University fundraising costs fall as cash donations increase

Howard Lake | 19 May 2014 | News

• Tagged with:
• higher education

University fundraising costs have fallen following a sharp rise two years ago.
The 2014 installment of the annual Ross-CASE survey, covering the 2012-13 financial year, reveals that the median expenditure to raise a pound dropped from 36p in 2012-13 to 27p in the last financial year. However, this was still 5p higher than the 2010-11 median.

Five clusters

The report grouped universities into five ‘clusters’ based on the performance of their fundraising programmes: fragile, emerging, moderate, established and élite.
Universities with fragile programmes – four of the 136 institutions taking part in the survey – were spending on average nearly £17 to raise a single pound. However, the élite group – just Oxford and Cambridge – need to spend just 7p to raise a pound.
The majority of universities (107) fell into a “continuum” of the emerging and moderate clusters, where fundraising costs were 33 per cent, which the report describes as “healthy”.
For both moderate and emerging programmes, a substantial proportion of their income came from just a few large gifts.
Fragile and emerging universities also employed the fewest number of fundraisers.
Twenty-two universities had established fundraising programmes, with more donors leading to income levels twice the median income for moderate universities and a fundraising cost of 17p in the pound.

Cash donations at all time high

Philanthropic cash income received in 2012-13 for higher education institutions. Source: CASE Ross Survey 2014

• Cash donations to British universities increased by 23 per cent last year to an all time high of £659.8m.
• However, new funds received – new single cash gifts and the full value (up to five years) of new pledges – fell by £81m to £681m, mainly because a few very large pledges made in 2011-12 were not repeated.
• 59 per cent of donations came form organisations, with 41 per cent donated by individuals (the first year the survey has recorded this information)
• The number of people giving to universities increased by six per cent from 209,404 to 223,353.
• The trend in alumni giving is increasing, with 174,000 former pupils making gifts compared to 168,000 in 2011-12 and 164,000 the year before that. Over the past six years, alumni giving has increased by 60 per cent.
• Universities had 9.3m contactable alumni, up from 8.4m in 2011-12 (a nine per cent increase), so participation in giving schemes is still low at 1.9 per cent. Fifty-nine universities improved alumni giving, but 20 experienced a decline
• Universities in the survey invested £80m in fundraising and a further £42m in alumni relations.

Kate Hunter, executive director of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Europe, said:

“The survey  demonstrates the correlation between the size of the fundraising workforce and the amount of philanthropy raised.
“For this figure to continue to rise, further investment in professional staff and broader engagement with the academic community is needed.”

Earlier this month after a report from Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) by the More Partnership and Richmond Associates said that the total number of higher education fundraisers will need to at least double – and preferably triple – from its current establishment of under 1,900 is the sector is to meet its income targets by 2022.
 

 
This year’s Ross-CASE survey  showed that only 44 new fundraising posts were created during 2012-13 on the total establishment of 1,198 fundraisers at the 136 participating univerisities..
A copy of the Ross-CASE survey can be downloaded here. You can also view a summary of university giving over the past three years:

Three year snapshot of philanthropic giving to higher education

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.