Mason's Gain in Financial Gifts Since Final Four

Between 2005 and 2006, something happened at George Mason University. It was a one-year span that, with the exception of a single athletic event, was mostly ordinary. It was also a year in which freshman applications surged by 22 percent and private financial gifts to the university jumped from $20 million to nearly $34 million.

While the long-term impact of the Patriots’ unprecedented run to the Final Four in early 2006 will be debated and scrutinized for years, the fact remains that the Mason of 2010 is greatly changed from the Mason that sent an unlikely basketball team to Indiana on a spring night nearly half a decade ago.

Christine LaPaille, vice president of University Relations, believes that Mason’s presence at the 2006 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship only brought attention to qualities already present at the university.

“When I visited Mason [in early 2005], I thought, ‘This is an amazing place and no one knows about them,’” LaPaille said. “‘I have to work here.’”

LaPaille said that the intense media focus on the school, which she likened to “managing a crisis,” placed the spotlight squarely on programs that were outstanding but as yet largely unknown.

“In research funding, we have a target for $150 million [for the 2009-2010 school year], and we already have well over $100 million,” LaPaille said. “Our excellent facilities and entrepreneurial climate are very attractive for researchers. When I came here there were just around 70 and now there are more than 100. Can you tie that to the Final Four? No. Can you tie the increased visibility to the Final Four? Yes.”

While she maintains that Mason’s top-tier academics ultimately under-girded the
school’s success, she admits the pivotal role the Final Four played.

“Athletic success is the window to an institution,” LaPaille conceded. “It gets immediate public visibility way beyond what our target campaigns would have done. It opens doors that weren’t open before.”

Marc Broderick, vice president of University Development and Alumni Affairs, would
agree strongly with that statement.

“The affinity that Mason graduates have had since the Final Four is not easily quantifiable or qualifiable,” Broderick mused. “The impact of that event and of the changed perspective on the university dramatically impacted people’s giving.”

Mason is far from the !rst institution of higher learning to suddenly find itself in the national spotlight following athletic success. Though the 65-percent jump in private contributions to the school between 2005 and 2006 is not unprecedented, the phenomenon has not only been sustained in the four years since Mason’s NCAA triumph, but in fact appears to be accelerating.

Mason officials attribute this trend to growing awareness of advantages the university already had to begin with: a law school consistently ranked in the top 50 nationally, prestigious neuroscience and computational studies, research facilities of excellent repute, a political science program widely regarded as among the finest in the U.S. and a growing population that even in 2006 had been eroding Virginia Commonwealth University’s lead for more than a decade. Mason surpassed VCU to become the state’s largest university in fall 2009.

Whatever the cause, there is no denying the reality: from 2007 on, private contributions have increased every year, and they are expected to soar by at least $10 million in 2010.

“We have over $41 million so far and we’re just over halfway through Fiscal Year 2010,” Broderick boasted. “I imagine we’ll probably have between $45 and $53 million by the end of the fiscal year.”

If Broderick’s prediction proves accurate, Mason could make a jump of as much as $19 million in personal contributions over the previous year.

Mason’s burgeoning coffers are the product of a higher proportion of large individual donations, which, like many things about the university, are getting bigger.

In 2005, only three people gave the school more than $250,000. That number jumped to nine in 2007 and 2008 before falling slightly to six in 2009. Those giving in excess of $5 million have done so more often and more generously.

In Fiscal Year 2006, immediately after the Final Four, George Mason received a single private donation of $5 million. Three years later, another individual bequeathed $10 million onto the school.

Fiscal Year 2010 has seen the largest gift in university history. A $17 million land grant from Loudoun County’s Van Metre Companies.

Mason officials feel that the land grant, a 37.5-acre plot that could enable further expansion into a Loudoun County campus, should take no one by surprise.

“The founder of the Van Metre Companies recently passed away,” Broderick said. “He was Mason-friendly, and he supported the university because he thought it would do good with the land. It shows the generosity of the donor and the reputation of GMU.”

Chris Clark-Talley, assistant vice president for Alumni Affairs, has seen the consequences of that enhanced reputation firsthand.

She came to Mason 12 years ago and has been ideally positioned to witness the transformation the university has undergone.

“I always said that when Johnny from Fairfax can’t get into GMU and we have 5,000 students in residence, we’ll have turned a corner,” Talley mused. “Well, Johnny from Fairfax might not get into GMU and now we have more than 6,000 students living on campus.”

Talley said that the Final Four “a ‘where-were- you-then?’moment” changed not only the amount of money Mason could raise, but the method by which it could raise it.

“E-mail is our lifeblood,” she confessed.

“The most important thing I want from a Mason graduate is their e-mail address. When I came on board 12 years ago, we had about 2,500 e-mail addresses. That went to 20,000 just after the Final Four, and today we have close to 50,000 alumni e-mail addresses. That’s a significant increase.”

That kind of access has translated into big time dollar counts, and, like the amount of money coming to the school, the number of alumni signing up continues to surge.

“We gain about 5,000 to 6,000 alumni per year, so it gets even harder to communicate, and when we have e-mail addresses, it’s essentially free,” Talley said. “Promoting events and activities, telling our story, letting alumni know the value of their degree and letting them feel proud of their Alma Mater are things we can do.”

While Mason has benefited tremendously from the Final Four and the attention it brought, the school’s rapid expansion and academic success have created some burdens that the university is struggling to handle.

After entering the national consciousness in 2006, Mason found itself inundated with new applicants.

Still, as with private donations, the new trend has strengthened—not fallen off—in the years since Mason’s star moment; the number of first-time freshmen vying for one of Mason’s increasingly competitive slots climbed 22 percent between 2005 and 2006, then rocketed up by an astonishing 43 percent between 2009 and 2010, making a leap from 14,000 to 20,000 in the space of one year.

The result of this massive expansion is a student population that topped 32,500 in 2009 and a campus so overflowing with new arrivals that the school has at times resorted to housing overflow students in nearby hotels.

Most universities could only dream of being in such a position. Currently, Mason’s acceptance rate of applicants is falling while its total number of applications shoots skyhigh.

Add to that the fact that the average GPA of its applicants is rising and Mason seems to be in, at the very least, a highly enviable position. There’s just one problem.

“State funding has not been increased,” Vice President LaPaille lamented. “The [state funding] formulas don’t take into account what we are now because they were made years ago.”

In 2009 alone, Mason had 1,500 more instate students than expected.

“We receive $2,000 less per student than the average of the other eight doctoral conferring schools in the state,” LaPaille said, noting the growing disparity between Mason’s size and its level of state subsidy. “It does present a major problem. We have told the story in Richmond for the last two years, but the bottom line is there’s no money. We need to get an increase in funding for increased enrollment. We have to keep trying so that we can claim our fair share.”

Andrew Flagel, associate vice president for Enrollment Development and dean of Admissions, acknowledged the issue.

“We want to bring it back down a little,” he admitted. “The BOV wants to slow growth to meet fiscal issues and capacity demands.”

Still, he said, dealing with too many people is better than dealing with too few.
“Mason has managed to break a lot of traditional molds,” Flagel elaborated. “We
continue to build towards meeting demand, and it’s hard to see that in a negative
light.”

Talley agreed.

“The door isn’t open to everyone anymore,” she said. “But that isn’t a bad problem
to have.”

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The above piece was published in Mason Nation: Four Years After Final Four, a magazine released this April documenting and analyzing the university's development since the Patriots' historic run in 2006, aiming to shed light on what's connected to the Cinderella story--and additionally, what's not.

Led by senior history major and Student Media veteran Rachael Dickson, the magazine's other topics include changes in men's basketball to effects on other athletics, and from player profiles of the Final Four team to the rise of the Chesapeake residential neighborhood. Gunston and the pep band also receive shout-outs.