ARL academic library participation in capital/comprehensive fund-raising campaigns: An analysis of effectiveness and capacity

This study examined academic library participation in capital/comprehensive fund-raising campaigns. The U.S. academic libraries selected for this study belong to the Association of Research Libraries and were involved in some phase of a campaign during the academic years 1994/95–1996/97. The concept of utility/prestige maximization as developed by Garvin (1980) provided the conceptual framework.; Institutional and fund-raising characteristics of effective fund-raising campaigns were identified in an extensive literature review. Utilizing several models of fund-raising effectiveness a capacity measure of fund-raising effectiveness was developed, which says that library campaign fund-raising effectiveness is the product of the percentage of the campaign goal achieved and the ratio of current and past voluntary institutional support. A more traditional measure of fund-raising effectiveness, a comparison of money raised by the library and money raised by the institution, was used to assess the convergent validity of the two measurements.; A questionnaire was administered to collect data on ARL library participation in capital/comprehensive fund-raising campaigns. Additional institutional and library data was gathered from published sources. Using the two measures of fund-raising effectiveness a list of most and least effective libraries was developed. The two measures provided limited convergence showing that attaining a high percentage of a campaign fund-raising goal and raising a high percentage of the institution's total voluntary support are not mutually inclusive activities. Highly effective libraries, or libraries that accomplished both, were a major focus of institutional campaigns, were full participants in the institutional prospect management system, and had a fund raiser assigned 100% of their time to the library fund-raising program. Fund-raising effectiveness, using either the traditional or capacity measure, was best explained by factors that maximized the library's prestige within the institution rather than outside the institution.