- Sean Quimby, Chair
- Meredith Evans Raiford
- Steven Mandeville-Gamble
- David Murray
Disclaimer (borrowed from David Weinberger): Live-blogging. Getting things wrong. Missing points. Omitting key information. Introducing artificial choppiness. Over-emphasizing small matters. Paraphrasing badly. Not running a spellpchecker. Mangling other people’s ideas and words.
[This was a fun, well-crafted session with three smooth, polished presenters.]
Using the International Brotherhood of Teamsters as a Case Study, will look at how private donations affect collecting.
Since the 1990s, federal and state funding of universities has dried up, so they “have to be in the development game.” At the same time, philanthropy is changing. New philanthropists see themselves as “social entrepreneurs.” They expect to see business plans, want tangible results.
Mission Creep: if you don’t carefully handle the obligations you make to donors, your programs can be distorted, bleeding away resources from core functions of your institution. It’s important to understand the goals your donor has, why she is at the table. Make sure the donation is a good fit, that both donor’s and institution’s needs are met. Donors have sued to regain control of collections (and associated endowments) when the institution isn’t taking care of them , or meeting the donor’s goals. Lesson: make sure both the letter and the spirit of the donor agreement are met.
GWU and Teamsters see themselves as partners. Teamsters approached GWU about putting records on permanent deposit, with a $1 million endowment. GWU had reservations: there’s no labor archives at GWU, no labor historian on campus; had run out of space in archives storage facility. GWU is “an aggressively pro-capitalist” institution; its labor studies classes (not called that) are all about busting unions. As such, SMG told Teamsters it was a poor fit
IBT asked for a proposal for creating the necessary conditions: labor archivist, historian, preservation endowment. SMG wrote the proposal, but had tensions with GWU Development VP who wasn’t willing to consider IBT’s needs/goals.
Labor archivist is embedded in IBT facility 3 days/week, travels to local unions, works with IBT Education dept., as well as providing research and reference service at GWU labor archives.
Lesson: By not just taking the $1 mil, GWU built trust with IBT, which led to much better relationship.
Two articles about “new philanthropy” worth reading:
- Lisa Brower: Paving the road to Hell? Cultural institutions and the “new” philanthropy, RBM {journal} 5 :1 3/20/04
- TK Reis and SJ CLohesy Unleashing new resources, New Directions for philanthropic fundraising 32
Two cases:
- GWU has a family collection of 40,000 rare books; it’s a good collection, widely used. However, the University didn’t use the endowment properly, spent money on related items for general collection. As a response, the family bought new books for collection and put them on deposit rather than donating the books. Family also gave money for staff salary. Development asked family for $1.5 million to endow curatorship. Things got ugly between family and development office. Meredith and Steve contacted the family on their own, built relationship based on genuine interest, not just fundraising.
- GWU received donation of electronic and paper pollster data. Pollster data didn’t fit into GWU collection, but they took it and made the data available online. Donor gave money to University to create a society of pollsters and to digitize data: the library was not at the table during the discussions.
Lessons: Ask, Write and Follow-up.
- Ask: It doesn’t hurt to ask for money When you ask, consider the donor’s needs, goals
- Write: Identify the needs of the special collections. What collections should you acquire to improve the special collections as a whole? What do you need for resources to process/digitize new collection? Identify the donor’s needs. Then write the proposal yourself. Work as a partner with your donor
- Follow-up: Your donor should get a thank you note from you, before she/he hears anything from the development office. Keep in touch with the donor on a personal level. Don’t let development office bombard the donor with requests. Make sure the relationship is open.
The donor is the center. The goal is to help the donor accomplish the change they want to see in the world.
Our job is a different kind of CRM: Charitable Relationship Manager. We are servants of an institution that existed before we got here and will exist after we’re gone.
“It’s a privilege to help people try to change the world… The best part of my job is going on asking people for money. The worst part is sitting in the office trying to get the money spent… A lot of donors are people who’ve spent most of their lives making money. I get to sit on a yacht and help them figure out how they want to be remembered.”
Goals are quantifiable (number of prospects/contacts/proposals, amount raised). Work is not quantifiable.
Case study: Plastics Pioneers Association Archives
“Harry,” the donor, approached Syracuse: I’ve got all this plastic stuff in my garage. I want you to build a website about it. SU sat down with Harry and his friends to learn about what their needs and goals were. They built a prototype website for him, he liked it and gave $10k. Then, more important, he gave them information that led to acquisition of National Plastics Center and Museum collection.
Sean Quimby raised the question: what implication does this have for the rest of the library’s special collections? Lots of interest from faculty across disciplines were interested in the plastics collections.
What you can (must) do:
- Do what you promise (that is, spend the money!)
- Be enthusiastic and optimistic
- The donor always wins
- Don’t take any crap
Question: [For David] Could you explain what you mean by “crap”?
David: We never say “We have no room.” That’s a bad explanation. We say instead, “We only take things we really want.”
Question: What do you do when development office or faculty accept gifts that you don’t want, without asking you?
David: Don’t let it happen again. It’s unethical for development to do that.
Meredith: I talk to the donor and recommend other places, find a better home for the donation.
Sean: Faculty don’t think archivist should presume to select and appraise!
Question: How do you get a place at the tablet so the archivist’s voice is heard?
Meredith: I make a lot of friends on campus – get to know people, take them to lunch, get people interested in and aware of the special collections . Encourage teachers to bring classes in, have events. You have to build relationships with faculty.
David: Our biggest donors are the campus – the provost, the faculty – and we yell at them.
Question: How do the processors (who don’t have time to process any more) communicate with curators who want to bring in more stuff?
Steve: As AUL for collections, I make sure we don’t take in collections that we can’t process and don’t even have a strategy to process. There has to be a plan that takes into account special collections’ needs and capacity. Demand resources for processing from head of library, or whomever.
Meredith: Know what you need, give it in writing to the curators. Let them know how much money you need to process, what these things cost, how the money will be used.
