Donald Keough, News Editor–
The What We Can Be Campaign: Denison Campaign, kicked off it’s national tour on Nov. 18 with an event at the Nasdaq, Inc. headquarters, following it’s previous launch on Oct. 24.
Described as Denison’s “most ambitious fundraising campaign,” the fundraiser seeks to raise a monetary goal as well as two alumni related goals: 12,695 alumni, or 45%, to give any amount to any area of the college, and 18,337 alumni involvement, or 65%, through event attendance, giving, volunteering and interaction with the college through marketing and communication efforts.
The campaign follows the closure of the previous campaign, Unlocking Potential, which raised $243 million against a $225 million goal.
“We started planning for this campaign the day after our previous campaign closed,” Billie Handa, the associate vice president, campaign director for institutional advancement said in an email response. “We knew that in order to capitalize on the college’s momentum, we would need to continue securing resources for Denison.”
Initially, What We Can Be had a revenue goal of $300 million. During the first four years of the planning phase of the campaign, which occured before the fundraiser was announced, it overperformed in both the revenue goal and the engagement goal, which has been increased from 60% to 65%. The Board of Trustees approved an increase to the monetary goal to its current $400 million amount.
During the campaign’s planning phase over the past four years, alumni networking staff have worked with “key partners to identify campaign priorities that would resonate with our community and donors,” according to Handa.
These priorities, with their intended monetary goals, include financial aid and scholarships; $125 million, academic excellence; $57 million, career success; $70 million, student life; $45 million and alumni connections; $78 million and unrestricted endowment; $25 million.
“The priorities were identified through a feasibility study, where we took key components from the university’s strategic plan and tested them with our donor community,” Handa said. “We found that financial aid and scholarships resonated most highly, which led us to identifying that area as our primary goal. The goals associated with each priority are based on the lessons learned through the feasibility study where potential donors identified the areas they were most passionate about and the philanthropic investment they thought they would make toward their areas of interest.”
Handa also described what each of these priorities seeks to support. The financial aid and scholarships priority seeks to continue to allow the college to meet the full demonstrated financial need for admitted students.
The career launch priority hopes to expand access and improve services offered by the Knowlton Center.
The student life priority looks to help students through supporting health and wellness services/opportunities on campus, orientation programming for incoming students, athletics and support of student organizations and leadership development opportunities.
The academic excellence priority aims to allow the college to enhance academic programs, create new academic programs and opportunities, and ensure that Denison has high quality faculty, professors of practice, and research opportunities for students, like summer scholars.
The annual fund priority will support the college to pivot when needed, provide seed money for new opportunities such as new majors and minors.
The alumni engagement priority seeks to support alumni while also helping build connections between students and alumni through opportunities like Ask a Denisonian.
The campaign is anticipated to last through the 2029 fiscal year, according to Handa, however she also said that they have the opportunity to extend the timeline.
Students, also according to Handa, will be involved “in myriad ways.”
“Some opportunities are obvious, like the senior class gift committee, where students help raise money and awareness of how philanthropy impacts Denison,” Handa said. “We also work closely with the Knowlton Center to ensure that students are benefiting from alumni connections – whether that is through alumni mentorship or opportunities like internships provided by alumni.”