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Funding Proposal

Learner’s Name

Capella University

EDD8506: Adult Education Administration

Instructor Name

March 1, 2021

Funding Proposal

West Greenville University’s (WGU) science division requires funds for new equipment

in addition to funds for regular maintenance. The university’s budget has allocated $470,000,

which is sufficient for maintenance; however, there is no room in the budget for the purchase of

new equipment, which costs $290,000. The university must therefore seek alternative sources of

funding, adding to its sources of funding.

West Greenville University

WGU is a nonprofit private arts and science college. The school offers 35 majors and

minors for undergraduates to choose from, including environmental science, computer science,

and biochemistry, as well as preprofessional programs. The university’s science lab requires new

high-precision equipment. The new equipment costs approximately half of the budget allocated

for lab maintenance for the entire year. This proposal will contain an exploration of alternative

sources of funding that WGU can utilize to acquire the funds needed to purchase the new lab

equipment for the academic year of 2022–2023.

Problem Statement

WGU is a private institution, and its primary sources of funds are the WGU endowment

fund, college tuition fees, and alumni donations. The endowment fund is managed and grown by

the finance division of WGU, and contributions from the endowment fund have historically

made up 7%–9% of the annual budget. Tuition fees form the bulk of the operational budget of

WGU and depend on enrollment numbers at the university. Alumni donations are earmarked for

causes such as financial aid and infrastructure maintenance. Student enrollment numbers have

fallen by 1.2% compared to the previous academic year. As a result, the WGU leadership is

currently not open to negotiations for additional funding with any of the divisions. WGU’s

budget for 2022–2023 has allocated $470,000 for the maintenance of lab equipment. There is

currently no funding allocated for the purchase of new equipment.

The lab currently requires upgrades to key instruments, which also include the purchase

of a new mass spectrometer, costing $290,000, by the end of the academic year of 2022–2023.

The new mass spectrometer will benefit students of environmental science and biochemistry.

The purchase will enhance the capabilities of the science lab at WGU, making the institution a

competitive option for new students. This funding proposal by the science division outlines a

plan to acquire the required funds by the end of the academic year without additional costs to

WGU for the acquisition.

Project Objectives

The main objective of the project is to secure alternative sources of funding for the

$290,000 needed to purchase the new lab equipment. The second objective is to create and

maintain a fund that can be used for future lab equipment purchases. The third objective is to

acquire the funding at no additional cost to WGU and with minimal involvement from staff.

According to Schmidt and Biniecki (2016), the five main sources of higher education funding are

foundations, governmental organizations, associations, companies, and individuals. Each of these

entities works differently when dealing with grants or philanthropic causes (Schmidt & Biniecki,

2016).

Gitlin and Lyons (2008) describe foundations as “nongovernmental funding

organizations supported by an endowment, or a permanent amount of money (or other assets)

that are used to provide grants” (as cited in Schmidt & Biniecki, 2016, p. 96). Some foundations

have specific missions and provide grants for specific causes like cancer research, while others

may give grants for various causes but only for initiatives within a region. For foundations to

work as a source of funds, there must be a match between the grant seeker’s goals and what the

grant funder is looking to accomplish (Schmidt & Biniecki, 2016). West Greenville has two

foundations, Fred Foundation and Max Foundation. Fred Foundation donates exclusively to

causes concerning clean water. Max Foundation is a religious organization and donates for

causes aimed at alleviating poverty. There is no alignment between the WGU’s requirement and

the goals of either foundation; hence, foundations are not a viable source of funding.

As a private institution, WGU discourages grants from governmental organizations. This

is to minimize any unnecessary governmental oversight in internal projects. Hence,

governmental organizations are not a viable source of funding. Associations that an institution is

a part of may offer grants if there is a good match between the institution’s mission and the grant

guidelines set by the association (Schmidt & Biniecki, 2016). The associations that WGU is a

part of deal primarily with post-college employment and hence are not a good match for WGU’s

funding requirement.

For-profit companies of all sizes often have funds designated for philanthropy (Schmidt

& Biniecki, 2016). However, these companies require something in return or a greater say in

how the money they provide will be spent. Since WGU’s specific goal is to purchase lab

equipment, there is no room to accommodate such oversight.

Individual donors are the most viable source of funding for WGU’s specific funding

requirement. Individuals may have personal reasons for donating to a specific project, so it is

important to understand those personal motivations (Schmidt & Biniecki, 2016). A clear benefit

of working with individual donors is the minimal bureaucracy and paperwork compared with

those associated with foundations, government entities, and companies.

Design

The associate provost of the science division initiated the project to acquire alternative

funding and identified two approaches to meet the project’s objectives. The first approach is a

targeted email campaign to the science alumni of WGU to solicit donations. WGU currently

solicits donations from alumni for specific causes such as student financial aid and suicide

prevention. The approach for this project is to specifically target successful science alumni for

donations that will make up an estimated 40% of the funds required to meet the project goal. The

option of restricted giving in the form of earmarked donations based on a real need can

encourage alumni to donate (Son-Turan, 2020). The purchase of the new lab equipment could

benefit the institution’s reputation. The growth of an institution’s reputation resulting from

alumni contributions in turn encourages further alumni donations. This results in a snowball

effect where alumni donations improve a university’s reputation, which in turn generates

additional alumni donations (Faria et al., 2018).

The second approach to meet the funding goal is to start a crowdfunding campaign

targeted at the city of West Greenville. This approach could help WGU acquire the remaining

60% of the funds required. Crowdfunding platforms are innovative financial intermediaries that

enable capital seekers to solicit funds from a greater population. The contributions to donation-

based crowdfunding platforms, given that relevant regulation is in place, may be tax deductible

(Son-Turan, 2020). WGU has had past success with two crowdfunding initiatives. In the

academic year of 2016–2017, the students of WGU set up a crowdfunding initiative to help

rehabilitate victims of a natural disaster in the town of West Greenville. The second

crowdfunding initiative was set up by the students of WGU to fund the refurbishment of the

indoor basketball court. Both initiatives had funding goals that were in excess of $250,000,

which were met and exceeded. In the case of the second initiative, most of the donations came

from the town of West Greenville. Hence, the crowdfunding part of this project will target the

town of West Greenville while also remaining open to donations outside this specific geographic

area to maximize its reach.

Evaluation

The new equipment for WGU will be purchased in the academic year of 2022–2023 if

this project reaches its funding goal. The funds will be acquired through the course of the

academic year 2021–2022. The associate provost of the science division intends to run the

alumni donation campaign at the start of the academic year. The donation window will remain

open for a semester and will be monitored by the associate provost. If the alumni donation goal is

not met by the end of the semester, the donation window will be extended by another semester.

The crowdfunding campaign will be initiated by the associate provost with assistance

from volunteer students of the science division. This campaign will be run throughout the

academic year of 2021–2022. At the end of the first semester, the crowdfunding goal can be

adjusted if it is determined that the donations from alumni are not meeting the goal set for them.

Future Funding

WGU’s project to acquire funds for the purchase of new lab equipment has been set up to

fulfil a request that falls outside the operational budget of WGU. There may be similar

requirements in the future, and this project will help establish if targeted solicitations for

donations and crowdfunding are viable sources of alternative funding for the institution. WGU’s

success with crowdfunding in the past was for causes that were easy to understand and with

which donors connected emotionally. The current cause of seeking funding for lab equipment

will require a different approach. If the project is found to be unviable in its current form, it

should be possible to tweak the approach to make it more effective. If the project exceeds its

funding goals, the excess amount can be used to establish a fund specifically for the purchase or

upgrade of lab equipment in the future.

Project Budget

The largest source of funding at WGU is college tuition, making up over 90% of the

operational budget. WGU has also been facing a decline in enrollment at an average rate of 1.4%

per year since 2016. WGU has responded to the declining revenues by streamlining its

operational budget and minimizing discretionary spending as much as possible. It is clear that

alternative funding is the only option available to the science division to purchase the mass

spectrometer.

The past success WGU has had with alternative funding shows not only that

crowdfunding is a viable alternative funding source but also that there is a bankable donor

community in West Greenville, which is home to many WGU alumni. The two parts of this

project, the alumni donation email campaign and the crowdfunding campaign, have been

designed to have minimal costs. The email campaign will not cost WGU anything.

Crowdfunding platforms typically charge a percentage of the funds raised. This cost can be

offset by factoring it into the funding goal on the platform.

Staffing

As the owner of the project, the associate provost of the science division will oversee the

campaigns and make all final decisions related to the campaigns. The campaigns will be

executed by student volunteers from the science division. The volunteers will be assisted by

representatives from the student affairs division who worked on crowdfunding campaigns for

WGU.

Timeline

This project will run throughout the academic year of 2021–2022. Volunteers will be

assembled and split into teams that will begin working on presentations and other material for

their respective campaigns in the second week of April 2021. Approvals for the project from

university authorities will be obtained, and the final versions of the campaigns will be launched

in the fourth week of April 2021. The teams will gather in the last week of September 2021 to

evaluate the status of the alumni donations and determine if the campaign should be extended.

The teams can also decide if the crowdfunding campaign goal needs to be tweaked. The project

will end in the last week of January 2022.

Table 1

Alternative Funding Activities and Timelines

Time Period Activity Owners

April 5th – April 9th, 2021 • Crowdfunding campaign

presentation

• Email campaign creation and

testing

• Volunteer students from

the science division split

into two teams

April 19th – April 23rd,

2021

• Procurement of project

approvals

• Launch of email and

crowdfunding campaigns

• Associate provost of the

science division

• Volunteer students from

the science division

September 20th –

September 24th, 2021

• Email campaign status review

• Crowdfunding campaign

status review

• Associate provost of the

science division

• Volunteer students from

the science division

January 24th – January

28th, 2022

• Project conclusion • Associate provost of the

science division

References

Faria, J. R., Mixon, F. G., & Upadhyaya, K. P. (2018). Alumni donations and university

reputation. Education Economics, 27(2), 155–165.

https://doi.org/10.1080/09645292.2018.1527895

Schmidt, S. W., & Biniecki, S. M. Y. (2016). Organization and administration of adult

education programs: A guide for practitioners. Information Age Publishing.

https://ebookcentral-proquest-

com.library.capella.edu/lib/capella/reader.action?docID=4648128

Son-Turan, S. (2020). The HESFS for higher education funding, employment and sustainability.

International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 22(1), 100–119.

https://doi.org/10.1108/ijshe-10-2019-0310