Fundraising is the most challenging issue facing Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The declines in federal and state appropriations have elucidated the need for alternative sources of financial support. The specific problem of interest is that the inherent level of entrepreneurial self-efficacy of the president and development officer…

From Louisiana to West Virginia to North Carolina--and many states in between--a growing number of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are coming off the sidelines and finally getting into the major fundraising game. In the face of a cash crunch, the colleges are rushing to launch serious capital and planned giving campaigns.…

This historiographic essay urges a reappraisal of the revisionist view of philanthropy and African-American higher education in the nineteenth century as hegemonic by adopting agency as a theoretical framework to excavate the institutional histories and other primary sources on the northern black colleges--specifically Wilberforce University--for…

Examining Black church support of higher education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this article highlights the longstanding project of African-American self-determination. Motivated donors, many of who would not in their lifetime see the fruits of their gifts, made faithful investments in the project of racial uplift.…

College leaders and policymakers benefit by understanding the relationship between increases in private giving, changes in state appropriations and how to position the institution to maximize both sources of revenue. Anecdotal and attitudinal studies suggested that fundraising success may affect state funding of higher education institutions.…

African Americans give a larger percentage of their disposable income to non-profits than any other racial group, including Whites. However, there is a lack of literature on Black giving to higher education. This lack of research is particularly acute in our current state of decreased funding to higher education. This case study of the United…

An informal CASE sampling of alumni activities at some of the nation's Black colleges is reported. Factors contributing to alumni involvement in fund-raising drives are described, including: close contact with alumni, increase in volunteers and matching grant incentives, heightened alumni awareness of need for outside help, and phonathons. (MLW)

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and Pew Charitable Trusts have halved the number of black colleges eligible to apply for grants, which some claim creates two classes of institution, the financially strong and the financially weak. Black colleges find the targeting policy insensitive. (MSE)

A study on foundation grant patterns, which found that certain types of institutions get more gifts--and larger ones--than do others, is described. Public and Black institutions and five types of private institutions (research, doctoral, comprehensive, liberal arts, and two-year colleges) were studied. (MLW)

Higher education for blacks in the United States is reviewed with attention to historical developments, college desegregation, and the role of philanthropic organizations. Two early, private universities in the North that were designed to provide higher learning for blacks were Lincoln University in Pennsylvania (1854) and Wilberforce University…

A number of organizations are working with alumni of Black colleges and with Black churches to attract more students to the campuses, raise money for financially strapped institutions (particularly for scholarships) and promote more alumni participation in college affairs. (MSE)

Reviews the activities of the Rockefeller Foundation's Equal Opportunity Program in the 1960s. States that initially the program had an elitist character catering to affluent Blacks in an attempt to bring talented Blacks into the mainstream at selected colleges. Claims that after program staff integration, new educational directions were…

The efforts of Kentucky State University to inaugurate a comprehensive development program to increase private financial support for essential programs are described. The 14 major objectives established by the institution's development office in 1982 and the programmatic approaches used over a period of 7 years to achieve each objective, are…

The process of acquiring financial support from private foundations is discussed in 26 essays, divided into five categories (Targeting the Foundation Market; Getting Started: Tools of the Trade; The Process of Foundation Fund Raising; The Grant Maker's Perspective; and Focused Programs and Foundation Support). A prologue, "Ethics and Foundation…