Graduates of the last decade gave more than $135,000 in FY14.
Last year, Ball State students gave more than $3,500 to help fellow Cardinals.
4,710 donors made their first-ever gift to Ball State in FY14.
About 12% of undergraduate alumni gave last year.
SOURCE: Lola Mauer and the Office of Annual Giving
As throngs of alumni flood on to campus for Homecoming, Ball State won’t be increasing its efforts to bring in new donors.
“The greatest period of giving is typically in the fall, [but] I don’t think it has to do with Homecoming week because towards October November, December people are making decisions about their contributions for the year,” Hudson Akin, Vice President for University Advancement, said.
In fiscal year 2014, the university received more than $23 million from 27,250 donors. In 2013, 25,901 donors gave more than $18.5 million.
Of all the donations throughout the year, the strongest times are around the end of year and tax time, Akin and Lola Mauer, director of annual giving for the university, said.
“We ask for contributions, gifts throughout the year,” Akin said. “There is not a special push around homecoming that is any different from what we do the rest of the year with the exception to what we are going to be doing on-campus to get support for the student body.”
However, most of the university’s outreach to alumni, parents, friends and businesses and corporations occurs throughout the month of October in preparation for tax time at the end of the year and once again in April and May, Akin said.
The office of annual giving has a staff of students that make calls six days a week, sends direct mail to alumni and other actions to bring in donations.
However, the university has been starting different programs to thank donors, showing appreciation for those who donate and shifting the focus to the average donor when talking about donations.
“In the Alumnus magazine, the university has moved away from here is a picture of the 70-year-old donor with their $5 million gift to Ball State because most of our alumni and students are like, ‘That’ll never be us,’” Mauer said. “So we don’t want people to think that’s the only thing people give to the university because it’s lots of small gifts that make up the vast majority of donors.”
Last week, the university held their first “Thank a Donor Program” as a way to educate students on ways to donate and to encourage them to thank those that give to the university, she said.
President Paul Ferguson, other university administrators and students were present at the two events in the Atrium and at the Scramble Light encouraging students to sign a thank you card for donors to be sent out around Thanksgiving.
Donations to the university account for 2.4% the total budget at Ball State, where 55% is tuition that and 37% is state appropriations. Donatins fall under the category of other totaling at 8%.
“We get less and less from the state, and so alumni [donations] make up such a huge portion of that support,” she said.
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