Catching Up with Andreh Khachaturians, CDU Executive Director for Development and Alumni Relations( continued)
oversee the area, my focus is kind of expanded through all of the programming that we do. Just not on alumni relations, but philanthropy and development and other areas. We have eight alumni who’ ve joined the Alumni Council and there’ s a representative from each college. In addition to that, we’ ve added the student body president as a non-voting member. Now they have a student facing representative that will tell them about all the things that are going on at the University.
Where does CDU Rising stand as we speak?? As you know, we’ re in the middle of the five-year $ 75 million comprehensive campaign, now focusing on a $ 95 million goal. We blasted through our $ 75 million goal last year. Now we’ ve expanded it to 95. And there are a couple of big gifts that that we’ re hoping to close with the team in the next few months to help us get us to that $ 95 million goal. And you never know. We may meet it earlier than usual and maybe we’ ll truck on to $ 200 million for the University. It’ s going well and we still have some work to do. July 2025 is around the corner, but we will definitely be doing our best to meet that goal and surpass it because this is all for the benefit of our students.
Would you say that the climate of fundraising at CDU is no longer, beg, beg, beg? If we want people to participate in the CDU vision, now they are coming our way? Is that a correct statement? I think it’ s a correct statement. Fundraising is a team sport and the way we have distributed the efforts is through specialization, so we have someone who focuses on corporate foundation relations. We have someone who helps us write grants, perhaps to public institutions or public entities such as federal, state, or local governments.
We have someone who focuses on our stewardship. We have someone who does prospect research, to make sure that we are going after the right people, the right organizations, and then we have someone who helps us with infrastructure to make sure that we record gifts correctly, that the IRS is happy with us that we recorded what we received correctly, and the people who make the donations to the University are happy that they get their receipt on time. All of those elements combined really help us do our fundraising. And building that long term success of the University.
The three pillars critical to student success include scholarships, unrestricted funds, and operational support for the University. The fundraising pillar includes raising $ 30 million for the Health Professions Education Building, which will house the new CDU 4-year medical degree program in addition to supporting the various other programs on campus. It’ ll be a collaborative space. That’ s what we’ re concentrating on for the University. But I also want to make sure that I convey the importance of the campaign being very short term.
It’ s usually five to seven to nine years, depending on how big the goal is. What I’ m trying to do is set us up for short term and midterm gains, and long-term wins. So that the university in 5, 10, 15 years from now is set up to be successful in fundraising. And the way we do this is by not only continuing to steward the relationships that we currently have with our donors and prospects and other organizations, but expanding that beyond this University, beyond the scope of the state of California and the nation.
We want to make sure that we’ re concentrating on the long term. That’ s my overall strategy in building a philanthropic culture on our campus. I strongly believe that every person on our campus is some type of fundraiser. And even if it’ s those bake sales that the students do to raise money for their student organization, to the things that we do in development, and making large asks to large organizations. Everybody has a role.
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 35