The university will launch a campaign to last several years to increase endowment and fund athletics and other projects.
SHANNON KELLY
Perspectives Editor
This year marks the beginning of Pepperdine’s third major fundraising campaign in the university’s 70-year history, an effort intended to bring structural additions and improvements to the campus and help increase the endowment to $1 billion in the next decade.
The campaign is no small feat, one President Andrew K. Benton referred to as a “break out moment” for the university.
“Campaigning will increase annual giving to the university; it will raise capital dollars so that we can make improvements such as in the Division 1 athletic facilities and housing, and a significant portion of the next campaign will be for the endowment,” Benton said.
The comprehensive campaign will last approximately seven to eight years and encompasses three components: capital, which subsidizes building projects and other physical campus improvements; the annual fund which is money raised and spent in the same year; and endowment which Benton described as Pepperdine’s savings account.
In August, Benton appointed Keith Hinkle, vice president for Advancement and Public Affairs and chief development officer, to head the fundraising campaign aimed at significantly expanding all three of these funds.
“It will be a transformational campaign in terms of bringing in significant resources in a fairly short period of time,” Hinkle said. “This allows for additional focus that, when done correctly, will energize donors to give more. The saying is ‘big gifts come from big dreams’ and campaigns like this are ultimately big dreams.”
Benton expressed the importance of planning in the “ramp-up” phase during the first three years of the campaign. “This gives the university time to get itself in to the best shape to present to potential donors,” he said.
Landscaping the front of the Center for Communication and Business and making other aesthetic improvements on campus, Benton said are examples of these necessary precursors since “it’s just good business.”
“When we are talking to a donor who is contemplating giving us a major gift — many millions of dollars — they want to not only be attracted to the substance of the program, but they want to be attracted to the visual impact that it has,” he said.
Students who are unaware of the behind-the- scenes details, are noticing one thing — as their tuition increased by seven percent this year, more than 20 new multi-thousand dollar palm trees also went up.
“I don’t think that these kinds of projects are really meant to benefit the students,” said senior Jessica Childress. “I think more emphasis needs to be placed on students’ needs, not on how other people or other schools view the university.”
While many students share Childress’s sentiments, both Benton and Hinkle say they recognize students’ concerns and want to bring clarity to some of the misunderstandings.
“I really just want students to understand that we are not using their money to build buildings, buy palm trees, add parking spaces or buy Public Safety cars,” Benton said. Tuition pays for their education—their professors.”
He pointed out that tuition dollars only cover the cost of about 70 percent of university operations. Additional money comes from donors.
“When I was a college student, I did the math and assumed I was attending a money making enterprise, but that’s just not the way it is,” Hinkle said. “If you want to build a cultural arts center or improve athletics facilities, and if you want new parking lots you have to raise that money and this is a hard concept for students to grasp.”
Hinkle said he can empathize as a Pepperdine law alumnus who also experienced yearly tuition hikes, but acknowledged possible misunderstanding among students.
“It pains me to see us get sidetracked with things like the palm trees. I’ve been working here six years and every time we put one up, we start to hear things like this,” Hinkle said. “But what students might not realize is that there is a bigger picture there.”
The bigger picture is seen through Benton’s vision, which includes increasing scholarships with a bigger endowment. He also said that to compete with top universities such as Harvard, which has a $29 billion endowment, Pepperdine’s has to increase far beyond the $500-$600 million it is at now. “I want to be a top 50 school, and you’ve got to have the funds to do that.”
Although exact numbers have not been decided, Benton pointed to the past two campaigns’ successes for a glimpse of this installment’s potential target. The 1984-1989 effort garnered 137.5 million, which exceeded the $100 million goal. The most recent fundraising campaign, which ended in the late 1990s collected more than $350 million, exceeding its goal by more than $50 million.
Hinkle said he presumes there will eventually be some sort of student committee that will give input to the campaign.
“I’m fairly confident that there will be an appropriate time and place to sit down with students and say ‘OK what is important to you,’ because if we’re creating priorities that student’s don’t care about, we fail.”
10-05-2006
