2-Year Colleges Step Up Fundraising Efforts

The college president’s fundraising gala at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels featured a silent art auction, live harp music and a professional mambo performance. Elegantly dressed business leaders, politicians, administrators and academics sipped wine and nibbled on a rich chocolate dessert.

Such an event might be common for big-name public universities or private colleges, many of which rely on a constant stream of them -- and armies of staff and volunteers -- to raise money year-round.

But the gala at the downtown Los Angeles cathedral’s ballroom earlier this month wasn’t put on by the likes of Pitzer or UCLA.

The fundraiser was for East Los Angeles College, a two-year institution that prides itself on sending large portions of its mainly Latino graduating classes to four-year colleges such as nearby Cal State L.A.

The party, in its third year, is a relatively new development in the college’s pursuit of extra cash.

And East L.A. is not alone among the state’s 108 community colleges in joining the chase for private donations. As budget pressures touch every corner of the state’s education system, community colleges are escalating their private fundraising, and doing it with increasing flair and sophistication.

It is an unusual step for commuter campuses without long histories of alumni loyalty or the multimillion-dollar donations enjoyed by well-known universities. It is also a move that the two-year schools hope will help boost their images.

“You need people in the community to say, ‘East L.A. College is doing good things. I want to help them,’ ” said Selina Chi, executive director of the college’s private foundation, which took in about $15,000 at its cathedral bash. Private money goes to “the extras that make the college unique and special,” like scholarships, art projects and support for a student literary journal.

The college’s foundation has built up its endowment to about $270,000 from zero five years ago.

Recent state budget woes have led to reductions in course offerings and fee increases at community colleges.

While not calling for more cuts, budget proposals for next year include raising fees to $26 per academic unit from $18, a 44% increase.

Fearing that the jump might push some students out of school, colleges are looking especially hard for private scholarship money.

So across the state they are setting up private foundations, putting on fancy dances, organizing alumni associations and sending out glossy donation pleas to neighbors, foundations and estate planners.

“Community colleges have finally figured out this is something they have to do,” said Janet Levine, executive director of the Pasadena City College Foundation, which manages a $5-million endowment.

Although the California community college chancellor’s office does not keep figures on how much money the colleges raise overall, their activity is increasing and their effect in recent years has been felt, spokeswoman Cheryl Fong said.

Some of the campuses have had such success with private donations that they have built big endowments, such as that of Santa Barbara City College: nearly $13 million.

The Long Beach City College Foundation raised only $1.6 million in its first 10 years of existence in the 1980s. Since then, it has garnered more than $20 million, including $1.7 million last year.

“We do see people responding to the fact that there is an economic crisis,” said Virginia Baxter, the foundation’s executive director.

Howland Swift, executive director of the Network of California Community College Foundations, says the potential for donations is huge.

“In California, we estimate that well over half of the population has been affected by a California community college,” he said. “Yet that enormous number is untapped, because the cost of finding out who they are and asking them for money is more than the college is willing to spend. They really have to go to the alumni.”

But there are challenges, especially when it comes to squeezing donations out of graduates -- the bread-and-butter of large universities’ fundraising drives.

Many more students work their way through community colleges than University of California campuses, and keeping track of them is a mammoth task for foundation and alumni offices that are staffed by one or two full-time employees. Operating budgets are small or nonexistent.

In addition, community colleges have the unenviable task of convincing former students that their allegiance is just as important for a community college as for, say, Beverly Hills High or Pomona College.

“What we have found over the years is a former student is very loyal and devoted to a high school and is very devoted to a university, but they kind of forget about their community college, where they spent a year or two,” said Long Beach City College alumni office director Gail Stewart-Garber.

William Galloway, a real estate developer and Pasadena City College alumnus who recently donated $100,000 for a plaza on the campus, said: “Maybe people believe the larger institutions are more important, but I don’t think that’s true.”

So it is a challenge to develop a “culture of giving” among the student body, said Chi, director of the East Los Angeles College Foundation.

For a fundraising event in October during Hispanic Heritage Month, the Mervyn’s Foundation asked that 20 East L.A. College students serve as volunteers. Chi said she could not find enough people to fill the request.

“The mind-set is to not give back,” she said. “They haven’t been nurtured to do that, because they’re busy struggling.”

But administrators say events such as the one at the cathedral are intended to remind everyone that East L.A. College deserves the kind of support that more flashy campuses are used to.

“We don’t get to go to the Rose Bowl and have the horse riding around and everyone wants to join the USC Trojans,” said Ernest H. Moreno, president at the East L.A. campus. “That’s what we’re trying to do in raising our prominence. The goal is to create a different image.”

Student Arturo Vera said school spirit was a big deal at San Gabriel High School, his alma mater, but isn’t so much at East L.A. “A lot of people look down on ELAC,” he said.

Vera, 20, plans to study child development at East L.A., then become a schoolteacher. He said he would donate money to the college if its foundation called him “10 years down the road.”

“It’s a part of me. I’m coming here to get my education. It’s like going back home,” Vera said.

Ricardo Rodriguez is an East L.A. alumnus whose downtown architecture firm regularly does pro bono work for, and donates scholarships to, the college as well as to Cal Poly Pomona, where he earned his bachelor’s degree.

His devotion to East L.A. College, he said, is special, springing from his childhood,

“I grew up in the area. I understand the culture, the neighborhood. If it wasn’t for that college, I don’t think I’d be where I’m at,” Rodriguez said.