The Spirit of Giving:
How Bard pulls in its millions
By J.p. Lawrence
The holiday season is a time for giving, for receiving, and for street corners staffed by hopeful ringing bells imploring frigid passersbys to give a little nickel to the poor. But for Bard College President Leon Botstein and the rest of school’s fundraising team, the holiday season is just one more beat on a long campaign.
When Botstein came to Bard in 1975, the college was a small, struggling liberal arts school with troubled finances and no real fundraising efforts. Today, Botstein oversees an international liberal arts empire, with various campuses across the world and an endowment fund that has more than doubled in the last decade.
Additionally, in what the college has billed the largest and most ambitious fund-raising campaign in its history, the school’s 150th Anniversary Campaign has raised almost $320 million dollars out of a goal of almost $600 million.
These millions are a pittance for large national colleges like Harvard or Yale, who boast endowments larger than the GDP of most countries. Even similarly-sized liberal arts colleges like Vassar and Williams have funds that dwarf Bard’s.
But for a small liberal arts school with no nearby urban center, no nearby industry to serve as a benefactor and a tiny alumni base, the real question is how Bard has any business mustering the millions it has now.
The answer, said Sasha Boak-Kelly, Bard’s Director of the Annual Fund, lies in Bard’s ability to attract rich philanthropists who believe in the mission and the importance of international liberal arts education. Boak-Kelly, along with the rest of the Office of Program Development, the Board of Trustees, various alumni groups, Leon Botstein and others, are charged with maintaining Bard’s finances.
Jane Brien, Director of Alumni/ae Affairs and Boak-Kelly’s peer, said that unlike many larger universities, most of Bard’s fundraising comes from people who never went to Bard, including Yale University grad Charles P. Stevenson Jr. and Princeton University grad Richard B. Fisher, the namesakes for Bard’s gym and performing arts center respectively.
Because these philanthropists often donate to causes that excite them, such as international outreach or the performing arts, gifts to the college often come in funds devoted to a particular cause.
As a result, more than 90% of Bard’s $241 million endowment is currently restricted to specific projects, with the remainder unrestricted and apportioned for the general use of the undergraduate campus. This, Botstein said, is the donors’ right, as “90% of where gifts go is at the discretion of the donor.”
Boak-Kelly and Brien explained that the college tries to match needs that exist with donors who would be willing to pay for them - but that dorms are “a hard sell.” The various current projects on campus, such as the new conservatory practice rooms and the gym renovations, occurred as a result of donors seeing a need and then donating money.
Over the years, Botstein said, he has had to reject some projects that didn’t fit the Bard mission or came with messy ideological entanglements: a veterinary arts center, for instance, or a funded chair for the advancement of free enterprise. But on the whole, he said, Bard does not discriminate on sources, only on gifts.
What this can end up meaning, however, is that Bard becomes beholden to a small pool of wealthy do-gooders and their whims.
“That’s the reality of the economic universe we live in,” said Botstein. “Is that a fair universe? No. Would I defend it as just? No. Is it the reality? Yes.”
Botstein said his priority is to “expand the family of givers.” The hope is with time, the number of Bard alumni and relatives of alumni will continue to grow in both size and earning power and will then be willing to pay for such projects as dorms and campus facilities.
For instance, the renovations to the gym were paid for by the parent of a Bardian, and much of the ongoing capital campaign will fund projects on the undergraduate campus.
“As you’ll notice in the capital campaign, 99% of those projects are more dormitories, improving the library, replacing and renovating old dormitories, expanding the gym, all related to the quality of life on the campus,” said Botstein. “The rest of the money is for unrestricted endowment, for scholarships and faculty salaries.”
This money should bring the undergraduate campus to a better financial position, one more equitable to Bard’s special projects. Even then, the development office said they will continue to pursue funding for special projects, as donors interested in, for example, prison education often later donate to the general college.
In fact, these Bard projects are what attract many philanthropists to the college in the first place. Boak-Kelly and Botstein said when they talk to peers at other colleges, jaws drop at all the programs Bard runs and receives money for.
“Ask anybody in the world of higher education,” Botstein said, “if the amount of money Bard raises is far in excess of what is predicted, and the answer would be universally, yes.”
It is idealism of some sort, Botstein said, that appeals to rich philanthropists, and that fuels Bard’s fundraising team. “You have to believe,” Botstein said, “in what you’re asking for.”