2025 Summer

Welcome to the digital executive edition of Innovatus, the magazine of the League for Innovation in the Community College. With this issue we resume our conversation with presidents, chancellors, and CEOs about the dynamic art and science of resource development at community and technical colleges and polytechnics across the U.S. and Canada. We continue to explore how strategic communications, relationship-driven fundraising, and innovation with intent can secure the resources our learners and communities deserve.

The authors in this issue bring a wealth of experience from across the community and technical college field. DeAnna R. Burt-Nanna leads off with “First, Know Thyself: A President’s Perspective on Institutional Advancement and Resource Development,” offering an unflinching look at the importance of personal and institutional identity, equity, and transparency to advancement work. David G. Ross continues with “Diversifying Revenue: Building Expertise, Confidence, and Success,” a practical roadmap for developing new streams of support while reinforcing institutional capacity. In “The Power of an Idea: Lessons and Reflections in Resource Development,” Michael A. Baston shows how imagination, grounded in mission, mobilizes donors even in turbulent times, and in “Shaping Tomorrow: How Community Colleges Can Lead Beyond Financial Constraints,” Paul Broadie II illustrates ways presidents can turn fiscal pressure into strategic opportunity.

Lee D. Lambert expands the dialogue in “Rethinking Resource Development: Building a New Architecture of Support for Community Colleges,” urging us to blend philanthropy, workforce investment, and social-impact capital into one cohesive ecosystem. In “The Coming Storm: The Crucial Role of Resource Development for Community College CEOs,” Jeff L. Pittman highlights the external forces bearing down on higher education and underscores the CEO’s responsibility to cultivate resilient advancement operations. Karen Stout rounds out the lineup with “Five Areas Where Community College Leaders Can Bolster Success With Private Philanthropy,” distilling proven practices that magnify donor trust and student impact.

A generation ago, fundraising was a small fraction of a college leader’s portfolio; today it is mission critical. Innovatus exists to support both new and veteran executives as you cultivate partners, steward resources, and demonstrate measurable outcomes for the people we serve.

We invite you to share the challenges, insights, and breakthroughs you encounter in resource development. Please email Cynthia Wilson with topics you would like us to explore or innovations you wish to showcase.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Institutional advancement and resource development are more than just fundraising for a community college president. Of course, fundraising is an important component of the job, but it is also about bringing various resources—media, attention, collaboration, partnerships—to your institution. All these pursuits can be interwoven, and it can take time for a new president to get comfortable in the role, but in my experience, having a good sense of self is the first step. The ability to showcase your institution to diverse audiences with authenticity and passion all begins with the ability to genuinely tell your own story.

When I became a college president, the thing for which I felt most insecure was this notion of the college president as chief resource developer. As President of Monroe Community College (Monroe), my effectiveness at bringing resources to my institution became an essential skill and an evaluative criterion. For some, this reality alone could be enough to cause potential candidates to rethink a career as a college president. However, consider that you just might be more prepared than you know.

I came to that realization during an exercise at a women’s leadership conference. The facilitator invited the audience to make a list of the things they had done to convince others that an idea, request, or perspective was worthy of their agreement. What I expected to be a very short list kept growing.

From negotiating parental consent to stay out beyond my teenage curfew and writing compelling student success proposals that secured national funding to pushing back on educators and physicians who too quickly wrote off my special needs child and securing career advancement and negotiating terms of employment . . . maybe I was more prepared than I knew. But how and where did I learn this skill? In part, it was by just being me, along with being offered—or creating—the opportunity to do so.

I am authentic, and people find this intriguing. I lead resiliently, transform boldly, and elevate myself and others purposefully. I listen intently, and people tell me that conversing with me is easy and interesting. I am realistic and reflective, and this combination keeps me humble. I am passionate and resilient. I am honest and reliable, and this facilitates trust. These reflect my core values, personality, and leadership traits, which translate into how I present myself and engage with others.

Knowing yourself, and from where and how your own personal story intertwines with that of your institution and community, is the beginning of framing the ask.

My story begins as the daughter of a military veteran, community servants, and philanthropists and as the granddaughter of a sharecropper who was convinced that education was so essential to his daughter’s success that he risked his life for my mother to escape laboring in the cotton fields of the South to attain it. This catalyzed the educational trajectory of generations of his offspring.

With some postsecondary attainment for themselves, my parents struggled at times to pay their bills and had no savings to send me to college, even though I graduated salutatorian of my high school class. A solution came while working alongside a friend at our part-time job as teens; her father was a recruiter for what would later become my college alma mater. The moral of that story is that developing good relationships, which in this case included a willingness to be vulnerable and disclose a need, can have unpredictable benefits.

I grew up in Michigan, in a city of low- and middle-income persons fraught with depleting tax bases due to the exodus of major employers. I had, and still have, friends who grew up without their basic needs consistently being met. This is strikingly similar to Monroe’s community in Rochester, New York, home of Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch and Lomb, and the lived experiences of the students we proudly serve.

So, when I am telling Monroe’s story, I am telling my story. It begins with me, the CEO, the chief resource developer. Progress is already evident, and this article will feature a few of those achievements. They illustrate how partnerships, trust, and relationships made it all possible for our community.

First, Know Thyself

By knowing yourself, you can also work to secure opportunities for your institution. Here are some key tips and strategies for positioning yourself as an effective cultivator of external resources.

• Start with onboarding. As a new president, proactively identify key partners and engage them early in your tenure.
• Identify your college’s strengths, opportunities for growth, and capacity for impact.
• Develop strategies to leverage those strengths. ​
• Know your institutional position. Are you starting your tenure from a deficit or an advantage?
• Acknowledge the efforts of your predecessors, then build upon them.
• Tell your story. Connect your personal story and the story of your college to others’ interests and desires; where necessary, calm fears.

There are four primary sources that you’ll need to cultivate to help secure resources for your institution. Some projects will have a combination of these funding sources.

• Foundation/Philanthropy
• Governmental Agencies
• Federal Grants and Awards
• Partnerships With Employers and Others

Foundation/Philanthropy

At Monroe, we are fortunate to have the MCC Foundation, a stalwart of excellence which in 2024 the Council for Advancement and Support of Education ranked first in total giving and restricted giving among all State University of New York (SUNY) community colleges, and which has been in the top three since 2018.

To address the need to create a stronger nursing workforce pipeline to fill current and future employment needs for local healthcare organizations, we have worked with the Louis S. and Molly B. Wolk Foundation and the Finger Lakes Performing Provider System (FLPPS). The Wolk Foundation has made several investments in Monroe’s healthcare training programs over the years. ​In 2022, they responded to a community need for an expanded skilled workforce by making a new $1.2 million investment to build out modular healthcare training labs at Monroe’s Downtown Campus.

In 2023, FLPPS, Monroe, and others partnered to establish a sustainable model for long-term career pathways that expand the healthcare workforce pool, ​investing $4 million in project funding, with Monroe as the initiative’s lead community college.

Since 2014, Monroe has been the site of the Be a Healthy Hero Summer Camp for Rochester City School District children ages 6 to 13 to stay physically and intellectually active. In summer 2025, the camp educated 800 children in math and language arts, and provided sessions on nutrition, character development, music, drug and alcohol avoidance, and teambuilding. The camp, which helps reduce health and learning declines that can occur over the summer months, is made possible with the generous support of private philanthropy in partnership with the MCC Foundation.

Government Agencies/Federal Grants and Awards

The college president must also maintain healthy government relations. In states like New York, where the community college funding formula accounts for state and county funding, these partners are vital to the institution’s fiscal health. For example, Monroe has successfully worked with our county government to secure funds for operations and capital projects such as our new Advanced Technology Center (ATC), set to open in fall 2026.

At a cost of $69 million, with $34.5 million being split 50/50 by the county and SUNY, the new ATC includes $20 million in funding to scale our optics and photonics program to meet growing demand for talent in the semiconductor industry. Illustrating the importance of robust relationships at all levels of government, this same project is being federally funded ($3.5 million) with the help of our congressional leaders, Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, and Congressman Joseph Morelle.

Monroe also contributed to the development of the proposal that led to Rochester securing a Federal Tech Hub designation through our work with U.S. Senator Charles Schumer’s office and others. The NY SMART I-Corridor Tech Hub designation, a partnership with Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse, New York, positions the region as a globally recognized semiconductor manufacturing hub in the next decade.

This designation drives the need for skilled technicians in disciplines for which Monroe is well positioned to foster talent, putting more people into good-payingjobs with family-sustaining wages, and reversing the effects of poverty across our community while bolstering the talent pipeline for the state. One way I support this regional approach to workforce development is via my service as Co-Chair of the Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council.

Federal grants can also provide the opportunity to scale programs and services for which your college has already achieved success. For Monroe, one of those areas is our internationally and nationally recognized optics program.

As the first community college in the world to graduate students with an optics and photonics associate’s degree, we worked with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Manufacturing Engineering Education Program to successfully receive a $5.1 million, three-year grant in 2023 to allow Monroe to strengthen our optics and photonics degree programs. This multiyear grant will help provide workers with the skills they need for major local employers.

Partnerships With Employers and Others

When it comes to showcasing a premier partnership between a community college with area employers and a host of public and private partners, you will be hard-pressed to find a better example than the Finger Lakes Workforce Development Center (FWD Center), located on Monroe’s Downtown Campus.

The FWD Center is a $11.4 million, 50,000 square foot state-of-the-art regional workforce development facility focusing on short-term and accelerated technology-oriented training programs that place individuals in high-demand jobs. In 2022-2023, during its first year of operation, 33 employers and organizations in the public and private sectors provided workforce training through the FWD Center​.

To illustrate the ongoing nature of fundraising, since opening the FWD Center, the MCC Foundation has continued to secure other funding, such as an additional $250,000 from Bank of America to build out a portion of the FWD Center and $5.4 million from the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr., Foundation to support FWD Center operations.

Another example of an innovative partnership with a global business partner, L3 Harris Technologies, was the launch this year of the fully funded L3Harris Technical Training Program, which covers the cost of attendance for New York residents and employees of L3 Harris who are enrolled at our college. Other Monroe students also benefit from the college’s relationships with employers that provide tuition assistance, such as Optimax, Xerox, Kodak, and Micron.

These are some of the accomplishments Monroe has made in cultivating relationships with key partners. They illustrate our community’s and state’s appreciation and understanding of the vital role we play in fueling workforce and economic development, including economic mobility across all zip codes.

Understanding the role of your college in your community’s landscape, as well as yourself and how your story informs and extends your college’s mission through the cultivation of relationships, can open doors of opportunity in the president and CEO’s role as chief resource developer.

In the year 2025, if you have lots of resources and are well funded, then perhaps you don’t need to read this. However, for many, where we get our resources is changing. For some, that change might be happening quickly. For others, it’s a slow, erosive process where inflation is overlooked or tuitions are frozen.

The major reasons I’ve seen are public policy changes at many levels of government, shifts in regional prosperity, and population changes that usually require increased enrolment support. Many of you are involved with other factors as well.

For further context, I am at an institution whose “North Star” is the success of our students first and our work in applied research second. Another high priority is support for industry in the region, and beyond, as it relates to talent development, innovation, economic prosperity, and productivity.

So, what can we do to lead our institutions past these resource challenges? This often means a change in mindset or institutional culture. When I arrived at SAIT, some of this had already started. In particular, we weren’t first looking only to various levels of government for financial solutions. Instead, other revenue was part of the solution to support both capital and operating budgets.

Some of the early wins involved cost recovery plus training. This meant developing often bespoke programs for partners to upskill their staff and give them a competitive advantage. What we were not focused on was the often-challenging continuing education models that perhaps serve a wider audience but don’t fully pay their way.

Over time, we have developed this space across a variety of program areas. We have also expanded it to offshore activity and transnational education opportunities in close to 50 countries. The latter has also provided hundreds of faculty and thousands of students with professional development and experience opportunities that we would not have otherwise been able to offer.

Another pivotal step was an important change for our commercial and facility services. This, again, was a step approach to build a system that would first start to pay for itself, then allow for reasonable surpluses to support capital expansion, including improved residences, parking, food service, bookstores, sport facilities, and student engagement areas. Again, a net surplus target was established while maintaining affordability for students. This program has helped pay off related loans and support other efforts such as our security and maintenance programs.

For my institution, this discussion has to include fundraising and what it has meant over the past 20 years. Prior to my arrival at SAIT, the groundwork had been laid for investment into what is necessary to sustain a successful fundraising program. This meant a properly resourced, skilled team with clear direction from the institution. This latter point is very important.

Many post-secondary organizations attempt to fundraise with limited expertise and understanding. We are currently in the middle of our Real Futures Campaign with a $150 million target.

A very deliberate international student enrolment strategy has allowed for the expansion of student services, programming availability/seats for domestic students, and cultural interaction with learners from over 100 countries on campus. This is a full cost recovery program that continues to be a centerpiece as we build global networks and partnerships with the objective to attract talent, resources, and ideas to our institution.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention the need for board support. In our case the entrepreneurial culture that surrounds much of this work requires a full understanding of the risk reward analysis for this type of activity. It has also meant attracting board members who understand this work.

None of this happens overnight. All of the examples I’ve mentioned have grown incrementally as we gained confidence and expertise in each area.

At Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C), we believe that powerful ideas, when clearly defined and widely shared, can change lives, communities, and even economies. Our recently concluded Skills to Succeed fundraising campaign is proof of that.

Launched quietly in 2019, this campaign began with a bold vision: to expand access to high-quality, skills-based education that could help Northeast Ohioans thrive in a fast-changing workforce. By 2023, we didn’t just meet our ambitious goal—we exceeded it. Tri-C raised $58 million, surpassing our $50 million target by 16 percent.

This achievement wasn’t inevitable. The campaign kicked off just before the world changed. As the pandemic took hold in 2020, many fundraising efforts across higher education were paused or scaled back. I arrived at Tri-C in 2022, when the campaign was underway. I was fortunate to inherit a campaign already grounded in a bold and timely vision, thanks to my predecessor’s leadership. Our task was to build on that foundation by lifting up a message that transcends any one administration—a message rooted in regional recovery, workforce transformation, and hope. We invited donors not to give to a college, but to invest in the future of Northeast Ohio.

We weathered a global pandemic and faced similar economic headwinds that challenged community colleges across the U.S. and beyond. Yet the campaign endured. Why? Because the idea at its core—that people deserve a real shot at life-sustaining wages through skills training—spoke to donors, business leaders, and the campus community alike.

Cleveland remains the second-poorest large city in America, but we are rich in possibility. Skills to Succeed helped us invest in wraparound supports that lower-income students too often go without. It allowed us to scale programs that align with emerging job markets, ensuring that people from every background can compete, and win, in tomorrow’s economy.

Reflecting on our success, five key lessons emerge. They are instructive for any higher education leader working to build financial resources in the name of mission-driven impact.

Listen to your fundraising community. The idea behind Skills to Succeed didn’t come from a boardroom; it came from listening to the community. Donors wanted to invest in solving regional challenges. We framed the campaign not just as support for the college but also as an engine for Cleveland’s workforce revival. Our goal was clear: Equip more residents with in-demand skills that lead to real opportunity.

By framing the campaign in terms of regional outcomes, such as stronger employment pipelines, greater access, and long-term economic recovery, we helped donors see themselves as partners in a larger solution.

Effective leaders rely on great lieutenants. This campaign’s strength was collective. Our progress was stitched together by a patchwork of giving from faculty and staff to regional partners and philanthropic supporters. Internally, we cultivated a belief in the mission, turning staff and students into champions who could advocate authentically. The result was not just dollars raised, but also trust built across our community.

Fundraising is not a solo sport. It requires an intentional network of leaders who are empowered to connect with donors and tell the story.

Celebrate your wins. We honored milestones—not just the finish line. Donor appreciation events, public announcements, and personal outreach helped reaffirm the value of every contribution. Campaigns are marathons, so recognizing progress re-energizes supporters and shows transparency, gratitude, and momentum.

Carry your momentum forward. A campaign shouldn’t end with an announcement. Our success created a halo effect. The messaging, partnerships, and visibility we built continued to yield results, even after the campaign’s official close. The extra $8 million raised beyond our goal is evidence of that residual impact. More importantly, it gives us the resources to keep investing in what matters most: putting money to work for our students.

Today, those dollars are helping to bring skills training into underserved neighborhoods, expanding scholarship support and wraparound services, building institutional capacity to deliver innovative programs, and increasing workplace learning opportunities that connect students to real-world experience.

The power of an idea endures. Leadership transitions and economic crises can derail even the best-laid plans. But when an idea is strong—when it touches hearts and aligns with real community needs—it becomes bigger than the institution. Skills to Succeed endured because people believed in the idea. That belief, shared across a diverse network of supporters, is what allowed us to reach and exceed our goal.

Sustainable success in higher education means building not only programs but also the financial infrastructure to support them. That requires clarity of purpose, courage of conviction, and a community willing to rally around a shared vision.

Because when you invest in people, everyone succeeds.

Across the U.S., community colleges grapple with the same challenge: how to provide a high-quality, responsive, and innovative education with limited fiscal resources. State allocations and student tuition alone are often not enough to sustain the wide range of academic programs, student services, and forward-thinking innovation our communities depend on, leaving institutions in danger of becoming stagnant.

Our institutions must be good fiscal stewards of the resources entrusted to us, and we must diversify our portfolio to maximize impact throughout the educational landscape. Unlike universities and private colleges, community colleges have traditionally relied heavily on state funding and tuition dollars, leaving them vulnerable to state funding swings and shifts in enrollment.

At Santa Fe College, we have recognized this reality as a call to action. To meet the evolving needs of our students, support our employees, and provide area employers with a highly skilled workforce that can propel and uplift our communities well into the future, we have embraced a proactive, entrepreneurial approach to resource development. This methodology diversifies our fiscal portfolio to further support the college’s strategic priorities and bolsters access and student success. By growing a culture of philanthropy and strategically expanding our sponsored projects and grant initiatives, we have positioned ourselves to thrive and innovate.

This evolution did not happen by accident. It required deliberate leadership, institutional alignment, and a steadfast commitment to innovation. 

Strategic Fundraising Begins with Presidential Leadership

As president, I see myself not just as the chief student advocate, or chief academic or administrative officer, but also as the college’s chief fundraiser. I take that responsibility seriously. Fundraising is not something to delegate; it must be led from the top. I work closely with our Office for Advancement and the Santa Fe College Foundation to engage our alumni, community partners, and philanthropic leaders in meaningful conversations about impact, access, and the individual and generational transformation resulting from the power of education.

Our mission resonates deeply with donors. They understand that when they invest in Santa Fe College, they are investing in the success of students, families, and entire communities.

This philosophy was never more evident than when we received a $40 million unrestricted gift from MacKenzie Scott, the largest in our college’s history. That transformative gift allowed us to advance a college-going culture throughout our service district; create a Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence to support faculty professional development and instructional innovation; expand access through increased scholarships; invest in workforce education; and expand essential student support services to address such issues as food insecurity, mental health care, and access to digital tools.

But large gifts alone are not the foundation of our future. It is the consistent engagement with donors, both large and small and new and long-term, that fuels our momentum. Cultivating relationships, listening to our community, and aligning giving with strategic priorities is at the heart of our philanthropic and grant-seeking model.

Building Capacity Through Sponsored Projects

While philanthropy has a major institutional and student impact, external grant funding powers our ability to innovate. Santa Fe College is fortunate to have a highly capable Sponsored Projects Office that has become an engine of institutional growth. This office plays a leading role in identifying grant opportunities, working with faculty and staff to craft compelling proposals, and managing the post-award process to ensure that every dollar is used effectively and in compliance with grant requirements.

Through this work, we have secured state, federal, and private grants to expand programs in healthcare, biotechnology, information technology, and, most recently, advanced manufacturing and semiconductor training. In fact, we recently received a $3 million Florida Job Growth Grant to launch a new Associate in Science in engineering technology, with a focus on semiconductors.

This is just one example of how grants and funding support from business and industry are enabling us to respond quickly to workforce demands, create new academic pathways, and support economic development across the region.

Innovation and Impact

Santa Fe College’s funding streams, philanthropy, and sponsored projects are not just financial tools. They are catalysts for innovation. They have allowed us to create Achieve, Conquer, Believe, and Excel (ACB Excel), a pioneering dual-generation workforce program that empowers adult learners to earn industry-recognized credentials while their children participate in STEM learning and enrichment. This model closes opportunity gaps for entire families and strengthens the pipeline between education and employment.

They have also allowed us to provide wraparound student services that go beyond the classroom: mentorship, wellness resources, childcare, and more. These services remove barriers and give every student the tools they need to succeed. Furthermore, they have allowed us to remain agile, adjusting programs, launching new initiatives, and scaling up successful models as community needs evolve.

A Call to Action

The financial challenges facing higher education are real, but so is our capacity to rise above them. Waiting for additional state funding or increasing tuition is not a strategy. We must create our own opportunities. We must build our own capacity. And we must do so with creativity, collaboration, and an unwavering focus on student success.

To my fellow community college leaders: Diversify your college’s fiscal portfolio, invest in your advancement infrastructure, build a culture of grant-seeking, and embrace your role as chief fundraiser. Your students deserve nothing less than your boldest vision and your relentless pursuit of the resources to realize it.

Community colleges are uniquely positioned to drive workforce readiness and upward mobility. But we can only fulfill that promise if we have the courage to lead beyond the budget.

We are amid a major socioeconomic shift. Emerging technologies—artificial intelligence, mobile platforms, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, and semiconductors—are accelerating a digital transformation that demands greater public-private partnership to remain agile, resilient, and relevant.

This transformation, combined with declining enrollments, shrinking public budgets, and shifting workforce needs, challenges community colleges to reimagine how we sustain and scale our mission. The goal is not simply to raise more money; it is to rethink how we build robust ecosystems that connect students, industry, and communities through shared purpose and investment.

From Strategy to Execution: Lessons From Two Community College Districts

At Pima Community College (Pima), we faced this challenge directly. We repositioned the college not only as an academic institution but as a platform for regional development. In 2018, we launched a $300 million resource development campaign to transform student outcomes, workforce pipelines, and community equity.

By 2023, we had secured nearly two-thirds of our goal from grants, contracts, philanthropy, and state investment. These funds advanced economic mobility, workforce innovation, and inclusive access. At the center was public-private partnership: co-creating value with industry, government, and community leaders to address challenges none could solve alone.

Now at Foothill-De Anza Community College District (Foothill-De Anza), I’m working to build a similar foundation—aligning our talent and vision with partners who see community colleges not as charity recipients but as engines of innovation and mobility.

From Gifts to Co-Ownership

Traditional fundraising at community colleges often focuses on scholarships and capital campaigns. While essential, these are no longer enough. Today’s challenges require strategic co-investment.

Funders now expect results: stronger talent pipelines, inclusive growth, and measurable impact. To meet this demand, we must shift from transactional fundraising to ecosystem-building—linking advancement with academic innovation, workforce relevance, and data-driven accountability.

Resource development must be woven into our culture. Advancement officers, faculty, deans, and staff should all serve as ambassadors, articulating how their work adds value. Presidents and chancellors must act as connectors and storytellers, forging relationships that generate long-term support.

Mission-Aligned Innovation

One of the strongest levers we have is aligning innovation with community impact. At Pima, we launched advanced manufacturing centers, micro-pathways in IT and cybersecurity, and industry-aligned curricula. These weren’t one-time initiatives; they were platforms built for sustainability and shared value.

That same opportunity exists at Foothill-De Anza. Our colleges can translate emerging workforce needs into accessible, high-impact programs. But this requires internal capacity—grant writers, data analysts, and partnership managers—who can bring ideas to life and maintain innovation through diverse, mission-aligned funding.

Today’s funders aren’t just looking for ROI. They want human-centered outcomes: career mobility, thriving communities, and equitable opportunity. Our partnerships must reflect that. When we co-design solutions with those outcomes in mind, we earn lasting support.

New Funders, New Relationships

As federal stimulus dollars fade and state funding plateaus, we must engage a new generation of partners: venture philanthropies, mission-driven corporations, labor unions, social impact investors, and regional collaboratives. These stakeholders are motivated not just by financial returns, but by a deeper commitment to societal transformation—expanding opportunity, closing equity gaps, and building resilient communities.

At Foothill-De Anza, we’re exploring partnerships that connect education with urgent needs—from climate technology and AI to healthcare access and digital inclusion. The key is to frame our work in terms that matter to funders: innovation, equity, and the power of education to drive lasting change.

Resource Development as Core Strategy

To succeed, we must redesign our internal architecture. Resource development can’t be a side office—it must be a core strategy. That means aligning fundraising goals with institutional priorities, empowering faculty to pursue support, and tracking outcomes transparently.

At Pima, we broke silos between academics, workforce development, and advancement and facilitated agile teams to respond to time-sensitive opportunities. That cross-functional muscle is now key to building a high-performance culture at Foothill-De Anza.

We are embedding resource development into our equity agenda, strategic planning, and regional engagement. Every department must understand how their work contributes to our value proposition—and how that value attracts support.

A Culture of Shared Stewardship

Ultimately, this is not just about money. It’s about shared stewardship of our students’ futures and our communities’ well-being. It means inviting funders, employers, alumni, civic leaders, and students to co-create the future of our institutions. When we shift from being recipients of generosity to facilitators of opportunity, we unlock more than dollars; we build networks of trust, accountability, and mutual investment.

This moment calls for bold thinking, broad collaboration, and a renewed commitment to the public mission of community colleges. With the right people, partnerships, and purpose, we can launch a campaign that meets this moment. At Foothill-De Anza, we are ready.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, community college leaders have faced challenges related to enrollment; funding; identifying and retaining qualified faculty and staff; and continuing to meet the demands of our students, employers, and communities. Now, we must plan to address declining birth rates combined with unprecedented vacancies in high-demand jobs in several employment sectors. In addition to these issues, we also see potential threats of reduced funding from federal, state, and local governmental bodies that we depend upon to provide affordable educational pathways to students.

Enrollment is surging at the four St. Louis Community College (STLCC) campuses. We are realizing rapid growth in on-campus and online education modalities and early college programming. Perhaps these increases are a sign of the times, with higher living costs and the recent public perception that the traditional university experience is beyond many Americans’ financial reach.

While increasing enrollment is good news, community college leaders are also at a significant crossroads to remain financially strong. We will likely see higher enrollments with less state and local funding. Hence, new funding sources need to be identified. While many colleges have been engaged in finding alternative funding sources outside of local and state tax support, at STLCC, we have discovered, through private fundraising efforts, that many of our community partners are interested in supporting our mission and assisting students in fulfilling their educational objectives.

Over the 30 years I have been involved in fundraising campaigns for community colleges, I have seen a shift in benefactor perceptions and expectations that should be considered when pursuing fundraising efforts in today’s highly competitive environment. Earlier in my career, a campaign typically focused on a new building with naming rights or more general funding of student needs. Today, that strategy will not work, at least not with the potential donors in our market.

We recently completed a $24 million campaign through the STLCC Foundation. A great deal of planning was involved in the campaign before its launch, and we discovered the need to diversify our approach to attract the most interest from a wide range of potential donors. We learned that donors are interested in how the campaign will benefit their organization as well as ours, which is a significant shift in fundraising philosophy. The campaign was divided into four components: health sciences, information technology, workforce training, and student assistance. In evaluating campaign subtotals, we found that most donations supported workforce training, or short-term career training, and student assistance in the form of wraparound services such as childcare or transportation. We learned that donors considered how their gifts would align students in a manner that would advance their mission or objectives, such as hiring our graduates for their organization.

We will soon launch a new campaign to raise $15 million. With this initiative, we will take a different approach based on insights from employers and potential donors during the feasibility study phase. This new campaign will strive to create more synergy among the college and its many key stakeholders, including employers, K-12 districts, and local foundations. The key components of this campaign are high-impact degree completion, real-world learning (aligning K-12 districts with careers), essential student support, and legacy gifts.

One of the features of the campaign is to support a new Real-World Learning initiative, convened by STLCC. Real-World Learning aims to provide regional high school students with a market value asset, such as an internship, entrepreneurial experience, industry-recognized credential, or early college credits. This allows us to pursue funding on a much broader scale that will benefit the college and K-12 districts, their students, and employers. Another key campaign element will be paid apprenticeships in several industry sectors for our current students.

While such campaigns are not replacements for key core funding elements such as a local tax levy, they can greatly assist colleges with filling in financial gaps or providing innovation funds for faculty and staff. Campaigns also tremendously benefit college CEOs by providing more opportunities to interface with key stakeholders and other leaders in the community.

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.