[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 106 (Wednesday, June 25, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1349-E1350]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    RECOGNIZING THE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE CAPITAL CAMPAIGN FOR HOWARD 
                              UNIVERSITY.

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 25, 2008

  Mr. RANGEL. Madam Speaker, I rise today to express my support and 
pride in the outstanding achievements of the historical $275 million 
Capital Campaign for Howard University.
  The president of the Howard University Pat Swygert and his Howard 
University Trustee Team achieved remarkable results by raising $275 
million in a 5 year fund-raising campaign. The plan broke several 
records, including the most amount of money raised by an African-
American institution and a record for Howard. These results were 
unthinkable without strong support of the alumnae, trustees and the 
involvement of the Congress. This year Congress contributed $204.3 
million to Howard University and $28.9 million to Howard University 
Hospital.
  The money raised through the Capital Campaign greatly improved Howard 
University by establishing modern equipped computer labs, glass walled 
conference rooms, exhibition galleries and other necessary facilities 
for successful student education. Hundreds of scholarships helped many 
students to complete their education reducing the burden of student 
loans. Growing number of alumni donate to Howard, seeing the success 
and achievements of the University. President Pat Swygert and his 
campaign did the terrific work not only raising the impressive amount 
of money, but also improving Howard as well as raising the reputation 
and the respect of the school.

                         (By Kathryn Masterson)

       Washington.--As a dental student 35 years ago, Leo E. Rouse 
     and his Howard University classmates learned to fill cavities 
     and cap teeth by crowding around one faculty member and 
     angling for a clear view of the day's demonstration.
       Today students at Howard's College of Dentistry, where Dr. 
     Rouse is now the dean, get an unobstructed view of dental 
     procedures from computer monitors mounted on 45 workstations 
     in the school's new simulation laboratory. If they miss 
     something, they can go back and review by watching DVDs in 
     the lab or on their laptops.
       The $1.3-million lab, which was built with money from the 
     university's recently completed capital campaign, does more 
     than enhance the students' experience, Dr. Rouse says. It has 
     helped bring in donations from alumni and almost doubled the 
     number of applications for the school's 85 seat class, from 
     about 1,400 before the lab was built to 2,710 last year.
       ``Word gets around,'' Dr. Rouse said. ``A school that has 
     new stuff is attractive. ``
       After raising $275 million in its 5 year fund-raising 
     campaign, the 11,000-student university has plenty of new 
     stuff to show off. There's a simulated trading room in the 
     School of Business, a van that travels around Washington to 
     screen men for prostate cancer, an exhibition gallery in the 
     architecture school, computer labs and glass-walled 
     conference rooms in the health-science library, and almost 
     300 named scholarships.
       The campaign broke a record for Howard, whose trustees and 
     officers first considered a more modest $100 million goal 
     that the university president, H. Patrick Swygert, thought 
     was too small. The effort also broke a record for the amount 
     of money raised by an African-American institution.
       Thanks in part to those gifts, the university's endowment, 
     which was $144 million when Mr. Swygert came in 1995, has 
     swelled to $510 million, an amount that put Howard among the 
     136 wealthy institutions asked to tell the U.S. Senate 
     Finance Committee how they spend their endowments.
       William F.L. Moses, a senior program director at the Kresge 
     Foundation, says the ``path-breaking, benchmark-setting'' 
     Howard campaign sets new expectations for how much money 
     historically black institutions can raise. Kresge has 
     supported programs to strengthen fund raising at historically 
     black colleges and universities, giving $18 million in grants 
     over 5 years to five institutions (Howard was not among them) 
     and $8 million to the institutional-advancement program at 
     the United Negro College Fund.
       ``It sets the bar, that this kind of success is possible 
     and HBCU's can compete with mainstream institutions,'' Mr. 
     Moses said. ``HBCU's can compete with the best.''


                        Alumni Make a Difference

       Howard's success was especially notable for how the 
     university involved its alumni.
       Alumni giving has been a challenge for historically black 
     colleges, said Elfred Anthony Pinkard, executive director for 
     UNCF's Institute for Capacity Building, which helps member 
     colleges with fund raising, enrollment, and other management 
     challenges. (Howard is not a member of the UNCF.) The 
     Institute for Capacity Building has given grants to 
     historically black colleges to hire consultants and buy 
     software programs to help advancement efforts.
       Alumni-affairs offices at the smaller institutions often 
     have just one or two employees and giving rates for the 
     colleges who work with the institute range from 7 percent to 
     as high as 38 percent, Mr. Pinkard said. The national average 
     is 12 percent, according to the Council for Advancement and 
     Support of Education's 2007 Voluntary Support of Education 
     survey.
       Ann E. Kaplan, director of the Council for Aid to 
     Education's survey on giving, said historically black 
     colleges tend to have less mature fund-raising operations 
     that rely more on money from foundations and corporations 
     than from alumni. When she spoke at a UNCF conference, Ms. 
     Kaplan said, she heard from college leaders who were more 
     focused on raising money for current operations than on long-
     term planning and faced challenges such as poorly kept alumni 
     records or understaffed advancement offices.
       Though tithing to churches and giving to religious 
     organizations are strong traditions among many African-
     Americans, the 19 historically black colleges that responded 
     to the council's survey (a number Ms. Kaplan said was too 
     small to be representative) had an average alumni-giving rate 
     of 6 percent, half the overall national average.
       ``There's no reason to think HBCU's can't be as successful 
     in raising money from their alumni, but they need to ask,'' 
     Ms. Kaplan said. ``Asking is the No. 1 reason why people 
     give.''

[[Page E1350]]

       Mr. Swygert knew Howard wouldn't make its $250 million goal 
     without significant alumni participation, but he also knew 
     that the university needed to do some work before it 
     approached them for money. A previous capital campaign had 
     been started in the 1980s with a goal of $100 million but was 
     never completed. At the start of Mr. Swygert's presidency, 
     annual giving by alumni was at about 4 percent.
       As one of only two federally chartered universities, Howard 
     receives direct appropriations from the federal government 
     each year. Congress had noted the low alumni giving rate, and 
     one of the first things lawmakers asked Mr. Swygert to do as 
     university president was to increase it. A higher giving rate 
     would provide evidence that Howard graduates valued the 
     education they received and that Congress should continue to 
     maintain its level of financial support for the institution. 
     This year Congress gave Howard University $204.3 million and 
     its hospital $28.9 million, according to the Department of 
     Education.
       During the campaign, Howard's annual alumni-giving rate 
     went as high as 20 percent, and it is now at 17 percent.
       The key to getting more alumni to give, Mr. Swygert said, 
     was to re-engage them with Howard by showing them the 
     university's key asset: its students. Howard ran ads in local 
     and national newspapers featuring students and sent postcards 
     to alumni introducing them to Howard's Rhodes, Marshall, and 
     Fulbright scholars, as well as distinguished alumni.
       ``People give to students, they give to ideas, they give to 
     memory,'' Mr. Swygert said. ``The idea of enabling a young 
     person to go forth and do well is a very powerful notion.''
       Howard hired Virgil E. Ecton, who raised more than $1.6 
     billion for UNCF in his 31-year career there, to run the 
     campaign. As vice president for university advancement, Mr. 
     Ecton oversaw upgrades to Howard's Web site, alumni magazine, 
     and advancement office. Alumni records were improved, and the 
     database of Howard graduates grew from 30,000 entries to more 
     than 60,000.


                            Backing a Winner

       Early on, trustees helped create momentum for the campaign 
     with several large gifts. Frank Savage, an alumnus, chairman 
     emeritus of the board, and chief executive of Savage Holdings 
     LLC, an international financial-services company, announced 
     he was giving $5 million to the campaign. Richard D. Parsons, 
     a trustee who led the campaign and is chairman of Time 
     Warner, gave more than $1 million. James E. Silcott, a Los 
     Angeles architect, alumnus, and trustee, gave $3 million. Mr. 
     Swygert, an alumnus, donated more than $2 million.
       ``That sent a clear signal to trustees, the giving 
     community, and the community [at large] that we were serious 
     about this campaign,'' Mr. Ecton said.
       Mr. Ecton, Mr. Swygert, and trustees went on the road, 
     appearing at a series of alumni events around the country. At 
     the events, which drew up to 1,000 people in New York, 
     Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami, Houston, and other cities, 
     alumni would get up and pledge their support to the 
     university, and the events began to take on a competitive 
     spirit, Mr. Ecton said. One alumnus in Philadelphia pledged 
     $1 million, the Miami event raised $8 million, and the New 
     York event, held at the new headquarters of Time Warner, 
     resulted in between $25 million and $30 million in pledges, 
     he said.
       ``People like to be associated with a winner,'' Mr. Ecton 
     said. ``It was clear we were winning.''
       At the end of the campaign, 33 percent of the money raised 
     was from Howard alumni. Nationally, in 2007, alumni giving 
     was 27.8 percent of total private giving, according to the 
     Voluntary Support of Education survey.
       One student who benefited directly from the money raised 
     was Raquel SK Thompson, who graduated from Howard in May with 
     a degree in architecture and received a trustees' scholarship 
     during her last two years. The scholarship, which was backed 
     by money raised during the campaign, covered half her 
     tuition.
       The money was a great help, said Ms. Thompson, who is from 
     Barbados and wanted to attend a historically black college. 
     The financial pressures of tuition, an unfavorable exchange 
     rate, the cost of materials for her architecture classes, and 
     restrictions on working off the campus were difficult for her 
     and her parents, Ms. Thompson said, and without assistance 
     she may have had to cut back on classes and work more on the 
     campus in order to save money.
       ``It helped me finish school,'' said Ms. Thompson, who is 
     now looking for a job in Washington or New York. Without the 
     money, ``I definitely think I would have been there another 
     year,'' she said.
       Both Mr. Swygert and Mr. Ecton say Howard should tap more 
     alumni for larger donations in its next campaign. Fifty-one 
     alumni gave more than $1 million, and both officials think 
     there is potential there to raise more. Mr. Swygert, who is 
     retiring at the end of June, believes Howard's next campaign 
     should have a goal of at least $1 billion. The top 
     institutions have campaigns that size, and Mr. Swygert says 
     Howard should be in that group.
       ``I think it's a necessity,'' Mr. Swygert said. ``It's a 
     stretch, but $250 million was a stretch.''

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