The Office of Philanthropy will continue the planning of their major comprehensive capital campaign, despite the recent economic downturn.

Jill Nilsen, vice president for external relations, said a delay in the campaign would adversely affect students.

“At this point, we have no plans to do that,” she said. “We are continuing to put all of our plans in place.”

The office is pulling together a steering committee and hiring two more directors for the campaign.

“If we delay a campaign, that delays our ability to identify funding for projects that are important to achieve President Perry’s vision,” Nilsen said. “Those are projects that will support honors, fine arts programming and outreach, study abroad, faculty and student research, and service learning as well as identifying funding for scholarships.”

She said private philanthropic dollars would help Eastern move those projects forward when the university is not getting state support.

President Bill Perry said the state budget depends upon the collection of certain revenues, like sales taxes and income taxes, so an economic downturn affects the revenue at the state level.

He said if the revenue estimates go down then a shortfall is created and states cannot fund as many programs.

He said if the state decides it cannot give the 2.8 percent because of the financial situation, the university would be OK because they were not planning on it.

The bigger issue would be in fiscal year 2010, he said.

“With fundraising, my experience has been almost anytime you want to start a big fundraising . you can find bad news anywhere so there’s never a perfect time to start a big fundraising campaign,” Perry said.

He said people will still want to give to the university, but the financial uncertainty will change the way people give.

“I think that when people know what your needs are, what your values are, where you’re headed as an institution, your alums will support that,” Perry said.

People now instead of pledging money over three or four years, they might spread that over five or six years, he said.

He added with the uncertainty in the economy, people who had been thinking about giving stock to the university at one time might find other ways to give.

When stocks go down, there is no advantage to that, he said.

“Some people, depending on their age, they might say for the next three or four years maybe I’ve got to wait and see how all this is going to clear up, but they might make the university a part of an estate gift,” Perry said.

Nilsen said it is likely gifts through estate plans will increase, which the university will not realize until later.

She also said she anticipates at this time a higher percentage of planned gifts or requests as part of the campaign than there would have been if it had been a better economy.

“I think, at this point, everyone is very careful with their dollars, but if they believe in the cause and believe it’s a sound investment with their resources, we’re hoping that folks will make those gifts,” she said. “We’re just going to have to feel our way through this time.”

Nilsen said she hopes the economy will become more stable as the campaign moves forward.

“There are some folks that believe that whatever’s going on nationally that we’re going to come out of that,” Nilsen said. “Campaigns are over multiple years, so to go ahead and start the campaign and knowing that as we get into it, the economy should be better.”

Fundraising has not seen a drop yet, she said.

Last year, fiscal year 2008, was the Office of Philanthropy’s best year ever in terms of philanthropic dollars, she said.

Nilsen said she had not yet received the first quarter figures for fiscal year 2009.

“We’ll have to look at the quarter figures, listen to our donors, listen to our campaign council, but we do feel that private philanthropic support is important to the university with declining state support,” she said.

Emily Zulz can be reached at 581-7942 or at eazulz@eiu.edu.