USC admits ‘systemic’ issue in how it treats donors. ‘It’s a mess over here.’

Earlier this year, the University of South Carolina’s largest-ever private donor publicly bashed the university for not reaching out after her mother died.

Because USC failed to reach out, financier and South Carolina resident Darla Moore said publicly in April she regretted donating more than $70 million to USC.

But following up with donors, especially at crucial times in their lives, is an ongoing problem, according to emails The State Media Co. obtained through the state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

“I personally believe we have a systemic problem across the university with not following up with people with named gifts or potential donors,” board member Dan Adams said in an April email. “I think we are missing out on a lot of gifts and potential gifts and we are not recognizing people that need to be recognized.”

In a response email also obtained through FOIA, USC’s top fundraising official, Monica Delisa, agreed with Adams’ assessment.

“It is a mess over here. There is a systemic issue, and it is going to take a while to get it sorted out because this field has been left fallow for years,” Delisa, who started at USC in January, said in the email. “The neglect of the development area before we arrived has finally become so self-evident that everyone is taking notice.”

In April, following Moore’s comments, Adams forwarded an email to then-USC President Robert Caslen and board of trustees Chair Dorn Smith that came from one of Adams’ long-time friends. The email said another USC donor experienced a similar situation as Moore’s.

The email came from a tax attorney and friend of Adams’, but the email did not name the donors. The donors were a husband and wife who had donated so much to USC they were honored during halftime at a football game. The couple had no children, and the wife’s will “left all” to USC. But the will was changed after USC failed to reach out following her husband’s death, according to the email.

“You and I know that staying in touch with people through notes and condolences and the like is not a big undertaking, but it means a lot to people. I hesitated to mention this to you but feel that the university is not only losing a lot of money — how many more times has this happened? — but a lot of support and goodwill in the community,” according to the email Adams forwarded.

In the email, Adams said this was not an isolated problem.

“From talking to this attorney, I am afraid that his example of one couple is unfortunately one of multiple that evidently are happening across the system,” Adams said.

Dissatisfied donors threaten more than a bad headline. In the modern era of higher education, donors keep universities afloat fiscally.

In recent years, South Carolina colleges and universities have received more dollars in state funding, but still receive a smaller share of the state budget than a decade ago. In the 2010-2011 fiscal year, higher education funding made up 11.3% of state general fund revenue, but by the 2019-2020 fiscal year, that amount was 8.4%, according to the S.C. Commission on Higher Education.

After the 2008 financial crisis, state funding for education declined, and USC responded with a fundraising campaign that raised more than $1 billion over seven years, The State reported previously.

In the 2005-2006 fiscal year, the earliest year readily available, private gifts, grants and contracts comprised 3%, or $25.2 million, of USC’s budget.

For the 2021-2022 fiscal year, USC’s budget lists private gifts, grants and contracts at 9.6%, or $168 million, of USC’s annual budget, according to USC’s fiscal documents.

“The philanthropic support of all our donors is indispensable to helping the university deliver on its promise to our students and to the state of South Carolina,” Delisa, USC’s top fundraising official, said in a November email to The State. “Our donors’ belief in our mission should never be taken for granted, which is why my focus since I joined the university earlier this year has been on strengthening those existing relationships and cultivating new ones.”

Solutions for USC

After the high-profile Moore flap, USC has tried to fix both flaws in how it responds to donors and relations with Moore.

On May 1, when Moore’s family house in Lake City caught fire, Smith forwarded the board an article from The State that reported on the fire, according to the emails. Minutes after sending the article link, Smith said he called and texted Moore offering her a place to stay.

After that, Caslen asked Smith if he would object to the university reaching out to Moore to “assist however we can.” Smith said he had no objection to that, and an hour later Caslen emailed Moore offering her the third floor of the President’s House. It’s unclear if Moore responded.

In Delisa’s email acknowledging a “systemic issue” in how USC follows up with donors, she laid out a plan for fixing the problem.

That plan included using programs to scan search engines and news articles in search of obituary data, then creating a list of major donors and cross-referencing those. The programs would form a quick response, but a long-term solution would be spending $2 million per year to hire more employees to help fundraise. Fundraising employees would receive additional training and be evaluated not only on dollars raised, but also on interacting with donors.

“The real problem is a much deeper and pervasive one. We have ignored and marginalized development for years at South Carolina,” Delisa said. “We have not had a culture of being donor-centric. This is partially because we have lacked resources. We simply do not have enough people to manage the relationships we need to manage.”

“This is one of two areas in which every employee resigned or retired in the past 18 months,” Delisa said in an email obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. “There was no one working in this area when I arrived.”

Delisa’s email was sent in April 2021, meaning the turnover began before she arrived and began in late 2019, a few months after Caslen became president. Her plan, as of April, was to fully staff the fundraising department by the end of 2021.

Since April, USC has hired 15 employees to help with fundraising, including an assistant vice president for donor relations, marketing and communications, Delisa said in the November email.

Delisa earlier had called for $2 million in additional funding to hire fundraising employees, and as of November, USC has set aside $1.5 million to hire more employees, Delisa said in the November email.

As of Nov. 15, there are eight open positions in USC’s Division of Development, according to USC’s website.

USC is also implementing a new fundraising model that “emphasizes the importance of relationship building and helping our supporters see how their generosity can change lives,” Delisa said.

This story was originally published November 15, 2021 at 2:32 PM.