Campaigns raised more than $290M

Ask Elaine Goldie back in 1985 if she'd ever see a personal cheque to the University of Manitoba for $10 million that a bank would actually cash, and she'd likely have laughed.

Not now.

Retiring after almost 25 years as U of M's fundraiser, Goldie has seen cheques for about $23 million from Bill Gates, $20 million from Marcel A. Desautels, rolex replica and $10 million apiece from Izzy Asper and Clayton Riddell.

Her first capital campaign set a goal of $42 million and raised $55 million, her second aimed for $100 million and collected $237 million.

Oops, $237.5 million, to be precise.

Not bad for someone whose hiring in 1985 doubled the full-time fundraising staff at U of M to two -- plus a part-time secretary.

That was when fundraising required a telephone book and a lot of envelopes and stamps. "The records we had from the alumni association were on recipe cards," and the university usually waited for donors to step forward, Goldie said.

Now, she has email addresses for 38,000 grads and senior officials travel to Toronto, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and other major cities to meet with alumni, many of whom have gone on to great success.

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"Now, it's very proactive," she said.

Goldie was a stay-at-home mom of three kids after graduating from then-Brandon College, but in 1979 got her first taste of heavy-duty volunteering with the United Way. She served on United Way with U of M administrators, and by 1985 they were asking her to work for the university.

Goldie is retiring Dec. 23 as U of M's first vice-president external, but she's proud to call herself a fundraiser. "Absolutely, and I'm not embarrased by it. I don't know why people don't believe fundraisers are professionals," she said.

That second capital campaign, Building on Strengths, broke records when it ended in 2003 and produced far more student financial aid than anyone expected.

People who step forward to donate without being contacted "usually want to support students. Students still appear to support human capital above infrastructure," especially small donors.

Goldie hires students to conduct the annual fundraising campaign among alumni, and she keeps her eye out for grads who regularly attend university events and show that they're connected to their school.

"It's always more expensive to do broad-based fundraising," but that leads to personal connections which can produce many years of annual donations -- and possibly bequests through a grad's estate.

Right now, the economy is tough, cutting deeply into annual gifts of stocks and securities, Goldie said.

New capital campaigns
embroidered patches usually start about a decade after the conclusion of the last one, she said.

So the next capital campaign may not be that far away, though Goldie declined to speculate whether it would focus on whatever plans U of M develops for the Southwood golf course lands it now owns.

"David (president David Barnard), I hope, would be interested in running a capital campaign," Goldie said. "The biggest unknown is the health of the economy."

And that campaign could be looking at raising around a quarter-billion dollars over five years, the last campai
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