With the state mired in a budget crisis, the time is right for the university to become less dependent on state funds.

After all, UC Davis faces significant challenges in regard to student enrollment growth, the need to recruit new faculty, the issue of graduate student support and the demand for creating more learning environments.

As state funding declines, the campus is relying on private giving to help close the gap in resources.

Kelly Ratliff, assistant vice chancellor for budget resource management, noted that with the university receiving about 26 percent of its general fund dollars from the state, additional dollars raised from private support would help to stabilize UC Davis' revenue in the future.

The fund-raising campaign is based both on this sense of pragmatism as well as guiding principles for how to finance it.

Those principles are described in the campaign's draft Advance-ment Finance Plan. Campaign financing, this document states, should involve simple and clear processes, preserve current spending power for advancement, encourage cooperation among all development activities on campus, and include accountability and performance measures.

With the goal of raising a proposed $900 million in the next decade or so, UC Davis must double its annual fund-raising during the campaign period.

Figuring out how to finance a major comprehensive campaign requires due diligence and a listening ear. There's one clear fact--money doesn't grow on trees. It will be a labor-intensive effort.

"It takes money to raise money, and it takes planning to ensure it is spent strategically," said Ratliff in describing the university's largest fund-raising campaign since its inception in 1908.

She noted, "The campaign will require start-up funds in order to support greater investments in talented students, outstanding researchers and educators, and laboratories and facilities with state-of-the-art technologies and learning tools."

As Ratliff explains, a successful comprehensive campaign for a major university requires laying the groundwork and putting the professional staff and vital resources in place. The end result is that money raised will support academic priorities -- students, faculty, programs and facilities.

Investing in the campus

Produced by Ratliff's office, the Advancement Finance Plan is based on input from University Re-lations, assistant deans, and development officers from deans' and vice chancellors' offices. The campaign will involve a deep partnership among development offices, faculty members and the administration.

"The plan illustrates UC Davis' commitment and provides broad guidance for the future as we move into the comprehensive campaign," Ratliff said.

Cheryl Brown Lohse, associate vice chancellor for development, said: "We need to rely less and less on public funds and more on our alumni and friends in ensuring our quality academic programs. That is why we are strengthening our fund-raising infrastructure and hiring more professional development staff."

The term "development" at UC Davis refers simply to fundraising. Gifts come from three major sources of private dollars: individuals (alumni and friends), corporations and foundations. Professional development personnel typically fall into two categories -- those who cultivate and solicit gifts, such as major-gift officers, and those who support these donor relationships, namely gift-processing staff.

Under the finance plan, UC Davis deans, vice chancellors and vice provosts are beginning to recruit major gift officers. It's anticipated that the College of Agricul-tural and Environmental Sciences, the College of Engineering, the School of Veterinary Medicine, the UC Davis Health System, and Mondavi Center will add positions made possible by each unit's share of the 6 percent gift fee that begins in fall 2004. (For details about the gift fee, see http://www-dateline.ucdavis.edu/dl_detail.lasso?id=7918.)

In almost all cases, cash donations or gifts will be subject to the fee, with 4 percent given to the dean, vice chancellor or vice provost, and 2 percent directed to the Chancellor's Advancement Finance Pool.

The campus also will provide funding to recruit a major gift officer in the Division of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Management, School of Education, School of Law, the library and Alumni Office.

Other units -- student affairs and athletics, and the College of Letters and Science -- recently received campus funding for development officers. To the extent that gift-fee revenues support new staff, they may hire additional development professionals. Elsewhere, strategic investments will be considered for Graduate Studies, the Office of Research, Undergraduate Studies and Student Affairs, University Outreach and International Programs, and University Extension.

The finance plan calls for University Relations, where centralized campus development efforts are located, to receive funding for four new positions that will directly support the campaign -- a deputy director for development, campaign coordinator, individual-giving director and a marketing director. These positions will coach the entire campus on individual giving, analyze and plan fund-raising activities, and strengthen the campus's marketing and fund-raising communications, among other duties.

Staying competitive

"The comprehensive campaign will help to develop a new culture of private support for UC Davis," Lohse said. "We compete at the highest levels in teaching and research. We also need to marshal the same kind of private support to recruit and retain the best faculty and students in the world."

The finance plan explains that four major funding sources will fuel the campaign -- the short-term investment-pool interest, contributions from the chancellor, the endowment administration cost recovery fee and the campus gift fee.

These funds, the plan states, will be distributed campus-wide in support of the comprehensive campaign -- to deans and campus units and to University Relations. Additionally, the chancellor's pool will provide the campus with the flexibility to make strategic contributions to units and deans.

Ratliff said that the campus will spend an estimated $7.1 million in 2004-05 to fund the campaign. This cost will rise to $7.7 million by 2006-07. Money spent in the early stages will help set the foundation for the rest of the campaign.

More about the comprehensive campaign can be found at http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/campaign/.