Tag Archives: Alumni

A lesson for fundraisers: the solicitation process for “A Campaign for Princeton,” 1982

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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)

Keeping the donor base informed: Princeton newsreels, 1960–1961

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Dur­ing the $53 Mil­lion Cam­paign (1959–1962) a 13 x 10 foot scale model of the Prince­ton cam­pus  toured 19 major cities and dis­played at meet­ings of the regional lead­ers of the fund drive. To keep Prince­ton alumni fur­ther informed about progress and devel­op­ments on cam­pus, the Alumni Coun­cil spon­sored two “Prince­ton News­reels” in 1960 and 1961. The two 30-minute films are inter­est­ing to watch, not only because they fea­ture new facil­i­ties, achieve­ments in sports and sci­ence, and notable events (from Hur­ri­cane Donna in 1960 to the dona­tion of $35 mil­lion for the Woodrow Wil­son School in 1961), but because they also doc­u­ment the University’s first attempts to reach out to its donor base through the medium of film.  Con­trast­ing the two films, one can­not help but note that the sec­ond film is much smoother in its pre­sen­ta­tion than the first.

The first news­reel opens with an intro­duc­tion by the 41 year-old pres­i­dent Robert F. Goheen ’40, and a fresh­men lec­ture about the honor sys­tem by Walker Steven­son ’35, pres­i­dent of the National Alumni Asso­ci­a­tion (1:30). The scale model of the cam­pus, men­tioned above, is fea­tured at 6:41, when admin­is­tra­tive vice-president Edgar M. Gem­mell ’34 explains the expan­sions planned for the next three years. The footage fol­low­ing cap­tures the Hibben and Magie fac­ulty apart­ments under con­struc­tion (6:41) as well as the five new dor­mi­to­ries of the New Quad (Class of 1937, Class of 1938, Class of 1939, Dodge-Osborn, and Gauss Halls), the first build­ings to be fin­ished since the start of the $53 Mil­lion Cam­paign (7:27).

aircar.jpg“Exam­ples of Research” opens with a bird exper­i­ment on the roof of Guyot Hall (7:55), fol­lowed by the Princeton-Pennsylvania Pro­ton Accel­er­a­tor, a par­ti­cle research facil­ity on the For­re­stal Cam­pus since 1957 (8:59). In addi­tion, the news­reel includes a demon­stra­tion of the ther­mo­he­liodon and the heliodon, devel­oped by the Archi­tec­tural Lab­o­ra­tory to deter­mine the effects of sun­light, wind and radi­a­tion (10:19), and research at the Depart­ment of Aero­nau­ti­cal Engi­neer­ing into prob­lems that occur with low speed flight (11:29; footage includes “air car” shown above). In addi­tion, the news­reel fea­tures fac­ulty who won an award in 1960: the later Nobel Prize win­ner Eugene Wigner, Pro­fes­sor of Physics, who received the “Atoms for Peace Award” (15:02) and His­tory Pro­fes­sor Robert Palmer, who won the Ban­croft prize for his book Age of the Demo­c­ra­tic Rev­o­lu­tion (15:25).
The sec­ond half of the film fea­tures par­tic­u­lar places and events, includ­ing alumni in the “Prince­ton Today” pro­gram who vis­ited the new C-site at the “Mat­ter­horn Project” (renamed the Prince­ton Plasma Physics Lab­o­ra­tory in 1961), a project for mag­netic fusion research funded by the Atomic Energy Com­mis­sion that had only been declas­si­fied in 1958 (15:47, with more about the Prince­ton Plasma Physics Lab­o­ra­tory in the sec­ond news­reel). This is fol­lowed by the appoint­ment of three new trustees (17:15), the for­eign lan­guage lab­o­ra­tory (18:57), achieve­ments in sports (track, squash, and lacrosse at 20:06; foot­ball (with coach Dick Col­man) at 25:04), and Reunions (20:54, with the Class of ’35). In addi­tion, the film includes footage of Tri­an­gle chorines dur­ing a per­for­mance of Break­fast in Bed­lam, which toured var­i­ous mil­i­tary bases and hos­pi­tals in Europe dur­ing the sum­mer (18:05). The news­reel also doc­u­ments Hur­ri­cane Donna, the only hur­ri­cane on record to have struck every East Coast state between Florida and Maine, which hit the cam­pus on Sep­tem­ber 12, 1960 (23:38).
The sec­ond news­reel that was pro­duced dur­ing the $53 Mil­lion Cam­paign is more crisply pre­sented, with a clear divi­sion into five chap­ters. The first chap­ter, “New Facil­i­ties,” shows new cam­pus edi­fices: the Engi­neer­ing Quad­ran­gle (1:42), the John Fos­ter Dulles Library of Diplo­matic His­tory (2:11), the Hibben and Magie apart­ments at Carnegie Lake (2:22), the new play­ing fields (2:37), and the dor­mi­tory quad with Wilcox Hall (2:48). It is fol­lowed by images of stu­dents mov­ing into their dor­mi­to­ries (3:44), Class of 1965 fresh­men, the new Dean of the Col­lege J. Mer­rill Knapp with Dean Ernest Gor­don (4:36), and key­cepts “in oper­a­tion” (4:57).
“Sports” (6:26), the sub­ject of the sec­ond chap­ter, fea­tures bas­ket­ball (6:28), swim­ming (7:04), track (8:11), and foot­ball (8:24), with brief footage of impor­tant games and close­ups of ath­letes. In the next chap­ter, “The Search for Knowl­edge” (11:32), the num­ber of research project pre­vi­ously fea­tured is reduced to two. The first con­cerns the new Model C Stel­lara­tor at Prince­ton Plasma Physics Lab­o­ra­tory (PPPL), the new name of “Project Mat­ter­horn” dis­cussed in the ear­lier news­reel. The large stel­lara­tor, for which facil­i­ties had been built in 1960, replaced pre­vi­ous mod­els that had been used in the 1950s. As a sec­ond exam­ple of Princeton’s achieve­ments in sci­ence the research of biol­ogy pro­fes­sor Arthur K. Parpart is dis­cussed (14:21).
The fourth chap­ter, “Going Back” (15:43) includes footage of the Class of 1936’s 25th and the Class of 1911’s 50th reunion, with Joseph Cash­man and Dr. William H. Hud­nut from the Class of 1886 as mem­bers of the Old Guard. (Footage of Pres­i­dent Robert Goheen ’40, Grant Sanger ’31, Harold Helm ’21, and Walker Steven­son ’35 is at 16:43). The “major Prince­ton event of 1961” is saved for last: “Prince­ton in Inter­na­tional Affairs” (19:29) fea­tures the $35 mil­lion anony­mous gift from a foun­da­tion (ini­tially called the “X” Foun­da­tion, later known as the Robert­son Foun­da­tion) to estab­lish a pro­fes­sional school for pub­lic ser­vice at the Woodrow Wil­son School. The news­reel ends with a state­ment by Gard­ner Pat­ter­son, who was the direc­tor of the Woodrow Wil­son School and of the new program (20:35).
These 16mm films are part of the Uni­ver­sity Archives’ His­tor­i­cal Audio­vi­sual Col­lec­tion (item no. 0083 and 0079)

 

Black alumni looking back, 1996

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Har­vard offered its first degree to an African Amer­i­can stu­dent in 1870, with Yale fol­low­ing in 1874. At Prince­ton, how­ever, the first two black stu­dents grad­u­ated only in 1947 and 1948, after arriv­ing on cam­pus as mem­bers of the Navy’s wartime V-12 pro­gram. His­tor­i­cally the “Ivy League school for South­ern gen­tle­men,” Prince­ton was a lit­tle “tardy,” accord­ing to Cor­nel West (then direc­tor of the Cen­ter for African Amer­i­can Stud­ies) in the doc­u­men­tary fea­tured here (32:01). In the words of Franklin Moore, Asso­ciate Direc­tor of Admis­sions 1970–1980: “If you had a seg­re­ga­tion­ist atti­tude or would like to cher­ish that atti­tude a lit­tle longer before real life hit you after you grad­u­ated, this was the place to come to.” (31:35).

The first two black grad­u­ates, John Howard ’47 and James Ward ’48, are among the 35 alumni who were inter­viewed for the doc­u­men­tary Look­ing Back: Reflec­tions of Black Prince­ton Alumni, which was writ­ten and directed by Melvin McCray ’74 and pro­duced by McCray and Calvin Nor­man ’77 on the occa­sion of Princeton’s 250th anniver­sary in 1996. Most of the alumni inter­viewed are from the 1960s and 1970s, when the admin­is­tra­tion started to make diver­si­fi­ca­tion of the stu­dent body a pri­or­ity. In the doc­u­men­tary Robert F. Goheen, pres­i­dent between 1957 and 1972, explains how the racial riots of 1963 in the South made him real­ize that Prince­ton, which counted only seven African Amer­i­can under­grad­u­ates in 1962, should pro­vide more edu­ca­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties to qual­i­fied blacks (20:52). Goheen’s suc­ces­sors William G. Bowen (Pres­i­dent 1972–1988) and Harold T. Shapiro (Pres­i­dent 1988–2001) are also inter­viewed, as well as Carl Fields (Assis­tant Direc­tor of Stu­dent Aid 1964–68 and Assis­tant Dean of the Col­lege 1968–1972), and the afore­men­tioned Franklin Moore.

The 75 minute doc­u­men­tary, in which alumni describe con­trast­ing expe­ri­ences and feel­ings, is divided into sev­eral chap­ters: “The early his­tory” (2:59), “Inclu­sion” (20:46), “Diverse back­grounds” (25:59), “First impres­sions” (28:44), “A mat­ter of race” (31:57), “Aca­d­e­mics” (43:51), “Nas­sau Hall Protest” (detail­ing the protest of April 14, 1978 over Princeton’s invest­ments in South Africa, 56:40), “Grad­u­a­tion” (1:01:35), “One Word” (1:04:20), and “Part­ing thoughts” (1:05:20). In the first chap­ter Woodrow Wilson’s racism is dis­cussed (6:16). The intro­duc­tion of coed­u­ca­tion in 1969 is dis­cussed at 48:43.

In addi­tion to the inter­views, the pro­duc­ers use his­tor­i­cal footage and pho­tographs (includ­ing mate­ri­als from Mudd Man­u­script Library and pri­vate sources) and ren­der­ings of “Old Nas­sau and “Going Back” by the a capella group “The Persuasions.” The doc­u­men­tary was pro­duced under the aus­pices of the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee for Princeton’s 250th Anniver­sary, in con­junc­tion with the Asso­ci­a­tion of Black Prince­ton Alumni (ABPA) and the Alumni Coun­cil. It won a Bronze Medal from the Coun­cil for the Advance­ment and Sup­port of Edu­ca­tion (1998).

This VHS video is part of the Uni­ver­sity Archives’ His­tor­i­cal Audio­vi­sual Col­lec­tion (item no. 1361).