GOAL 8: Grow a culture of giving.

UAHuntsville is a young institution with a small Alumni population, a profile which presents predictable challenges to securing private gifts. Moreover, for a variety of historical and circumstantial causes, UAHuntsville has not until very recently built an adequate infrastructure nor adopted well-tested practices for securing private financial support.

Nonetheless, all the necessary conditions for successful fundraising are in place – an Alumni population growing at a very fast rate; significant wealth and good will in the local community; a vibrant and rapidly expanding technological-industrial economy; and senior leadership committed to the investment necessary to achieve ambitious fundraising goals.

The core responsibility of University Advancement is to provide the experience, expertise, and effort required to lead UAHuntsville towards a future where advancement is an essential part of everything we do, and to convert an institution-wide commitment to excellence into a continuously growing stream of gifts.

Actions

• Make the case for private support through print and electronic communications, personal visits with Alumni and friends, events, and the media.
• Build the donor base through a comprehensive annual giving plan.
• Establish and build the major gift pipeline through an aggressive program of identification and qualification of new prospects.
• Cultivate both near-term and long-term gift prospects through a coordinated “moves management” program.
• Match gift potential with university priorities and secure consensus among academic leadership on the designation of major gift proposals.
• Aggressively solicit gifts in a timely, orderly, and realistic way.
• Provide superb stewardship by maintaining accurate gift records, sending timely and appropriate thank you letters, recognizing donors and connecting them with the recipients of their gifts (students, faculty, et al), rigorously ensuring the fulfillment of donor intent, and maintaining frequent, high-quality contact with donors.

Assessment

• Acquisition of new donors to the annual fund, as well as the retention and upgrading of current donors.
• Numbers of qualification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship visits by major gift staff and academic leadership.
• Numbers of new prospects added to the major gift pipeline.
• Gifts received, as measured by size and congruence with established priorities for private support.
• Growth of endowment.