Interview with Professor Michael Arthur, President & Provost, UCL and Lori Houlihan, Former Vice-Provost (Advancement)
A Fundraising University, or a University that Fundraises?
Building Relationships to make remarkable things happen at UCL
In the latest Cairney Conversation, Cairney & Company’s Sir Eric Thomas, Karen Cairney and Colin McCallum had the enormous privilege of speaking with two of the UK’s most celebrated leaders in driving forward Advancement in higher education.
We are sincerely grateful to Michael and Lori for taking the time to have such an interesting and insightful conversation with us. In the coming weeks we hope to bring you more from leaders at Edinburgh and Glasgow universities in Scotland, Waterloo in Canada and Breast Cancer Now, among others. We hope you will enjoy these conversations and we welcome your thoughts and comments.
The pioneering work of Michael Arthur, President & Provost of UCL and Lori Houlihan, former Vice-Provost (Advancement) have given HE Advancement a seat at the top table. Their campaigns raise unprecedented funds, while challenging and changing the culture of institutions along the way.
Michael and Lori both retire this year, and UCL needs to ensure the next generation of leaders build on their extraordinary legacy of driving forward Advancement.
Here is what Michael and Lori had to say.
Philanthropy and Advancement of educational institutions has played a critical role in your previous positions and institutions, as well as at UCL. What is your view on how philanthropy has shaped the institutions you have worked for and with, for the better?
Lori: Philanthropy fills a much-needed gap, demonstrating investment in areas that will make a difference. For example, I recently launched a fund at UCL which has already raised £80,000 for a researcher specialising in Glioblastoma the brain cancer I was recently diagnosed with. As well as the funds being important in and of themselves, they will also leverage further funding through research grants.
Michael: Of course, I also agree with everything Lori has said! Philanthropy is a binding issue, it’s that intersection where institutional strategy aligns, and donors get excited. It has the potential to bring an institution together to do more.
Although we have seen very impressive numbers around fundraising in UK HE, we’ve also seen many institutions with a more stop start approach. Why has philanthropy not percolated into more HE institutions? What are the most significant changes that you think universities will need to make in the future in order for philanthropy to reach its potential?
Lori: I’d put it down to not enough strategic planning, underinvestment in Advancement and a lack of personal commitment from some leaders. Michael and I have worked tirelessly to create institutional conditions for success, not built around individuals or our roles but by involving people from across UCL, for example in the creation of the internal campaign steering group. It took a lot of time and effort, but it’s now sustainable and embedded within UCL, and in particular with the academic community. Advancement is no longer seen as something done in a department over there.
Michael, was that the key, that as much of the attention was internal as external?
Michael: Not only internal focus, but importantly led from the top down. Persuading leadership to direct a few million pounds a year to start an advancement function, with no guarantee of return is a very tricky moment! External support was vital to help guide those conversations and to present it professionally to our Council and Deans, and it gave us the courage to keep going when we met resistance. Once the money started coming in, it became a lot easier.
Eric: It is a very common challenge, not enough upfront investment, made worse when budgets are cut if money isn’t raised quickly enough. Leaders can get nervous, and they don’t push through to the next phase when they should stick to their guns and trust their investment plan. This is why it’s vital to build understanding and trust internally.
We quite often see an approach to financial realities as being a little bit short-term. In particular when cuts come around again, we’re told the pain must be shared equally so everyone gets cut. How can we shift that thinking now in institutions, to focus on strategic investment?
Lori: It’s hearts and minds. There are those who think with their head: finance, and those with their heart: Advancement teams. So, make friends with your Finance Director and improve your reporting and data for the board. We managed to protect investment at UCL and at Aberdeen when others were being cut. It’s important to track data over a number of years, not just by quarter or financial year.
Your fundraising team needs to demonstrate professional confidence. They need to be trusted to deliver success. You need to get people across the institution feeling excited about your achievements and celebrate them.
Michael: Data and the return on investment figure wins the argument every single time.
Is that partly about the teams that we hire being more assertive, more confident, and being able to manage across the institution?
Lori: Yes. I sent my team to The Royal Academy of Drama and Art (RADA) to support building confidence and storytelling. Everyone at UCL, not just the fundraisers need to convey confidence internally and externally
Eric: Sparing Michaels’ blushes, but I am absolutely clear that the leader of the institution has to be right behind this as well. As well as the Chair, who more often than not bring the more influential people. If they’re on board, you don’t get pushback in a downturn or when leadership changes.
Lori: Also fundraising professionals will vote with their feet and won’t hang around if the leadership isn’t behind Advancement or if the strategy isn’t clear.
Michael, in the business of fundraising you’d better have a strategy for your institution, it had better be logical, it had better have a set of priorities and you’d better be able to articulate it before you start asking anybody for money. Donors will expect this. I wondered what your reflections are on this point?
Michael: at UCL we deliberately went for a very big picture strategy. We developed a 20-year time frame, rather than the normal 3-5 year strategy. As you will know, this isn’t the done thing, but it resonated with our potential donors because they could clearly see the impact of their giving. It ensured that our campaign remained welded to that strategy.
You were one of the first VC’s in the UK to take the bold move to establish the VP Advancement role at UCL as a core member of the leadership team. Why was this important to you and UCL?
Michael: It was both a natural and vital evolutionary step. I wanted to send a clear message that UCL is a Fundraising University and not a University that Fundraises. Advancement had to be a core consideration and part of our strategic development. We now have a proposition that will endure in the long term. Eric, as you know and we’ve all agreed, it’s not a bolt on or ‘nice to have’.
Lori, Advancement is often seen as a North American term and is not used consistently in HE. What does it mean to you within the context of an HE setting and how would you describe it to colleagues that perhaps are not as familiar with the term?
Lori: I have always felt that it is an odd term and something I could never really explain to my Mum. If I can’t explain to her what I do then how can I convince others? Advancement is responsible for the University’s reputation and profile. I have a big sign on my wall that sums up advancement, “building relationships to make remarkable things happen”. By joining up our thinking - both inside and outside the institution - we can be clear on our purpose and provide an open door for engagement.
Lori, we are told that there is still a shortage of the right talent to drive our programmes forward and that many institutions struggle to find and retain the talent they need. As a profession what more can we do to ensure that there is a stronger pipeline of professionals moving through the ranks?
Lori: It’s a hard one. I am really proud that the staff survey at UCL ranked the advancement team with the highest staff engagement score. We’ve also invested in the CASE internship programme, ensuring a new pipeline of talent. We have worked hard on UCL’s employer brand, speaking at industry events and encouraging junior staff to speak at CASE conferences. We value flexible working, helping us retain and attract more women - and men with caring responsibilities, I always worked from home on a Friday. I know our strong onboarding process helps new starters feel included and get up to speed quicker, so I meet all new starters in their first week and they also get time with Michael.
There’s no easy answer to developing and retaining talent but it helps to have strong organisational values that are understood and practiced, through recruitment, behaviour, professional development and performance measurement.
Michael: It has been one of the most fun parts of my job getting deeply involved with (the Advancement) team. Knowing our donors and potential donors are in the most capable hands is fantastic. During this (lockdown) time, we have spent a lot of time on Zoom together including a “spoof” Zoom to say farewell to a valued member of the team. All of that stuff is crucially important at keeping that team together and active and functioning and has been highly successful.
You have both in your careers played a key and strategic role in the development of CASE, the professional membership organisation supporting advancement. With social distancing remaining a key focus in the coming months and year, how can CASE continue to support the profession virtually?
Lori: Our profession is jam packed with people who are innovative, adaptive and love a challenge, so I’ve got no doubt that CASE will come out of this situation in good shape. I think with their new strategy and the launch of AM Atlas (driving data-evidenced decisions, metrics and benchmarking) they are on a solid footing. CASE is a truly global and unique membership organisation and we need their support for the profession more than ever. It’s been one of the highlights of my career being able to serve on the CASE Board.
Michael, how can CASE engage more with leadership, as we know that continues to be a challenge and a struggle for CASE in the UK, is there anything else they should be thinking about or doing to reach out to Leadership?
Michael: If you are a Vice-Chancellor serious about Advancement, CASE is an incredible organisation to connect with. It’s crucial to get the best support and training for anyone we’re asking to be significantly involved in fundraising. Our Deans, in particular, got great benefit from participating in the Canada Study Tour. We’re moving to a model where every Dean plays a leadership role in the next campaign, similar to Harvard. Giving them the tools to feel confident in delivering success is vital.
We’ve been talking to a lot of people about how they are continuing to engage with their donors throughout this time. What have UCL been doing to maintain those relationships?
Michael: I have a weekly schedule of phoning all of our top donors and large foundations. You cannot overstate the value of staying in touch, letting them know what’s happening, the good and the bad. They are not only fascinating people, but I get to hear first-hand what they are having to cope with. It’s also an opportunity to discuss the change of leadership and discuss introductions to ensure relationships and momentum are not lost.
Again, I put the £1m+ we’ve already raised for COVID research and student support down to the fact we’re a fundraising university. Interestingly, over 40% of the gifts have come from new donors and over 16% are non-alumni.
Lori: I don’t think you can over-communicate at a time like this. Michael and the Deans have done an incredible job with donors, by being both proactive and responsive. We’ve seen a huge surge in engagement and giving back from our alumni community. We invested in a new alumni platform, with over 17,000 alumni willing to help students and other alumni to exchange ideas and build a network. They’ve attended student open days and been featured in promo videos, podcasts and marketing material. Alumni are embracing their role in marketing UCL.
In addition, we have a mixture of almost 400 alumni and students connecting for virtual coffees addressing social isolation during the pandemic.
Eric: We should never let an opportunity pass to highlight the role of universities to the community. Whether experts interviewed on television, the research into vaccines and treatments or medical professionals on the frontline, they all have the word Professor in their title. Universities have been utterly central to the management and addressing of COVID-19 and we shouldn’t be shy about shouting about this.
Lori: Absolutely, it is important that our community externally and internally know about the contribution they are making in fighting the pandemic and feel proud.
Volunteers play a critical role in supporting universities to build their networks, influence key decision makers and to make a financial contribution. Is there another role for them to play as many institutions will be fighting for survival and to demonstrate relevance?
Lori: It really struck Michael and I during the Brexit debate and we wished that we had mobilised our community of volunteers to be a voice for UCL. We have a new team to support our volunteering and advocacy work, and this has strengthened UCL’s civic voice but there is more we can do.
Alumni have played a key role in strengthening our international position, particularly in China. They wanted to emulate what the Ivy League universities were doing, so we now host an annual UCL dinner and host a series of annual events across China attracting thousands of alumni. It gives us the chance to focus on recruitment, create greater integration across the institution, all of which strengthen our overall proposition.
Are universities ready to engage volunteers more day to day in what they do?
Michael: We are! Our campaign, It’s All Academic, has a fundraising and a volunteering target. We’ve already exceeded our goal of 250,000 volunteer hours.
It has also challenged my own thinking about where best to manage our external engagement and Advancement seems the perfect place. Do we need to do more public engagement? Do we ever! For us to succeed, the public needs to know what we do for public good. At the moment it’s limited, and we are not winning that battle.
Michael, given the current environment with COVID-19 what are some of the tough decisions you have had to make quickly as a VC to minimise the long-term impact on your organisation and ensure its viability and sustainability?
Michael: The global nature of the pandemic has presented the greatest challenge Eric. It has affected every country, region and market we operate in. The unpredictability of what’s going to happen has been immense. Internally it has been difficult as well, trying to balance the financial impact and managing the expectations of the governing bodies.
I have always worked on the principle that the current COVID situation has an end point. When we come out of this, we need to be as strong as possible. I think things will go back to normal and the only question is how quickly. I don’t see it being back to normal in a years’ time but I do see it being a lot better.
In times of challenging budget situations, how would you advise others to ensure that advancement remains at the forefront of institutions at a time of competing institutional priorities and how best to demonstrate its institutional value?
Lori: Live and breathe the institution priorities and look for opportunities to get behind them. Understand the challenges facing the Vice Chancellor and the senior team. What keeps them awake at night? If you need to make savings, highlight clearly where they will be and the impact they will have. Have an adaptive strategy. It’s not about asking for money for resources, it is about demonstrating the value added and being part of the future solution.
Seek out your academic champions, be really transparent about what you need from them. Work together to explore opportunities and build on what they may doing to engage with stakeholders. One of the nicest messages I got in the last few weeks was from an academic who had just been promoted to Professor. They wanted to say thank you for all the opportunities they had had to be involved with the Campaign, as it had helped raise their profile within UCL.
People in times of crisis can be extremely generous and focussed on their philanthropic giving. Income and influence are both equally important. Professor Sir Duncan Rice, the former Vice-Chancellor at Aberdeen talks about building up the bank of goodwill to draw upon when things are difficult. It is not an easy time but we’ve been through difficult times before and those in the advancement profession tend to have the skillset that times like this need.
Focus on sustainable philanthropic fundraising by building trust with the leadership and academic community. Reassure them that you are not going to cannibalize their networks, but don’t be afraid to explore them together. We have a great example of how by working together, we leveraged a £200k gift to £1m from a donor a key academic knew. UCL has ambitious plans to increase the size of the development function and increase the Faculty focus. I couldn’t have proposed that 10 years ago but now we have more trust, more understanding and demonstrable success. We have become a Fundraising University.
Eric: one of the things that I always felt was quite important to articulate was how the income you generate would make a difference to the bottom line. Finance Directors only see that box in the bottom right hand corner of the spreadsheet.
What role should philanthropy play to influence and leverage other income opportunities for universities?
Michael/Lori: Never make the success yours, always make it the institution’s. Listen to the concerns of your academics, for example, the Head of our Cancer Institute is concerned about the pandemic’s impact on fundraising charities and the knock-on effect that has on their research. We need to address the priorities of today that will impact the future.
Michael, Higher education across the globe has been impacted significantly due to COVID-19 what do you believe to be the one major change we will see across the HE landscape in the next 3 years?
Michael: Given UCL’s focus on research-based education, we would like to see as much campus activity as possible, aligned to the pedagogical approach. However, we have also created a world class online educational experience, and this won’t be wasted. Remember, universities are very enduring organisations. Your route to success all depends on remaining true to the philosophy and focus of the institution.