Tomorrow morning in New York, President Skorton will announce an ambitious capital campaign: to raise $4 billion in five years. To meet this goal, the development office will need to solicit many multi-million dollar contributions, though our real strength, according to the University’s new fundraiser-in-chief, Charlie Phlegar, lies at the “grass-roots level”: in the pockets of Cornell’s 200,000 alumni.

Like all colleges and universities, Cornell is continually raising funds to increase its endowment. The difference is that in a capital campaign, universities aggressively seek higher contribution levels to meet a target goal. As Phlegar told the Cornell Chronicle, “We need our alumni base to stretch a little bit more in this effort … The person who’s giving $50, we need them to give $75.”

With a current endowment of $4.3 billion, some have questioned the urgency behind the campaign — a move that would essentially double our resources in just a few years. In The New York Times Business Section last week, Joe Nocera suggested that capital campaigns were fueling an arms race among the major institutions:

“[T]he truth is — and this is a lot of the underlying rationale for all these capital campaigns — Stanford isn’t just trying to save the world. It is also trying to keep up with Yale and Harvard and the other elite institutions with whom it competes for students and faculty.”

Yet it’s clear that, at least financially, we’re not Stanford, Harvard or Yale. With the exception of Brown (ring any bells?), our endowment is the smallest in the Ivy Plus group (the seven Ivies, MIT and Stanford). Partly because of our large size, and partly because three of our seven schools are publicly funded, Cornell’s per-pupil endowment is the lowest in that group (Brown included).

Fundraising might not be an arms race, but it’s certainly a competition. Phlegar explained to me that these drives are “not determined by rivalries as suggested,” though he maintained that “we want to compete for the very best students and faculty, and be a top destination for them, and campaigns can help us do that.”

From a financial perspective, the campaign’s burden will fall most squarely on the shoulders of ordinary alumni. In exchange for support from its graduates, Cornell should take several steps to increase alumni satisfaction:

1. Continue support for legacy preference

Legacy preference for children of alumni has been derided as everything from antiquated to discriminatory to downright racist. Speaking at Myron Taylor Hall in 2002, Robin Lenhardt, faculty fellow at Georgetown Law Center, said that legacy programs “have a way of preserving racial discrimination in admissions.”

Perhaps, but the beneficiaries of legacy are no longer all white. “Our alumni of color are as interested in maintaining our legacy admissions policy as are our majority alumni,” Howard Wolf, president of the Stanford Alumni Association, told The Stanford Daily. At Cornell, minorities now make up nine percent of living alumni, according to Cornell Alumni Magazine. With higher numbers of minorities graduating from college, legacy policies do more than grandfather unqualified white students into prestigious institutions.

And, though the immediate beneficiaries of legacy preference are children of alumni, the capital campaign demonstrates that alumni money is crucial in creating research opportunities for all students. As The Harvard Crimson’s Daniel J. Hemel wrote, “Legacy preference didn’t help me in the admissions process — but it’s been a boon to me ever since.”

By the numbers, Cornell’s commitment to legacy remains strong. In the last two years, nearly 20 percent of students admitted during the Early Decision phase were children of alumni, and over the past eight years, legacies made up about 14 percent of the total class, according to Doris Davis, Associate Provost for Admissions and Enrollment.

As we ask more of alumni in the next five years, the University should be prepared to stand behind these figures. Most alumni do not have the wherewithal to see their surnames engraved on a building; instead, they expect to see it Magic Markered on a freshman dormitory door.

2. Increase minority alumni participation

By the time my children apply to college, minorities might comprise a fourth of Cornell’s alumni base. Since 1982, minority applications at Cornell have tripled, acceptances have doubled, and enrollment has increased from 18 percent of the class to over 30 percent, according to the University Factbook.

Soaring rates of minority admissions mean that university fund-raisers will need to tap into these groups for, among other things, capital campaigns.

Yet, according to Cornell Alumni Magazine’s May/June 2006 cover story, “Minority Report,” among minority graduates, “something happens in the transition from student to active alumnus: they leave the Cornell fold — sometimes for years, sometimes permanently.”

According to the report, there’s hardly any infrastructure in place for courting minority donations. Rates of participation in minority alumni groups are pitiful: 10 percent of eligible black graduates in the Cornell Black Alumni Association; 3 to 6 percent in the Latino Association; and in the Asian Association — which offers free membership for the first year — there aren’t more than 150 dues-paying members.

“A lot of alumni of color are doing well, and they have a choice in where they donate their discretionary funds,” Linda Gadsby ’88, a former president of the Black alumni group, said to the Alumni Magazine. “Cornell might lose out if they are not embraced and brought back into the fold.”

3. Develop better connections with alumni

If you’re a regular Cornell alum, your mailbox might hold fundraising cards from your graduating class, your fraternity or sorority, any clubs or groups you were involved with, as well as solicitations from the University’s Annual Fund. Alumni are asked, moreover, to interview candidates for admission and create internship opportunities for potential applicants.

“We get a lot of mail that’s in the form of mass mailings; you don’t get sufficient personal attention, and they don’t do a sufficient job in letting you know where the money you might donate is earmarked to,” said Mark Seiden ’82. “Fewer mass mailings, more inked signatures, personal attention, and more clarification” about where contributions are going would help, Seiden suggested.

Alumni I spoke with said that their efforts went unnoticed by the University. A student interview might earn you a thank-you email, and a sizable donation could yield a standardized letter in the mail. But by and large, the “grass roots” alumni — the group so crucial to the upcoming capital campaign — felt underappreciated by the University.

In reaching that $4 billion goal, Cornell should make sure to strengthen ties with all of its alumni, and not fall back on the astronomical contributions of a select few. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for other ways to contribute, I write very nice thank-you letters.

Rob Fishman is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at rbf25@cornell.edu Agree to Disagree appears Wednesdays.