Cal State Fullerton Raises Expectations

When Cal State Fullerton’s celebrated baseball coach, Augie Garrido, quit last month, he left for a bigger school and a greater challenge.

Most of all, though, he left for money.

The University of Texas offered Garrido $1.68 million over six years, a deal that his beloved Fullerton could only dream of offering.

“We just couldn’t match something like that,” said Harry Gianneschi, Cal State Fullerton’s vice president for university advancement.

Cal State Fullerton, a bustling campus of 24,000 students whose academic year begins today, is learning the hard way that it helps to have some extra cash around.

After years of relying almost exclusively on public money for support, the university is intensifying its search for private sector for help.

The 36-year-old university is aiming to raise more than $110 million in private money over the next decade for financial aid, scholarships, classrooms and professorships.

“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” said Warren Pompei, a retired businessman who is heading the University Advancement Foundation, a fledgling fund-raising group. “But I’m optimistic. We all feel very strongly that the university needs this.”

Consider the numbers. Cal State Fullerton’s endowment--the pool of private donations set aside for educational enhancements--stands at about $3 million. According to a report prepared by the National Assn. of College and University Business Officers, that would place Fullerton behind Guam Community College in the U.S. Territory of Guam, at No. 458 of 460 colleges ranked.

By contrast, Harvard University, which boasts the nation’s largest endowment, has more than $7 billion in assets. UC Irvine has an endowment of $56.8 million. Even Chapman University in Orange, a private institution with 2,500 students, has $35 million.

“We have been behind the curve,” said Gianneschi, one of the catalysts behind the push for donations. “We are now aggressively seeking private money.”

So are a lot of public universities. As public support for colleges and universities has waned, more and more schools are looking to corporations and individuals for help.

“A lot of colleges have tried to make up for funding cuts by tapping private sources,” said Robert Sweeney, a researcher at the American Assn. of State Colleges and Universities. “But it takes a lot to make up for some of those spending cuts.”

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The folks at Cal State Fullerton believe they have little choice. In 1986, the state paid for about 86% of the cost of operating the Cal State University system, according to the chancellor’s office. By 1996, that figure had dropped to 70%.

To help make up for the loss, Cal State Chancellor Barry Munitz is encouraging all 23 campuses in the Cal State system to boost their private gift totals to a level equivalent to 10% of their budgets.

Milton A. Gordon, Cal State Fullerton’s president, says he has emphasized private fund-raising since he arrived in 1990. He is optimistic about the school’s prospects.

“People like to support education,” Gordon said. “They can see a real benefit coming back to society.”

But the campus has a long way to go. Last year, Cal State Fullerton took in about $4.7 million in private gifts, much of which was spent on ongoing projects. The amount was less than 5% of the school’s budget. Overall, the Cal State system received about 6.25% of its money from private donors.

By contrast, private giving at the University of California is a tradition. Donations and gifts from private sources to UCLA totaled $190 million during the past academic year, about 10% of the university’s $1.9-billion budget.

At 30-year-old UC Irvine, one of the system’s newer schools, private donations totaled $21 million last year. That amounted to about 3% of the school’s budget.

Gianneschi says it is unfair to compare schools like Cal State Fullerton, which was founded in 1960, to UCLA, which was founded in 1918.

“When people ask me how we compare to UCLA, I say: Well, how was UCLA doing in 1948?” Gianneschi says.

The shallow pool of private money has hampered Cal State Fullerton’s ambitions. In 1993, after persuading the city of Fullerton to help build a $10.2-million football stadium, the university axed the football program. The reason: lack of money to run the program. Fullerton dropped men’s gymnastics after the 1991-92 season as well.

When Garrido, the renowned coach, left last month after 21 years in two stints, many people close to the university thought his departure was emblematic of a larger problem.

“It’s difficult to be a coach when the whole athletic program is a shambles,” said John Francis, a Fullerton attorney and foundation board member. “When the only thing that’s working is the thing that you’re involved in, that’s not good. I think Augie realized that.”

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Even the most minor expenses sometimes pinch. Gianneschi recalled the time, in 1995, when President Clinton invited the Titans baseball team to the White House after it had won the national championship. Though the cost was relatively small, the team managed to go only after the university president dipped into a special budget to foot the bill.

“It was a scramble,” Gianneschi said. “We would like to have that kind of money handy.”

Gianneschi, Pompei and the others believe that there are big donations out there ready to be tapped.

Here’s why: About 85% of the university’s 100,000 graduates still live in Southern California. And while many universities doggedly pursue their former students for money from the day they graduate, many Cal State Fullerton grads have not yet been asked.

Indeed, when university officials began compiling a list of old graduates in order to solicit donations, they discovered that few records had been kept for people who graduated before 1975.

University officials cite Cal State Fullerton’s youth and historic role to explain the paucity of private funding.

Since its inception in 1960, the Fullerton school has offered a low-cost education to students who might not otherwise be able to afford college. Even today, yearly tuition costs less than $2,000. All but about 500 students live off campus, and the typical student works in addition to going to school.

The average course load per semester is about 10 hours, less than a typical full-time student in the UC system. “It is a different university experience,” Gianneschi said.

What’s more, Cal State Fullerton is a school that started small and grew quickly. When the school opened its doors in 1960, it had fewer than 1,000 students. Today, the student body numbers about 24,000.

University officials say they spent much of the first 30 years concentrating on how to accommodate their booming student body. As with many schools in the Cal State system, administrators didn’t have the luxury of worrying about extras such as scholarships and fancy buildings, they say.

“Raising money was just not something we focused on,” said Douglas Patino, vice chancellor of university advancement for the Cal State University System.

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When university officials started reaching out to former students, they found them eager to pitch in. Many graduates said they felt a debt to the university they were eager to repay.

Pompei, chairman of the University Advancement Foundation, entered Cal State Fullerton in 1966. After graduating with an engineering degree, he started S.A.E. Inc., a an electronics manufacturing company.

Working from an old warehouse, Pompei built his firm into a $20-million company, pioneering the digital FM tuner in radios and the multiband graphic equalizer.

In 1986, he sold the company, and at age 40 he retired.

Pompei believes he never could have succeeded without Cal State.

“The university taught me that I could learn anything if I put my mind to it,” Pompei said. “It taught me never to be intimidated by technology.”

Since 1993, Pompei has chaired the board of the University Advancement Foundation. He also manages the university’s $3-million endowment.

The University Advancement Foundation took over many of the fund-raising chores from the California State University Fullerton Foundation three years ago.

In 1979, that foundation was the subject of a critical federal audit, which questioned the way the foundation spent more than $1 million in federal grants. Unlike the Fullerton Foundation, the University Advancement Foundation is independent of the university and it does not seek government funds.

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As with all endowments, university officials are restricted to spending the income earned from the contributions, not the endowment itself. For the short term, that means endowments require enormous amounts of money to generate relatively modest amounts of cash.

To endow one scholarship for one student per year, for instance, requires a contribution of about $25,000. An endowed professorship needs about $1 million.

But officials say things are looking up, and they point to the athletic department as an example. Private money donated directly to the athletic department amounted to more than 5% of its $3.66-million budget last year.

Gifts to athletics last year amounted to slightly more than $200,000, up from about $120,000 the year before.

George G. Golleher, who recently donated $25,000 to set up a scholarship fund for minority students, is, like Pompei, a classic success story. He worked his way through college, logging hours in warehouses and shoe stores, and graduated from Cal State Fullerton in 1971. Today, he is the chief executive officer of Ralphs Grocery Co.

He now sits on the foundation board and has donated more than $100,000 to the university.

Like many Cal State Fullerton grads, Golleher is grateful to his alma mater for giving him a good education at a bargain price.

“I wasn’t one of the most honored students,” Golleher joked. “But I’ve done well in my career and I want to show my appreciation.”

Also contributing to this report was Times staff writer Lon Eubanks.

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Funding 101

Cal State Fullerton is trying to raise more than $110 million during the next decade to enhance education opportunities. About $100 million would go into an endowment; only interest income from the endowment would be spent. Where the money would go:

Endowment programs chosen by donor, such as scholarships: $50 million

Endowment programs chosen by school, such as research, libraries: $50 million

Fullerton sports complex: $4.5 million

Arboretum Environmental Education Center: $5 million

Anthropology research and teaching center: $600,000

School Money

Endowments at other Cal State and Orange County universities, in millions:

UC Irvine: $56.8

Chapman University: 35.8

Cal State San Diego: 34.8

Cal State Long Beach: 11.4

Cal State Fullerton: 3.1

Source: Individual universities