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Member Contributions Build Endowment
By Martin D. Snyder
From the outset, the goal of the AAUP’s capital campaign, the Campaign for the Common Good, has been to create an endowment fund that would help to support the operating costs of the Association. Like most membership organizations, the AAUP has depended almost exclusively on membership dues to fund its operations. Rising costs and static faculty salaries have made it necessary to supplement dues income with other sources of dependable revenue.
The Association has been successful in garnering significant foundation support for specific projects since the start of the campaign. Funding from the Ford Foundation ($75,000), the Nathan Cummings Foundation ($46,000), the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ($75,000), the Open Society Institute ($170,000), the Carnegie Corporation ($25,000), the Spencer Foundation ($35,000), the TIAACREF Institute ($43,900), and the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute ($10,000) have made it possible for the AAUP to pursue initiatives that might otherwise have been impossible. Monies from the Ford Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation supported Association initiatives on the controversial subject of academic boycotts. Sloan Foundation support is enabling the AAUP to prepare and publish reports on contingent faculty. The Open Society Institute has agreed to underwrite the publication and dissemination of the Association’s statement Academic Freedom and Outside Speakers. The Carnegie Corporation funded the Association’s pilot program Professors at the Polls, which will encourage faculty at Maryland colleges and universities to serve as elections judges in 2006. The Spencer Foundation underwrote the cost of the Association’s recent opinion survey on public perceptions of the professoriate, and the TIAA-CREF Institute and the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute sponsored a nationwide survey of faculty retirement policies.
The sort of foundation funding mentioned above often provides budget-relieving subsidies for project-related operational expenses. Ford Foundation funding, for example, will partially underwrite an issue of Academe on academic boycotts. Such funding is immensely helpful in the short term, and the Association is grateful for the generous support. Nonetheless, special project funding does not ensure the long-term health and stability of the AAUP.
The heart of the Campaign for the Common Good remains the drive to establish an endowment to secure the Association’s future. As reported in the May–June issue of Academe (see “Chapters and Conferences Support Capital Campaign” on pages 13–14), chapters have pledged nearly $150,000 to the capital campaign and have earmarked their contributions for the Endowment Fund. Five state conferences have also pledged support for the Endowment Fund: Illinois ($2,000), Michigan ($4,000), Nevada ($2,000), Tennessee ($2,000), and Virginia ($5,000).
Individual members as well have overwhelmingly designated their pledges and contributions for the Endowment Fund. The largest individual pledge has come from James E. Rogers, chancellor of the University and Community College System of Nevada and a member of the AAUP’s National Campaign Committee. Rogers pledged a matching grant of $250,000 to the Campaign for the Common Good. Payable over ten years, the gift will allocate $25,000 to the campaign each year that the AAUP receives a like gift of $25,000; the gift will pay $50,000 each year the campaign brings in at least two gifts of $25,000 or more. Rogers, whom Time magazine listed as one of the top twelve philanthropists in the nation, is a majority stockholder in Sunbelt Communications Company, which owns and operates television stations throughout the western United States. He has been a generous supporter of higher education.
Pledges from individuals to the Campaign for the Common Good total more than $525,000, including the Rogers challenge grant. Of that total, $430,000 is earmarked specifically for the Endowment Fund. AAUP members clearly understand the need to create a secure financial foundation for the Association and realize that to achieve that goal the Association must have a substantial and stable endowment.
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