Institutional Advancement is responsible for the accumulation of money that Clarke can spend on various costs without any restrictions, making it the most important fund for Clarke University. This year, Clarke has fundraised over $550.000 Dollars out of their goal of 1 million with the Deadline of May 31 coming up in about 3 months. The Clarke Giving Day on March 27 should help reaching this goal.
Erica Davidson is the Director of Annual Funds at Clarke and works hard along with her team in Clarke's Institutional Advancement Office to achieve their goal of raising 1 million Dollars for the unrestricted Clarke Fund every year. The Department has gotten to their goal every time in past years, but there is still a lot of work to do to achieve their goal this time. Davidson has come up with a plan to engage the Clarke community more, visiting classrooms, organization meetings or meeting up with the Crux Podcast to do an episode together. The impression is that most students and faculty don’t really know about the most important day of the Clarke Year – Clarke Giving Day on March 27.
Erica highlights the importance of the fund for every Clarke student, saying that “100 percent of students are impacted by the Clarke Fund one way or another”. Even though most students interpret Clarke’s tuition cost as high, 46% of the University's operating cost is not covered by tuition. Those costs must be covered through government funding, other grants and most importantly the fundraising efforts of Clarke. Institutional Advancements success in this process determines how high the tuition has to be, with Erica and her team trying their best to keep the tuition costs low, while the price of education has skyrocketed. They work with outside partners, who help with marketing campaigns, physical or online, turn towards the marketing team to spread the word, reach out to alumni.
Clarke Day this year is supposed to be more present for students with activities in the atrium, organizations being involved in the day and CSA supporting the day by sending the Food Truck “Hangry Hobo” to Clarke that day. The Director’s vision is to “make it feel like a day of excitement”, where students can engage with the Institutional Advancement Office. On the day itself, there is no specific goal of money being raised, but rather a goal of 500 individual donors giving money to Clarke, whether that is buying a lotus drink, where some of the profits go to the funds, donating 5 dollars online or deciding to give back to the University with a gracious $10.000 donation.
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