Donor disappointment in University of Arizona President Ann Weaver Hart is hurting the school’s fundraising efforts, one of the leaders of its current fundraising drive says.
“Donors who have been steady supporters of the UA have suspended their giving,” Sarah Smallhouse, co-chair of the $1.5 billion Arizona Now campaign, wrote to one of Hart’s bosses a few weeks before Hart announced she plans to retire as president in 2018.
“My impression is most donors want to see her gone ASAP,” Smallhouse, herself a major donor, said in an email to Arizona Board of Regents member Bill Ridenour, who at the time was a trustee on the UA’s fundraising board.
Much of the ill will stems from Hart’s decision earlier this year to take a paid position on the board of for-profit DeVry University, Smallhouse wrote.
The DeVry situation “amplified hard feelings and added to concerns that the commitment to excellence at the UA has indeed been abandoned by its president,” she said.
It isn’t clear if Ridenour shared the fundraising co-chair’s comments with fellow regents. He didn’t respond to requests for comment sent to his work email and regents email over a three-day period last week.
Smallhouse’s emails are dated May 13. Hart announced her departure decision June 10 at a Board of Regents meeting in Flagstaff.
Hart declined comment last week on the concerns Smallhouse raised. Other UA executives acknowledged a slowdown in giving, but said there’s no way to know for sure what’s behind it.
“Donors make philanthropic decisions (either positive or negative) based on all kinds of reasons and timetables,” said John-Paul Roczniak, CEO of the UA’s fundraising arm, the University of Arizona Foundation.
“It isn’t feasible to accurately attribute decreases or increases in gifts to any one specific reason,” he said in an email. The campaign overall has been highly successful and is on track to end earlier than planned, he added.
Gregg Goldman, the UA’s chief financial officer, said the downturn could be because the campaign is nearing its end and may not have the same momentum as at the start.
The Arizona Daily Star obtained Smallhouse’s emails through a public-records request and also reviewed two years worth of online progress reports for the Arizona Now campaign.
The public phase of the fundraising drive began in 2014 with more than half the $1.5 billion already raised in what the UA described as a “quiet phase.” Donations boomed in the year or so after Hart announced the campaign in April 2014, less than two years after she took over as president.
In the 2015 school year, for example, the UA raised $293 million — an average of $24.4 million a month. The monthly average dropped to $17 million in the 2016 school year just ended, for an annual total of $205 million.
Between January and June this year — the time frame in which protests arose over Hart’s DeVry job — donations averaged $14 million a month.
As of June 30, the campaign needs $40 million more to reach its goal, which is expected to take until “late fall or early winter,” said Goldman, the UA’s finance boss. If that forecast holds, it equates to average giving of $6 million to $8 million a month in the final stretch of the campaign.
As well, the UA’s new budget predicts a 9.6 percent drop in private gifts in the school year just starting — a decline of $8.7 million, even though the UA plans to spend an extra $4.7 million to hire more fundraising staff.
That sort of dip is common after a major capital campaign ends, the UA’s Goldman said.
A local downturn in donations would run counter to current national trends.
Giving to education is expected to rise by more than 6 percent both this year and next, according to recent research from Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
“We project stronger growth in giving to education in 2016 and 2017 than in overall giving,” said philanthropy expert Una Osili, the Lilly school’s director of research.
“This may be due in part to the increasing interest of donors — and especially wealthy donors, foundations and even corporations — in funding higher education, as well as a growing role for philanthropy in K-12 education.”
Smallhouse said last week in an email interview that she never intended for her comments to Ridenour to become public. She said she thought the emails were private and didn’t realize they could be released as public records.
Smallhouse isn’t alone in the view that Hart’s DeVry job is having a negative effect. Regents CEO Eileen Klein has told board members that it is eroding public confidence in the entire state university system. The Star also obtained Klein’s email through a public-records request.
The regents, who collectively are Hart’s employers, have said little in public about the situation, which has sparked hundreds of complaints from faculty, students, alumni and state legislators.
Critics say Hart should be spending all her energies on the UA and that she tainted the Tucson school’s reputation by attaching herself to a questionable enterprise.
Many have called for her to resign or be fired, but according to her contract, Hart did nothing wrong. Regents’ policy doesn’t require university presidents to seek board approval for outside work.
Hart accepted the DeVry post in February, two weeks after the Federal Trade Commission launched a lawsuit that alleges DeVry deceived its students about their employment prospects — claims DeVry denies. Hart has said she believes the firm is on solid ground and said she took the position on her own time to help DeVry students reach their potential.
The corporate post pays Hart $70,000 a year plus $100,000 in stock, on top of the $665,500 pay package she receives from Arizona taxpayers.
She’s believed to be the only sitting president of a major American public university to serve on the board of a publicly traded, for-profit education firm.
The Board of Regents plans a national search this fall for Hart’s replacement.
Outgoing board chair Jay Heiler has said Hart could exit the UA’s top job next year once a new leader is in place. She plans to stay on at the UA as a tenured professor, as her contract provides.
Hart’s presidential contract doesn’t expire until June of 2018 so, barring any changes, taxpayers could end up covering two presidents’ salaries until then if a new leader comes aboard next year.
