Closing the Financial Need Gap through Annual Giving and Donor Relations

Higher education is currently in a crisis that is affecting institutions of all sizes. As the allotted funds from federal and state governments decrease and additional revenue-generating areas such as tuition fail to close the need gap, many universities and colleges find themselves in a budget crisis. This crisis affects public and private higher education institutions, resulting in the need for philanthropic support from outside sources. Institutions of higher education, private and public alike, are turning to private giving to meet budgetary demands. As a result of this crisis, both public and private higher education institutions turn to philanthropy to help them receive the funding needed to serve their constituents adequately. (Drezner, 2011, p. 2) My project explored and evaluated the University Libraries’s annual giving and donor relations program of a large, public institution specifically identifying results, strengths, and weaknesses to determine recommendations to bolster the University Libraries’s programs. To meet the immediate funding needs, the University Libraries welcomed implementing my project in Fiscal Years 2021 and 2022 to learn and examine the success of the existing programs. As a result, the goal of my project was to create an annual giving and donor relations plan that led to 10% increases in Fiscal Year 2021 and Fiscal Year 2022. The recommendations and deliverables given to the University Libraries will propel it as it enters the last 6 months of its university-wide capital campaign, which ends December 31, 2022