THE MONEYMAKER

Alma Gildenhorn, a 1953 alumna of the university, remembers when arts programs were scattered across the campus. Dance in one spot, music in another and theatre in another still. The departments wanted to collaborate, but distance made it difficult.

It took millions in private donations to bring them together. With the completion of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in 2001, the disciplines were brought under one roof, and the results were tangible.

"Because you have this state of the art production, presentation and academic center, if I was a student interested in opera, I would apply there, because I have all of the facilities at my command," said Gildenhorn, chairwoman of the university's Great Expectations fundraising campaign. "Plus then you begin to attract the even better professors. You can replicate that at the Smith School of Business, the Philip Merrill College of Journalism."

The construction of CSPAC — like many initiatives completed during the last 12 years — took vision and drive. But more than anything, they required cash. Lots of it. And university President Dan Mote has been able to deliver. The successes of his tenure have been driven by an unparalleled boom in university fundraising.

Mote took over a university with a paltry endowment and outdated fundraising methods, and within a decade, turned it into a well-oiled, money-soliciting machine. In fiscal year 1997 — a year and a half before Mote's arrival in College Park — the university raised about $48 million from private gifts, according to numbers provided by the university relations office. Two years later, it almost doubled to about $91 million. Before dipping with the economy, the annual haul peaked at nearly $140 million in 2005.

At the same time, the donor base has expanded. At the start of Mote's term, about 22,000 donors gave each year; today that number is more than 40,000.

Officials credited Mote with setting the tone for fundraising success and emphasizing it as never before.

In addition to developing the overall vision for university fundraising, Mote has inspired donors with his vision for the university, said Brodie Remington, vice president for university relations. Mote has made the university more visible, through starting initiatives such as Maryland Day — which now draws about 70,000 people to the campus each year — and meeting personally with important donors and forming the University of Maryland College Park Foundation, Remington said.

"He's very involved — he does a lot of fundraising visits and fundraising events — but he's not a hands-on manager, and this is true of all areas of the university," Remington said. "He gives the vice presidents a lot of leeway. He holds us accountable, and we need to perform, but he lets us manage our own operations with a great deal of latitude."

Mote launched the largest fundraising campaign in university history, Great Expectations, which aims to raise $1 billion by 2011. Mote also oversaw the completion of the previous fundraising campaign, Bold Vision, Bright Future, which finished more than $100 million above its $350 million target.

Private gifts have helped to develop the campus and fuel the university's rise in national rankings. In addition to CSPAC, donations have helped to fund building projects such as Knight Hall and the Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building. Fundraising has also helped to attract top faculty talent and create programs such as the Roshan Center for Persian Studies and the Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Center for Israel Studies, Mote said.

"When we were involved at the university many years ago, fundraising was not as necessary because the state offered all the funds necessary to run the university," said College Park Foundation Board of Trustees chairman Joseph Gildenhorn, Alma's husband. "But in recent years, the state does provide a great deal, but it's private grants, other measures, that keep the university going. Having a large endowment is terribly important to the university."

In his 2007 State of the Campus address, Mote emphasized how the university needed to turn to donations and away from the whims of state politicians.

"After years of unsuccessful, though incessant, efforts to bring in resources from our state and system to build a great university," Mote said, "I have concluded that for the foreseeable future we will not be given what we need for this job."

Central to the university's fundraising efforts is the College Park Foundation, which Mote established in 2000. The foundation consists of many notable alumni, including journalist Connie Chung and Under Armour founder Kevin Plank, who donate money, solicit private gifts and offer other support and advice to the university.

"You're as good as the company you keep," Remington said. "Who is involved with you? As effective as President Mote is at fundraising, one would expect that he does fundraising, and he gets paid for it. ... So it's a seal of approval, a good housekeeping seal of approval. The more influential, prestigious the people are, it shines a very bright, positive light on the university."

Before coming to the university, Mote cut his fundraising teeth as the vice chancellor for university relations at the University of California, Berkeley. When he was offered that job in 1991, he accepted with one major condition: that he be allowed to start a $1 billion fundraising campaign — an especially enormous sum at the time. The campaign would eventually raise $1.4 billion.

At the job, Mote said he learned to look at the world from other people's perspectives and about the importance of thanking people for their work.

"For an academic person, a university relations job is really an exceptionally good opportunity because it changes your perspective about how to deal with people, especially those off of the campus," he said.