Karen Stout

Community colleges have always operated on lower per-student funding than other public higher education sectors and are, thus, more vulnerable to up and down funding cycles from their state and local public funders. Community college leaders also know that continuing increases in tuition to fill the funding gap is no longer sustainable. It is, therefore, no wonder that these leaders continue to think of ways to diversify their operating and capital funding strategies.

Now is the perfect time for community college leaders to demonstrate and articulate their value to new audiences that extend beyond traditional state and local funders. Community college leaders can leverage their institutions’ localness to build new strategic financing models that optimize private fundraising strategies. Today, community colleges must build their capacity for private resource development to put their institutions on firmer ground.

Crossing Boundaries to Achieve Bold, Big Agendas

Some exemplar community colleges are partnering with philanthropic organizations to develop new ways to fund bold new access agendas that include, yet also go beyond, traditional Promise Programs. More than ever, community colleges are serving as boundary-crossing institutions and leading coalitions that are designing community-wide solutions to educational pathways and workforce development and serving as hubs of broad-based community well-being for the next generation. Some of the most successful approaches to gaining access to private fundraising have included working in partnership with community leaders to introduce a collective fundraising approach.

For example, the Harold Alfond Foundation made a $75-million gift to Maine’s Community College System to support the building of the new state workforce and support the training of 70,000 Mainers over the next several years. And quite recently, the Dallas-based O’Donnell Foundation, which primarily supports graduate STEM education, made a $60 million investment to transform Dallas County’s Promise Program to support students wherever and whenever they fall off track for higher education. Resources to key partners will tackle barriers beyond affordability, including broadening advising for middle and high school students. A third of the grant funding will help the community college’s philanthropic foundation to provide scholarships to high-need students after high school and offer financial support to their parents and other adults who want to reengage with higher education.

Making Generosity Generative

While most gifts are nowhere near this large, multimillion-dollar gifts in support of community colleges have become more frequent in recent years than in the past. Achieving the Dream (ATD), for instance, received a $20 million unrestricted gift from MacKenzie Scott in 2021. Gifts like this are rare for nonprofits that are often program heavy and infrastructure lean. Our board put $10 million into a quasi-endowed long-term fund and the organization is now more fiscally stable because of a board-approved spending policy that allocates a specific percentage of the endowment’s annual investment proceeds to fund general operating expenses. This helps us reduce the costs of supporting our colleges. In addition, we are re-granting a significant part of the gift over several years to subsidize the entry of new and historically under-resourced colleges into our network. This regifting strategy has in the past two years added another 28 rural, urban, and minority-serving colleges into our network. This approach has brought to life MacKenzie Scott’s vision that “generosity is generative” and that “sharing makes more.”

In the past two years, ATD has also developed a new approach to institutional improvement that encourages our institutions to focus beyond their campuses to address long-term community needs. The Community Vibrancy Framework is aimed at expanding access to our colleges, improving our thinking about completion by expanding it to degree and nondegree credentials that create greater social and economic mobility for more learners and their families, and connecting the contributions of the colleges and learners to resulting community prosperity.

The new orientation to institutional reform, which adds an externally focused orientation to ATD’s historic internal focus, is already helping institutions make a better case for private and public funding. Jeremy McMillen, President of Grayson College in Texas, for example, used this approach to develop his college’s case-making for a $456.5 million facilities bond, which was approved by voters in 2024. “We discussed what was needed to have a vibrant community,” McMillen said. “We used language around building for growth and filling a talent pipeline without increasing the overall tax rate.” Arizona’s Coconino Community College, which is also using the framework, is launching a capital campaign, asking “what kind of community do we want to build” and creating a reverse model to attract new donors to the college.

Five Areas That Can Fuel Community College Fundraising Success

Based on my own experience, which has included launching foundations as a development leader at two community colleges, building a fundraising unit and leading a capital campaign during my college presidency, and now engaging in “big philanthropy” at ATD and seeing our network colleges struggle with building capacity for their own private fundraising, the keys to private fundraising success are as follows.

Connect Institutional Foundations to the Core of the College’s Structure and Strategy

Community college fundraising operations have not been optimized. Too often the foundations operate in a silo and focus on fundraising from special events with low margins, annual giving, and sporadic major giving strategies. They often draw donors to fund annual scholarships, sometimes for specific programs, which limits the collective reach of these gifts. These efforts are typically separate from the larger strategic vision of the institution, including its student success goals and the growing needs of students and their communities. Equally problematic, the leader of the college foundation does not always have a seat at the executive cabinet level, further isolating fundraising from strategy. This arrangement has the unwanted effect of putting funders in the fundraising strategy driver’s seat rather than ensuring that the institution’s strategic case for fundraising drives donor investments.

Strengthen Case Making and Relationship Building

Leaders must have a compelling vision for the future and seek to understand the goals of funders and the issues that motivate them to invest. Attracting larger gifts requires deep and continuing dialogue that allows for the co-development of new strategies to solve longstanding challenges affecting students; institutions; and, where possible, the community at large. Presidents must be engaged in and lead these conversations with the long view in mind. Trust is built over time as a byproduct of conversations in which leaders, donors, and funders can share candid insights that pinpoint problems, point to solutions, and open the door for later funding. A particularly challenging aspect of this relationship building is that community college presidency turnover and shortened tenure are keeping some community colleges from harvesting the goodwill established by incumbent presidents. Those who stay longer, after establishing presence and trust in the community, should consider how to leverage their longevity and lean into a more aggressive private fundraising agenda.

Promote a Value-Driven Agenda That Is Fueled by Each New Investment

Community colleges are local institutions, providing the most tangible results for employers and for underserved populations. Proposals need to emphasize all parts of this three-part equation—local benefit, tangible results, and who is being served. Leaders must begin to define student success more broadly to make the case that investments in community colleges can do more than help get students into and through programs. These institutions can also make a long-term impact for their graduates, leading to life-sustaining careers and stronger social and economic mobility that leads directly to a more prosperous community as graduates tend to stay in their communities. Because community colleges neither import nor export their students, they are essential engines for community and workforce development.

Expand Partnerships to Reach Those Who Are Left Behind

With student basic needs exceeding public funding capacity, and with federal dollars for programs that serve basic public needs in danger of being cut, community college leaders must look to expand the universe of donors by partnering with community-based organizations in joint private fundraising. This is an excellent time to reach donors who typically invest in social causes but who may have never thought about community colleges as beneficiaries or key catalysts of their investment. Some colleges in the ATD network are seeking and gaining funding for efforts to target households that earn more than the federal poverty level but are still unable to afford basic needs.

In addition, dual enrollment programs, which enable students to gain college credit while in high school, can be significant opportunities for private fundraising, especially for corporate funders who need to fill talent gaps in specific industries. Colleges can partner with school districts and community and youth-serving organizations to expand these programs to identify students who, in the past, might not have been considered college material. This includes students who are currently disconnected from high school and may not even be served in alternative high school programs. Similarly, colleges can partner with organizations that address the needs of other groups of potential future learners, including students and community members whose criminal records are keeping them from gaining traction in work but whose skills are needed in the workplace, and young adults who are recovering from substance abuse.

Improve Fundraising Capabilities and Infrastructure Over Time

Just like our institutional research areas in community colleges, our foundations and private fundraising shops are lean. It’s hard for leaders to reallocate dollars from tight budgets away from core student services efforts and into building a private fundraising team. Yet, every new foray into fundraising can further build capacity. ATD’s success at fundraising over the years has been the result of consciously building the organization’s ability to pinpoint new challenges; synthesizing what is known and not known about potential solutions; identifying talented people to lead new work and put them on the executive team; and using research to identify what works and does not work. These activities, in turn, create a virtuous cycle. ATD was able to use new resources to hire talent, and to build a strong project management culture that helps us become strong stewards of private investments.

I encourage community college presidents to rethink how they view their role in private fundraising. This includes engaging deeply with your institutionally related foundation and actively connecting private fundraising goals and programs to the college’s strategic vision around student success and a value-driven agenda. It includes restructuring to give the private fundraising leader a seat at the executive cabinet table and carving out time to focus on building trusted donor and funder relationships that can grow through the years. It includes targeting new audiences to support and braiding together small successes to gradually build stronger fundraising operations. Not least, it requires presidents to take a long view about the work and ascertain when it is the right moment to go big and be the face of that boldness.