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BY LILLIE DREMEAUX

In print | Published September 25, 2003

Most alumni feel good about Swarthmore. They like donating money to the college and other charitable groups. But they are not convinced the college needs their help as much as it says it does, according to a recent poll.

The Board of Managers, in its meeting last weekend, viewed the presentation of a survey that sought graduates’ “attitudes about contributing to the college.” Swarthmore also hoped the survey would help it “get some insight into the best way to communicate with alums” about the capital campaign, said Dan West, who presented the results to the board.

The capital campaign, halfway finished, has already raised $138.5 million. The college hopes to generate $230 million more by December of 2006, according to West, vice president for alumni, development and public relations.

West called the results “mostly very encouraging. We were pleased to find a strong sense of loyalty to the college and a commitment to the place.”

The survey also found alumni to be generally “philanthropic,” Director of Alumni Relations Lisa Lee ’81 said, with a tendency to give “time and energy as well as financial support” to local and national organizations.

What the college needs to work on, West said, is convincing graduates who already donate that they should give more.“A large number of alumni aren’t really convinced that the college needs to raise more money,” West said. “They’re not convinced that we need their particular help.” The poll revealed that alumni believe the large endowment and an absence of any recent financial crisis at Swarthmore mean they only need to contribute small amounts, he said.

The endowment is currently $970 million. But, West said, “the endowment is basically there because of what people in the past have given. It needs to grow.”

Over 60 percent of alumni have contributed to Swarthmore at least once, according to West.

Lee called Swarthmore graduates “pretty smart” and said they “had a pretty good sense of how a college runs. They do realize Swarthmore can’t run without contributions.”

A new goal for the college is to better inform Swarthmore graduates of exactly why the capital campaign is taking place.

“Most of the people we talked to knew about the campaign, but most of them weren’t clear on what we were trying to raise money for,” West said.

Some alumni who donate between $100 and $500 annually might be willing to give $30,000 or even $100,000 a year “if they were convinced that the college needs their help,” he added.

The survey also asked alumni what they saw as the most important features of the college. High academic standards and need-blind admissions came out on top, West said, as well as “some of the Quaker values, such as social justice, civic responsibility and a strong sense of community.”

Lee said the survey also sought to find out “what kinds of materials alumni read and don’t read.” The college, she said, plans to “use the data that we got to look at the messages we want to put in the materials we develop,” such as the Bulletin alumni magazine and The Garnet Letter, a publication about the capital campaign. Alumni, she said, need to be made more aware of what, exactly, the college needs to fund and why it considers those projects important.

“Our alums are pretty well aware of our campaign, but we might need to get the message out a little stronger,” Lee said. “We do get good support, but, that being said, we’re trying to raise $230 million.”

Students trained by the Michael Cohen Group fielded the survey, which polled 400 randomly selected alumni from the classes of 1955 through 1999.

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