area,” says Steven Budd, president of New Hampshire Community Technical College at Claremont and also the board president for the Council for Research Development, an affiliate organization of the American Association of Community Colleges focused on fund raising. “Alumni programs all over the country are really being beefed up.”
And as such, the role of the community college president is changing, in terms of how presidents spend their time, why they’re hired and even how long they spend in the job. Budd, for instance, came to his current college by way of an assistant vice president for advancement position at Massachusetts’ Springfield Technical Community College. More and more, he says, institutional development is becoming a pathway to the two-year-college presidency.
At EMSI/CCbenefits, we’ve found that one of the best ways for a college to increase its visibility for fundraising is to conduct a college impact study, which measures the socioeconomic benefits that the college provides to its entire community—including students, taxpayers, and businesspeople.
