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JULY | AUGUST 2015 BizEd 29 Real Estate, met or surpassed their monetary goals. There's usually an obvious use for any extra money. For instance, the Humanoid Robotics group raised $1,000 more than its target of $5,000, and the surplus went to defray additional trip costs. When another campaign exceeded its goal of raising scholarships to fund three service trips, the additional money was used to fund more scholarships. Cigelske is quick to point out that students achieve learning objectives even when they don't meet the financial goals of their crowdfunding campaigns: They get real-world experience, they learn how to use social media to raise awareness of a project, and they learn how to measure what approaches have been most successful. "They also discover that it's not nec- essarily a bad thing to set lower goals and then aim to surpass them," says Cigelske. "Generally speaking, you're supposed to reach 30 percent of your goal in the first 48 hours. If you don't, you probably won't meet your overall goal." Running a crowdfunding campaign as a classroom project can be an im- mense undertaking, Cigelske admits. In fact, he says, it would be di§cult for a professor to handle all the details without the cooperation of a member of the advancement team. Cigelske works closely with Harvey throughout the process to make sure the perks are reasonable, donors are acknowledged correctly, and donated money gets to the right place. But once a process is in place, crowd- funding can o£er correspondingly huge payo£s. First, it raises money for worth- while university projects that otherwise might struggle to find funding. Second, it gives students real-world experiences that look impressive on résumés. Third, it allows the university to develop rela- tionships with "new, younger, socially connected audiences that might want to donate," Cigelske says. "Other schools might fear the lack of control or the possibility of can- nibalizing the annual fund, because these are typically annual-fund-sized contributions," says Harvey. "But for us, the upsides have outweighed any concerns we might have had at the beginning about crowdfunding." See details of all the campaigns at www.marquette.edu/crowdfunding/. Comprehensive Campaign How can a school fund an expansion of its campus and improve its overall quality without raising tuition? London Business School (LBS) plans to achieve this goal through a £100 million (about US$152 million) comprehensive campaign—the first one in its history. Traditionally, notes dean Andrew Lik- ierman, business schools outside the U.S. don't rely on fundraising initiatives to generate capital. "Roughly speaking, half of our income is derived from degree students and half from executive educa- tion, and that will remain the primary way we finance our- selves," he says. But administrators decided to turn to fundraising to improve most facets of academic life at LBS: £40 million will go toward new facilities, £28 million to faculty, £18 million to scholarships, £10 million to unrestricted funds, and £4 million to new technology. "It's tough to fund those things out of our current budget," says Likierman. "Therefore, this campaign will enhance our ability to operate as a quality school." Launched in 2013, the campaign needed only two years to get to the £87 million mark and is likely to meet its goal well ahead of its five-year schedule. The school's strategy has been to engage with all stakeholders—alumni, students, facul- ty, sta£, friends of the school, and its governing body—and encourage them to get involved. Three approaches have been especially fruitful: Making connections with individual donors. LBS received a lead gift of £25 million from the Idan and Batia Ofer Family Foundation specifically for renovating an iconic older building into a state-of-the-art facility to be known as the Sammy Ofer Centre. More recently, former Alibaba president Savio Kwan gave the school £5 million to support the Charles Handy Chair. To secure such large gifts, says Likierman, it's key to understand what motivates each donor. "We're respectful of the ways each individual wants to relate to the school," Students quickly learn that the key to finding donors is to identify the people who have some connection to their causes.