In a pre­vi­ous blog we dis­cussed the three-year $53 Mil­lion Cam­paign, launched at the begin­ning of Robert’s Goheen’s pres­i­dency in 1959. On an even larger scale was the five-year fundrais­ing cam­paign that was launched on Feb­ru­ary 19, 1982 dur­ing the pres­i­dency of Goheen’s suc­ces­sor William G. Bowen. The goal for “A Cam­paign for Prince­ton” was set at $275 mil­lion (raised to $330 mil­lion in Jan­u­ary 1984). Three years into the cam­paign, the fund drive ran like a “well-oiled machine,” accord­ing to the Daily Prince­ton­ian, bring­ing in more than $1 mil­lion a week. Fifty-five pro­fes­sion­als worked with a body of 2.500 alumni vol­un­teers, spread over sev­en­teen regions, who were trained to ask fel­low alumni to give at their max­i­mum capac­ity. Fea­tured here is “You Ask For It: An Intro­duc­tion to Cam­paign Solicitation,” an instruc­tional film that, how­ever much a prod­uct of the 1980s, may still be of inter­est for today’s fundraisers.

The cam­paign goals were sum­ma­rized in a Cam­paign Primer, pub­lished at the launch of the cam­paign. A full list and descrip­tion of the goals, which included aca­d­e­mic pro­grams, facil­i­ties, stu­dent aid, and res­i­den­tial col­leges, can be found at  CampaignPrimer.pdf.

Alumni solic­i­tors pre­pared to “make an ask” to prospec­tive donors with the help of a writ­ten solic­i­ta­tion plan, pro­vided by Princeton’s cam­paign staff. The solic­i­ta­tion plan, accord­ing to the Vol­un­teer Hand­book, con­tained par­tic­u­lar infor­ma­tion about the “prospect” as well as spe­cific guide­lines on how to work with the per­son to “help ensure max­i­mum giv­ing.”  For the first time in Princeton’s fundrais­ing his­tory, alumni with cap­i­tal gift poten­tial were asked to make one sin­gle com­mit­ment to the cam­paign that included both Annual Giv­ing (AG) and a cap­i­tal gift (this was known as a “joint ask”). As the cam­paign was spread over five years, it allowed for all alumni to be addressed with their class’ major reunion goals in mind.

Solic­i­tors were not meant  to be bash­ful about their “ask.” Out­right gifts of cash or assets (gen­er­ally secu­ri­ties) were first pri­or­ity, accord­ing to the Vol­un­teer Hand­book, but if that was a prob­lem, other char­i­ta­ble tax plan­ning tech­niques were encour­aged. “If you are per­suaded that a donor sim­ply can­not meet the requested level through an out­right gift, you should then intro­duce Planned Giv­ing to the nego­ti­a­tion.” Since these tech­niques were rather sophis­ti­cated, fur­ther nego­ti­a­tions were referred to Princeton’s Planned Giv­ing staff.

The above VHS video fea­tures two alumni ‘novices’ to the solic­it­ing process, who ask an expe­ri­enced alum­nus named Jim, a regional chair­man in charge of Major Gifts, in a staged inter­view for advice. The woman in the film is in charge of “Spe­cial Gifts” for her Class’ 10th Reunion, and the male novice alum­nus is asked to solicit money for a large cap­i­tal gift from a man who never donated more than $2.500 for Annual Giv­ing. The film lets Jim go back in his­tory, show­ing one failed solic­it­ing attempt at the begin­ning of his career, because he was not well enough pre­pared (1:05). This is fol­lowed by his account of one recent suc­cess­ful attempt, in which an alum­nus ended up giv­ing much more than he ini­tially thought he could man­age, par­tially through Planned Giv­ing (5:03).

Although the Uni­ver­sity Archives con­tain a lot of infor­ma­tion about the cam­paign itself, infor­ma­tion about the VHS film fea­tured here is lack­ing. In the lists of Regional Chair­men Major Gifts, pro­vided in the Vol­un­teer Hand­book, there is no James or Jim, hence the peo­ple in the staged inter­view may not be actual alumni. If you can pro­vide more infor­ma­tion about the mak­ing of the film, please let us know!

For more infor­ma­tion on the cam­paign itself, see The Story of A Cam­paign for Prince­ton, 1981–1986 by William McCleery.

This VHS video is part of the Uni­ver­sity Archives’ His­tor­i­cal Audio­vi­sual Col­lec­tion (Item no. 1422)