UConn Foundation has new leader spearheading ambitious $1.5B fundraising campaign, targeting $1B endowment

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Amy Yancey, seen above with Jonathan the Husky, took over as the UConn Foundation’s CEO and president in May.

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By Hanna Snyder Gambini

The UConn Foundation this spring will kick off the public phase of its most ambitious fundraising campaign to date.

The goal: Raise $1.5 billion over a 10-year period to support a new strategic plan that aims to significantly raise the profile of the state’s flagship university.

The campaign, called “Because of UConn,” will help fund research and innovation and sustainability initiatives — including the university’s goal to be carbon-neutral, and then eventually carbon-zero — as well as the formation of an institute for healthy aging, among other things, school officials said.

Leading the effort is Amy Yancey, UConn Foundation’s relatively new CEO and president, who started in her role in May.

Yancey, 57, brings decades of experience heading major fundraisers. At UConn, she’s also been tasked with growing the school’s endowment to the $1-billion mark within five years.

She has a ways to go to reach that benchmark. UConn’s endowment was valued at $634 million at the end of fiscal year 2024, which ended June 30, ranking it 65th in value out of 236 public universities tracked in the 2023 NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments.

“(It) is actually a very ambitious goal for us,” Yancey said of the school’s fundraising efforts. “In fact, we’ve never had a formal campaign of over half-a-billion dollars.”

Trust and alignment

Yancey is no stranger to major fundraising efforts. As associate vice president for development at the University of Virginia, she was responsible for raising approximately $1 billion in a larger $5 billion campaign, while overseeing fundraising, alumni relations and board development.

Most recently, she served as vice president for development at Boston College, overseeing fundraising for financial aid, the student and athletic experience, and academic programs.

She also led fundraising teams at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Tennessee.

At the UConn Foundation, she oversees the organization’s three main functions — managing alumni relations and engagement; fundraising for the university, including both endowed and unendowed gifts; and managing and growing the endowment.

The foundation has already been boosting its performance in recent years, raising $157.9 million in new gifts and commitments in fiscal 2023. That represented the fourth straight year of record-breaking fundraising results, the organization said.

Those gifts supported student scholarships ($55.5 million), academic programs ($47.7 million), and athletics ($27.9 million).

Roughly one-third of funds raised in any given year are endowed gifts, while the rest support current-year scholarships, internships, research grants or capital improvements, foundation officials said.

In one of her first major changes at UConn, Yancey said she reorganized her 165-member staff, increasing the number of fundraisers from 54 to 60.

An average fundraiser brings in about $2.5 million in commitments per year, “so it’s just easy math,” she said of designating more employees to that role. “If we grow by 10 fundraisers, we’d be able to grow by $25 million a year in commitments.”

Fundraising efforts at the foundation are taking on greater importance as UConn continues to deal with budget constraints that require the university to trim expenses, Yancey said.

The foundation operates on a budget of $13.5 million from the university, and none of the money raised goes toward operating expenses, she said.

The new fundraising campaign, which runs through 2030, has already been underway for several years in its quiet phase. Early results will be announced in April, when the UConn Foundation goes public with the effort.

Yancey said she’s implementing an all-hands-on-deck strategy to meet its goals. That will include approaching all engaged philanthropists, alumni, parents, foundations and corporate partners with giving capacities that range from $1 to multimillion-dollar gifts.

The majority of major gifts — over $50,000 — typically come from individual donors after engaging in one-to-one conversations with foundation fundraisers who share how their giving can impact students, patient care and research advances.

“Major giving requires trust and the alignment of objectives,” Yancey said. “For annual gifts and participation, we have a multichannel approach. In keeping with the university’s strategic initiatives around sustainability and carbon neutrality, we will also rely heavily on digital strategies rather than traditional print appeals for broader participation.”

This new campaign will be the foundation’s largest to date. Previously, it raised $471 million against a $330 million goal for a campaign that ran from 1998 to 2004, officials said.

Growing the nest egg

The fundraising campaign correlates directly with the foundation’s goal to build a $1 billion endowment.

UConn’s endowment pool achieved returns of 12.1% in fiscal 2024, increasing the school’s nest egg by $57 million to $634 million. That performance was driven by strong technology stock returns and certain diversification strategies, said David Carney, the foundation’s chief financial officer and senior vice president for finance and administration.

The return outperformed the foundation’s target and also outpaced many of UConn’s peer universities, Carney said.

Over the past five years, the foundation’s endowment pool has realized an annualized return of 9.3%, generating $88 million in income distribution for the university, he said.

UConn’s endowment is made up of over 2,000 individual funds, each of which is restricted to support a specific purpose, school or program. More than a third is allocated to scholarships, with the remaining funds directed toward academic initiatives, faculty support or programmatic needs.

Endowed gifts generate 4% annually to university programs, according to the foundation.

Current use gifts are all spent in the year or years given, but the endowment exists in perpetuity and grows primarily through investment strategy.

Despite the gains in recent years, UConn’s total endowment still lags many peer institutions. There were 41 public universities with endowments of more than a billion dollars at the end of 2023, according to the 2023 NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments.

The Texas A&M University system had the largest endowment of any public university ($19.3 billion), followed by the University of Michigan ($17.9 billion).

Yancey said UConn’s fundraising efforts only got started in earnest around 1993, putting it behind other major public research universities. Since then, however, the endowment has grown substantially, from $23 million in 1990.

“We’ve only been fundraising for the endowment since the 1990s,” she said. “Comparatively, the University of Kansas began fundraising in 1891,” and had an endowment of $2.4 billion at the end of 2023, she said.

The Midwest university’s foundation staff is also larger — almost 210 compared to UConn’s 165, she said.

UConn President Radenka Maric said Yancey has the experience and drive to reach the foundation’s ambitious fundraising goals.

Yancey, Maric said, “has built a sterling reputation and is known for her capacity to think strategically, drive high-performance fundraising teams, and strengthen relationships with alumni and donors.”