Goal V: Community/Financial Support

We will partner with the larger community to garner financial and other support to achieve our common goals.

Rationale and Readiness

• Alabama ranks as the state with the biggest percentage budget cut to higher education since 2008—some 20.1%.
  
• A recent report by the Science Coalition, “Sparking Economic Growth,” identifies 100 national “success stories” from university research. Collectively the companies employ over 100,000 people and have annual revenues of nearly $100 billion. 

UAB and Birmingham are inextricably bound and share a common, interdependent future. “Blueprint Birmingham,” our region’s new plan for economic growth, recognizes this, highlighting UAB’s pivotal role in developing the workforce and “creating a culture of innovation” based on research, development and technology transfer. The Blueprint report makes the critical point that other states, including neighboring Georgia, provide funds, independent of those allocated for education, to assist in the recruitment of star researchers who then pay back the investment many-fold by securing federal grant funds and in some cases spinning off companies. They also provide annual capital budgets. The State of Alabama does neither. State bonds and direct federal funds have been the only public dollars available for major renovations and construction of facilities such as the Shelby Interdisciplinary Biomedical Building, which has been pivotal in luring star researchers to UAB.

• Recruitment packages for top researchers generally average $1 million each (over three years).  
  
• Of the universities in the national top 30 for federal research funding, all but UAB and three others have endowments exceeding $880 million. Harvard has the largest with $25.6 billion. 

In 2007, when state funding had peaked, UAB set aside $10 million per year to create the IMPACT fund, which is designed to support biomedical research programs that have a substantial probability of enhancing economic development in the region and state. IMPACT – the Investment Pool for Action – primarily focuses on recruiting and retaining top researchers with substantial grant funding or with the potential to garner it. Two years in, IMPACT funds were used to recruit 25 researchers with an annual ROI of 1.16:1 and to retain 12 researchers with an annual ROI of 2.45:1. These researchers came from institutions such as Johns Hopkins, UC San Diego and Columbia. Given the current average level of external funding per NIH-funded investigator is $700,000 per year, 100 net faculty researchers return $70 million annually (so the investment per researcher is paid off in a year and a half).

In 2008, the State of Alabama, at the urging of the governor, established a $5 million recurring line item for UAB’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, and UAB committed to carving out $10 million per year from its regular appropriation for this purpose. In addition, the state committed $50 million in bond money for the Cancer Center. This influx enabled the Cancer Center to recruit senior faculty and leadership from institutions such as Northwestern, St. Jude’s and M.D. Anderson, and renovate the Wallace Tumor Institute and cancer pharmacology labs. Since 2006, external funding for research in the Cancer Center has increased fourfold.

• The recent economic crisis caused the nation’s more than 75,000 grant making foundations to cut their 2009 giving by an estimated 8.4% (nearly $4 billion)—by far the largest decline ever tracked by the Foundation Center.
  
• Since 2007, gifts to education at all levels have dropped an 8.%.

 UAB’s fundraising catapulted with the Campaign for UAB and the follow-up Maintaining the Momentum initiative, together raising $938 million from 23,214 donors. In 2009, we had our most successful fundraising year ever with $96.5 million This means scholarships for deserving students from around our city and state, funds to recruit and retain top faculty to teach these students and conduct research that advances knowledge and fuels Birmingham’s economic engine, and top-of-the-line facilities in which we deliver quality healthcare. Funds raised for UAB are an investment not just in the university, but in the community, and benefit the people of our state and region.

For example, prior to the Campaign for UAB, the University had 49 endowed chairs (48 fully or partially funded with one other testamentary commitment) and nine endowed professorships. Today, the University has 103 endowed chairs (96 fully or partially funded including a deanship in medicine with seven other testamentary commitments including a deanship in nursing) and 37 endowed professorships. The privately funded endowments allow UAB to compete for top leadership and faculty nationally.

Significant private gifts have also made possible a radiation oncology facility and adjacent park, as well as ArtPlay, home to the Alys Stephens Center’s arts education outreach program. Some $7.2 million has been raised toward the $11.5 million Institute for the Visual Arts, which will house student and faculty art, as well as traveling exhibitions, and will help anchor a new Cultural District along with the ASC.

• A 2009 survey of higher education fundraising found that alumni participation rates fell by 3.5%, with significant drops at both public and private institutions.

We continue to cultivate greater alumni support and involvement, as National Alumni Society membership has grown fourfold since 2002 to 9,500 members and 62 chapters around the nation (and one in Taiwan). In 2010, the NAS awarded over $700,000 in scholarships, grants and gifts back to UAB. They have also contributed $1.2 million to the new Alumni House, set to open in January 2011. UAB and the NAS together are connecting with new graduates as future supporters, and incentivizing them to remain in or return to Birmingham’s workforce.

Strengthening our Impact

• Enhance overall financial support for educational, research and clinical excellence.
• Increase appropriations and special support from government at all levels.
• Increase alumni engagement.

See the Community and Financial Support Scorecard.