In this latest ground-breaking essay--part of the series exploring innovative change in contemporary pedagogy--I turn from purely academic matters to the important issue of raising funds. Readers are encouraged to distribute this seminal brainstorm widely.
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ON INSTITUTIONAL ADVANCEMENT
Let us imagine
that you find a family living in a dilapidated old house. The roof leaks; the
windows are cracked; the carpets are threadbare; the furnace is erratic, often
providing much heat in warm weather and little heat when it is cold. The stone walls
are crumbling.
Let us also imagine that you—Mr. Hastings van
Rensselaer Plutocrat—are wealthy and altruistic. You wish to assist this
family. You leave your mansion in Palm Desert, California, and go to them. You
smilingly announce that you are going to help them. You will construct in their
yard a marble fountain that will send a beautiful spray of water fifty
feet into the air; further, you will hang upon their living room wall—over the
cracks—a genuine Gobelin tapestry depicting colorful scenes of medieval pageantry.
In proper recognition
of your generosity, a fine bronze plaque will be affixed to the fountain
designating it the Plutocrat Water Display and the tapestry will appropriately
bear a small label: “Gift of H. van R. Plutocrat, 2013.” Your benevolence will
be fittingly acknowledged at a public ceremony where you will be hailed as a
modern Maecenas, a philanthropist extraordinaire.
How happy this
family will surely be! Even as they sit in their cold, drafty living room
watching the rain drip into the buckets placed under the holes in the roof,
they will hardly be able to stifle their cries of joy as they admire the
intricate weaving of the tapestry and marvel at the loveliness of the fountain.
If this seems like
an absurd flight of fancy, I have to suggest that, unfortunately, it is not. It
is analogous to what can happen when a combination of generosity, self-esteem, and
misplaced priorities, facilitated by faulty fund-raising policies, are brought
to bear on an impoverished institution—such as, to choose a random example, a
tuition-driven boarding school.
Would it not
make more sense, if, before adorning a shack with golden gables, one first
repaired the walls? If the roof leaks, should the construction of a magnificent
garage be the first priority? When the heating system is antique and
undependable, one might replace it before installing a jacuzzi, might one not? Should
one not water the lily before gilding it?
Surely it
does not strain credulity to assert that institutional advancement implies that
the institution must have a sound infrastructure before more buildings are
built and comparative frills added. That is common sense. Why then is it not
done?
One reason may be
that some potential philanthropists feel that to endow a grand building, to
construct a statue, to equip rooms with huge tables that the users of those
rooms neither want nor need, is preferable to repairing a heating system or
tuck-pointing a crumbling wall, because building, constructing, and equipping
offer more opportunities for recognition than repairing and replacing. Perhaps such
people feel that little prestige attaches to renovating bathrooms or laying
carpets, to fixing roofs or caulking windows. After all, the pharaohs are
remembered for pyramids, not for sewers.
I suggest that it
is the function of Development Departments not to take the easy way out by abetting
such erroneous notions and soliciting money for secondary things, but to grasp
the nettle and tell potential donors what is really needed. If Lorenzo the
Magnificent, class of ’53, announces he will finance an air-conditioned,
twenty-lane bowling alley, it is the job of the Institutional Advancement
experts to tell him (politely but firmly) that the institution does not need
such a thing, but does need—to invent an exaggerated, unlikely example—to prevent
a dormitory that has visible cracks in its outer walls and whose windows are
out of plumb from continuing its slow but steady descent into a ravine, so
would he kindly write a check for these much-needed repairs to an
already-existing structure even though it is not named after him?
So, wealthy,
public-spirited alumni: when your alma mater needs shoes and a dress, do not
give her a feather boa. When she huddles in the cold, do not give her a
painting of a fireplace. When her house is falling down, do not offer to build
her a tanning salon next door.
And advancement
officials: take the bull by the horns and insist that you have a strong,
well-built cart before you get a horse, or a white elephant, to pull it. Repair
the infrastructure before adding to the superstructure.
For if this is not
done, the eventual fate of institutions which do not do it might well be that
so famously depicted by Shelley:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said, “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half-sunk, a shattered visage lies….
And on the pedestal these words appear --
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Maybe
Ozymandias built an Arts Center when he really should have repaired his palace.
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For all those awaiting news of
The Free Lands, I want to tell both of you that the book is completed and that I am awaiting the cover. If the artist finishes it on time, I am hopeful that Volume IV of
Mercenaries will appear in November.
