Building Private Support for a Public University

In The University at Albany is once again blazing new trails as it announces the largest fund-raising campaign in its 159-year history. The Campaign for the University at Albany aims to raise $500 million in private support over the next five years. This ambitious goal signals the growing importance of private philanthropy for public universities nationwide.

While President Karen Hitchcock was finalizing Campaign plans with UAlbany’s friends and partners, we were busy planning our coverage of the Campaign in this special issue. As we assembled our package of Campaign stories that begin on Page 3, I had the opportunity to talk with two former UAlbany presidents who laid the groundwork for this effort: Vincent O’Leary and H. Patrick Swygert.

President Swygert, now president of Howard University in Washington, D.C., presided over the University’s first-ever campaign, the $55 million Campaign for Albany. “At the time (1991), there was an enormous amount of skepticism,” he recalled. “Folks were taken aback by the goal.” But in hindsight, he said, $55 million turned out to be a small number. Under his leadership, UAlbany successfully completed that first campaign three years early, in 1996. President Swygert, by the way, is now leading Howard in a $250 million campaign.

Planning for UAlbany’s first campaign actually began in 1988 under President O’Leary. Now retired, living in California and working on a memoir, President O’Leary led UAlbany for 13 years, the longest presidential tenure during the University’s modern era. During his presidency, he said, he watched the state’s share of the campus operating budget slide to 40 percent. (Today, it is about 20 percent.) “In the mid-1980s, it was pretty clear that the amount of private money we were raising (about $300,000) wasn’t going to do it,” he said.

The decade of the 1980s represented a turning point for the idea of philanthropy at UAlbany, a public institution. Giving grew by almost 500 percent, adjusted for inflation, from $567,125 to $3.4 million. The numbers seem small now, but they represented enormous momentum.

Today, both Presidents O’Leary and Swygert see private philanthropy as essential for all colleges and universities — public and private. “I think the publics have a lot of catching up to do, but they can catch up because they are such good institutions,” President Swygert said. They also agree that the support of alumni will be critical. “One of the things you can’t underestimate is the resources available to alumni,” President O’Leary said.

The Campaign for the University at Albany represents another giant step in UAlbany’s efforts to join the ranks of the world’s great public universities. The $500 million goal is indeed bold, but we have a lot of friends who share our vision. I’m confident we’ll be successful.

Christine Hanson McKnight, Editor
UAlbany magazine