Happy Surprises

Marquette University is a Jesuit Catholic university located in urban Milwaukee. It was founded in 1881 as a liberal arts school for men to support the immigrant populations of the Milwaukee community. Now open to both women and men, the school carries on its founding tradition; this year, 25 percent of its freshman class is made up of students whose parents emigrated to the United States.

The hallmarks of its mission, like those of the 27 other Jesuit Catholic universities in the country, are excellence, faith, leadership and service.

Here, Julie Tolan, Marquette’s vice president of university advancement, talks about where the institution gets the 15 percent of its operating budget that’s contributed, a recent fundraising success and the lessons learned from it.

FundRaising Success: What are your sources of funding?
Julie Tolan: Thirty-four percent from alumni, 2 percent from parents, 20 percent from friends, 21 percent from corporations, 22 percent from foundations, 1 percent from associations.

FS: What is a “friend”?
JT: We’re in an urban setting, we’re in a city. So there are a lot of people in the community who are not alumni or affiliated with us in any other way who make a gift. Some of them may be past parents but, really, a lot of these people are people who support our athletics program, our art museum, our endowment in general. It’s people who have not had any affiliation as alumni or are not current parents, and we call them friends, benefactors who have adopted us as a priority in their giving.

FS: Tell me about a recent fundraising success.
JT: Magis was the name for the seven-year campaign that began in ’98 and finished in June ’05, and it was a comprehensive campaign, so it raised money for facilities, capital; it raised money for endowment; and it raised money for current use. The original goal was $250 million and we achieved $357 million, and that broke down to be almost 30, 30, 30 when it came to those three areas; facilities, endowment and current use.

FS: What were some of the big surprises of the campaign?
JT: First, I would say just in general, the generosity. As optimistic as we always have been about the great generosity of our supporters, clearly it was more than we expected, by over $100 million.

Secondly, though, is the number of first-time donors who came to the table and the number of donors overall. Some 56,000 people contributed in one way or another during Magis. We have known, living alumni bumping 90,000. About 21,000, or 36 percent, made their first gift to Marquette during that campaign. That was a huge surprise.

The other thing was the extent to which our major gifts came from all over the country. Certainly our core regions, both from an admissions perspective and where our alumni and friends are, is where we are. So, the corridor from Milwaukee to Chicago, if you will. Fifty percent of our alumni are in that area, as are nearly 100 percent of our friends. But giving came from a much more national demographic base. The money came from as far as California to Oregon to Washington, and New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, to Florida to Texas. So we had a really great national reach in terms of where the money came from.

FS: What do you think prompted 21,000 first-time donors to give?
JT: Well, for one thing, we had [not run a fundraising campaign] for much of the decade of the ’90s. We finished our last comprehensive campaign in 1990, and then didn’t move forward for eight years. And the ’90s were a decade of fairly massive wealth creation and very low unemployment, so even young graduates got jobs pretty quickly. So there was pent-up demand, if you will. And we got out there, started telling the story more clearly, more succinctly, talking about the impact of a Marquette education. We were delighted with the fact that people really could care about the ability of the university to achieve its vision.

FS: What is the most important thing you learned from the campaign?
JT: The biggest thing we learned and the biggest challenge we have all the time is demonstrating the relevance of Marquette University among all people’s choices for what they support and among all people’s choices for where they send their children to school. So [we learned about] the relevance and impact of a Marquette education as a powerful means to motivate people, as opposed to talking about our needs.

When we think of the largest gifts that were made, they were clearly not made because we talked well about what we needed. It was because the donor had a sense and had a vision for what could be accomplished in the world through Marquette.