Welcome to The 1909, the podcast that takes an in-depth look at The State News’ biggest stories of the week, while bringing in new perspectives from the reporters who wrote them.
It's Wednesday, December 3rd, and this is the 19 09, state news's weekly podcast featuring our reporters talking about the news. I'm your host, Alex Walters. Last time Michigan State University launched a major fundraising campaign, Obama was worried about the midterms, Nicki Minaj's Anaconda was topping the charts, and the ice bucket challenge was all the Internet rage. Yes. 2014 was the last time the university made a major fundraising push.
Alex:That, of course, is also before the university weathered all sorts of perception shaping scandals, like the Larry Nassar scandal, Mel Tucker, an unprecedented rate of presidential turnover and dysfunction on the board of trustees. But now they're back, and they're raising money again with a new president. And our reporter, Owen McCarthy, has written a great story about what that means for a university to do this sort of major fundraising endeavor. They call it a capital campaign, and he's here to tell us about it.
Owen:Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, Alex.
Alex:So first of all, tell us, you know, this terminology of capital campaign. What does that mean? What's the difference between, you know, universities raise money all the time. What does it mean when they do this sort of, like, announcement of a concerted effort? How does that differ from just raising money?
Owen:Yeah. So when we're talking about sort of a concerted effort like this, you know, oftentimes, there's gonna be a sort of, like, branding or sort of tagline to come along with the campaign. So, you know, we're raising money for this sort of set of particular reasons that is going to help our university progress in this sort of specific way. I mean, they're not gonna be that specific a lot of times. It's like, you know, I don't know.
Owen:Like, think about the phrase, like, Spartans will, for example. Like that, you know, it's more abstract, but I'm just saying
Alex:There's like a theme or an idea that, you know, is supposed to compel people to donate.
Owen:That's exactly right. Yep. And and when we talk about these concerted efforts, you know, there's specific sort of, goal posts, if you will. We wanna raise this amount of money. We wanna do it kind of in this time frame.
Owen:And so, yeah, with with all these sort of capital campaigns, whatever you wanna call it, these universities will sort of set a a a goal. I mean, what comes to mind is the University of Michigan, for example. In October, they launched what they're calling their biggest fundraising campaign in school history, and the goal was $7,000,000,000. I think we can expect that MSUs won't be won't be up there just when you compare the size of the endowments and just the size of universities. But yeah.
Owen:So that's another element is having a very specific, goal that you want to achieve within a certain amount of time.
Alex:And this is to be clear too. MSU hasn't publicly announced this campaign. You reported this. You you were able to get advancement to confirm that it was happening. Yeah.
Alex:But we're reporting that this exists. We don't necessarily know all the details of it.
Owen:That's right.
Alex:But can you tell me, you know, to what extent did they tell you about it? What do you know from advancement about what this campaign will look like?
Owen:Yeah. So, you know, officially, advancement, you know, in the statement they they wrote to me was sort of like, it is correct that we are, you know, about to launch this campaign. They said, there's much to be proud of and more we aspire to achieve together with our Spartan community and friends of the university. Stay tuned for a bold campaign that intends to help Spartan solve the grand challenges of our time and prepare our students for the opportunities of today and the future. So not a lot of specifics, but like I said, there's usually that sort of theme, and I think you can sort of see a signal there of a bold campaign that intends to help Spartan solve the grand challenges of our time and prepare students.
Owen:That's that's kind of all the details we have on it to this point.
Alex:Yeah. And, you know, I I had a chance to sit down with the MSU president this morning, and I asked him a little bit about this. And he kind of walked around along those same lines Yeah. Of saying that the focus of this campaign he hopes is gonna be, like, student success, which I guess is scholarships or support for students. Not necessarily some capital campaigns are about, like, a big new building.
Alex:Mhmm. A new dormitory. Maybe like something for athletics like a stadium. This one will be kind of along those student success lines.
Owen:Yeah. Yeah. Well and we we've sort of gotten an indication, earlier that that the capital campaign might kind of be along those lines. And and the main way we got that indication is you reported on this months ago, but president Kevin Guskewitz, one of the kind of first things he did in his administration was he, he he signed a contract. He hired, the McKinsey consulting firm, McKinsey and Company, and they sort of outlined and and gave him guidance, and the contract was about 2,000,000.
Owen:They gave him guidance on on his administration's priorities, basically.
Alex:And one of those is, you know, the idea of this capital campaign. Mhmm. That's right. Specifically that it would be centered on, like, scholarships or other student success initiatives.
Owen:Yeah. And and it talks specifically about, you know, the the report from McKinsey talks a lot about this demographic cliff and and how does MSU sort of stay, relevant and also kind of at the same level of of its peers in the big ten. Right? And it said that that one of the ways MSU is sort of lagging is when we think of retention rates. So that basically just means, once people come to us in their freshman year, how likely, how often are they staying with us or are they leaving?
Owen:And they also found that that, you know, MSU's retention rate is lacking behind some of its peers, and that the number one reason for that is because of financial reasons. And so McKinsey says one of the ways that you can, you know, sort of mitigate this is by, I think they even call it, launch Spartans for Spartans fundraising campaign to fund retention efforts, and they provided, as examples, mental health resourcing and bridging loans,
Owen:and that was meant to have a focus on closing this gap that you see, particularly in retention rates
Owen:among underrepresented students. So
Alex:if MSU wants especially underrepresented students from, like, marginalized groups to be able to stay for 4 years Mhmm. And not have this higher rate of dropping out. The idea would be you do this big fundraising campaign Yep. And then you use that money to fund scholarships and programs and whatnot to help students.
Owen:Yeah. That's exactly right.
Alex:And it's interesting too because a lot of these capital campaigns, it'll be like the big building or whatever and put your name on it. Like, when Broad raised a lot of money a couple years ago, there's like the Minskoff Pavilion, and he gave tens of 1,000,000 of dollars. And in exchange, kind of his name is on that pavilion. Yeah. And when I was talking to the president this morning, I was asking him about, like, well, is there gonna be some sort of, like, physical infrastructure that a donor can put their name on?
Alex:Because that's, I think, a big part of that kind of fundraising. And his thought was that, you know, maybe the stuff you're raising money for, these scholarships, endowments for certain kinds of professors and stuff might not be the thing a donor is gonna, like, slap their name on. But that MSU could retroactively give naming rights to some of these beautiful new buildings on campus, the STEM building, this new rec center, the multicultural center that don't have, like, a namesake donor.
Owen:Yep.
Alex:But a name could be added to it for someone who gives to these initiatives.
Owen:Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting you mentioned that. I actually spoke to sort of prominent donor for this story whose name is, James Billman. Of the Billman Pavilion.
Owen:Exactly. Of the Billman Music Pavilion. And so, yeah, he's I mean, he's responsible for a host of sort of professorships and scholarships, but he also at some point got that sort of tangible physical thing where his name was attached to something on MSU's campus.
Alex:It's a great pavilion. It's great rehearsal there.
Owen:You you know it well, don't you? Yeah.
Alex:I see. There's a big picture of his face in the lobby.
Owen:Really?
Alex:And whatnot. Yeah. And, like, it's kind of like a like in this, display of all the donors is, like, his face, then a long list of the other smaller donors.
Owen:His face is, like, the biggest out of out of the faces. He's the only face. Oh, then the rest is less. Okay.
Alex:But, anyway, tell me, the timing of this capital campaign is interesting because, obviously, it's coming with the new president, but it also is in some ways kind of belated. Right? I opened the show with, talking about 2014, which with our little kind of cheesy cultural references feels very, very far away. Yeah.
Owen:That's the
Alex:last time I miss you was raising money.
Owen:Yeah. Can you
Alex:tell me a little bit about that campaign, the 2014 campaign? That was the last time they did this.
Owen:Yeah. So, one thing to mention is that with these campaigns, the public launch of them generally is they they sort of will have these kind of quiet phases of the campaign where they're they're going to their donors, and it is this concerted effort, but it's not this, like, publicly visible thing. And then once they reach a certain level, a certain threshold of of their goal, that's when they make this public push. Right? And so the campaign actually started its quiet phase in, like, 2011, and then in 2014 was the public launch of it.
Owen:And then soon after that, you had big, kinda chip ins from from Minskoff, and you had Dan Gilbert was kind of in the folds, of Quicken Loans. No? Right?
Alex:Rocket.
Owen:Rocket? Yeah. And so, you know, people people were paying attention, sort of prominent, donors were were, like, this is great. We wanna we wanna get in on this. We wanna support MSU.
Owen:The campaign lasted all the way until 2019. It had crossed its goal of 1,500,000,000, I think as as early as 2017, and then it sort sort of continued.
Alex:The momentum's there. You keep it going.
Owen:Exactly. I mean, why would you stop? You know? And so then then they reach about, like, 1,830,000,000 in the year 2019, and that was when they said, okay. We're done with our campaign.
Owen:It's been great. Thanks thanks for your support, basically.
Alex:And so the quiet phase is when you're you're kind of meeting with individual big donors
Owen:and courting,
Alex:and that feels like where MSU is now with this campaign. Is that fair?
Owen:Yeah. I think that's fair to say. I mean, they've not I'll tell you, MSU has not given me any details about, oh, we've been in the quiet phase. But when I was talking to the donor, for example, he was sort of acting like, well, yeah. I mean, they never stopped raising money and and and tapping in with with their donors.
Alex:Mhmm.
Owen:It's just not been this publicly visible.
Alex:Well, you know, when I was talking to Gus because this morning, he said, like, later this week, he'll be in Florida meeting with some people to talk about giving money and stuff, and they I guess, right now, they're sort of gauging interest. And then and is it reasonable to expect when they do the kind of, I guess, the loud phase of the campaign, what are the public phase maybe? Is that when they'll detail actually not just this, like, broad theme of student success, but what this money will go to specifically if people give?
Owen:Yeah. I think that's fair to say. Generally, when when universities publicly launch their campaigns, that's when they sort of lay out, here's what we're gonna do. We're here's we're gonna build this. We're gonna make this scholarship, whatever it is.
Owen:So I I think it's reasonable to expect, you know, more details at that point. And and they they advancement has sort of indicated that to me of, like, you know, when we were working on the story and everything, they were, like, well, because we're so far out, or not so far, but a number of months out from the public launch, we can't give the details right now. So sort of the implication was that the details will come when that public launch does happen in the coming months, whatever that is.
Alex:What about the timing of this for MSU? Because, I mean, this is an odd moment for the university. In the time since this last campaign 10 years ago, ago, you've had this major sexual abuse scandal that was I mean, Larry Nassar that was known globally. It was covered by the national media intensely. Strong association with MSU.
Alex:You have Mel Tucker. You have everything with Sanjay Gupta. And you also just have these perception shaping moments that I think really stick with, students with alumni. I mean, the shooting, of course. Yep.
Alex:And and a myriad of other kind of smaller scandals. Just this week, we reported on a new department of that investigation into the Olin health center Yep. For a sexual assault allegation there or allegations there. Yeah. Is this is it fair to say that this is like a weird time, a bad time to do a campaign?
Alex:I mean, are they taking into is there a thought about what it means to do a campaign coming off of all that scandal?
Owen:Yeah. I mean, I I think from the outside looking in, it can seem like, I mean, there's been a lot of sort of turbulence going on, and and it might seem like an inopportune time to to start soliciting donations, but there's actually research out there, and I I got in touch with these researchers for this story, that shows that universities are largely unimpacted really by by these sort of scandals. They these researchers particularly looked at, federal title 9 investigations, which is applicable to MSU because there, there there's 7 federal title 9 investigations of MSU as we speak. But, you know, I think they also give some indications about bad press in general was the term they use, bad press. And, yeah, MSU has had its share of bad press.
Owen:Let's be honest here. But what these researchers found is that when you're looking at these specific university outcomes that are measurable, like enrollment and, like, alumni donations, which is very pertinent to this discussion, bad press is not negatively impacting these universities. In fact, in some cases, you know, the universities tend to start soliciting money more when Really? When they're going through these tough times. And I sort of asked these researchers, I was like, well, did you do any sort of qualitative analysis to see, when when these universities are soliciting donations, are they framing it of, like, hey.
Owen:We're going through it right now. We need help. And the researchers were like, that would be an interesting extension of our work. We didn't look at that. So they just looked at the quantitative stuff, but what they found was that, yeah, you know, the rates at which alumni are giving tend to be sort of, even almost equal or unaffected and sometimes in some cases, even higher when there's this bad press in these federal timeline investigations, and also the rate at which universities solicit the donations can can be a little bit higher.
Alex:So both after, you know, bad press Mhmm. Donors might give even more and universities might seek even more?
Owen:That's right. That's right. Yep.
Alex:Do they talk about why I mean, if these researchers, do they have some sort of, like, explanation for why that might be? Because it seems counterintuitive, but it's, you know, what the data shows.
Owen:Yeah. So the big thing that they focus on in their report is, this concept called salience. And so, basically, it's it's it's pretty simple. It's almost common sense. It says, look, if a university has been in the news regardless of of what reason, it is more likely to sort of be fresh in people's minds.
Owen:So the researchers find that, for example, when it comes to enrollment, people don't think that hard about enrollment. You know, if you're listening and and you came to MSU and you thought really about it, you know, that that's awesome. But a lot of people are, like, where do I go to college? I know this place. This place is by my house.
Owen:Whatever. And so what the researchers found is, like, people don't think that hard about it, and if they've been hearing about the place in the news, they just have that association. It's fresher in their mind, and it's that salience piece. And they said that could, you know, that could be a reason for the increased sort of giving from alumni in these times where there's lots of bad press and media attention because the the institution is just fresher in their mind.
Alex:Do you wanna just remember that's somewhere to give my money to.
Owen:Yeah. Yep. Interesting.
Alex:Yeah. That's fascinating. Well, we'll have to watch how this plays out. I wonder if this will work out for MSU, the successful campaign. I'm sure we'll have you again when we know kinda more concretely some of the details of what this campaign will actually be raising
Owen:money for. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, thank you for your reporting.
Alex:We will be back next week with more great stories from the minds here at the state news. Until then, Owen Story and, others are available at state news. Available at state news.com. Thank you again, Owen, for coming on. Thanks for podcast coordinator, Taylor, for making it sound so nice.
Alex:And most of all, thank you for listening. For the 19 09, I'm Alex Walters.