Even as Tufts faced a 25 percent endowment loss and had to cut back to make ends meet, the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL) ended fiscal year 2009 with a surplus thanks to increased fundraising efforts and an unexpected hike in donor support.
Facing less certain economic waters, the IGL revised its annual budget three times in the last fiscal year, decreasing expected expenditures by 30 percent, according to IGL Director Sherman Teichman.
"Between budgeting, changing the program focus, delaying things until the entry of this fiscal year, we were able to end with a surplus in the tens of thousands," Teichman said. "As an avid gardener, I know what it's like to prune. When you prune effectively, things grow back even stronger."
In response to the recession, the IGL increased its fundraising efforts by reaching out to previous donors and nurturing new alliances. The institute relies almost exclusively upon contributions from external donors to finance its 20 programs, Teichman said. Personally, he devoted significantly more time to culling donors.
"If I could quantify, it changed from 20 percent of my time to close to 50 percent of my time," he said.
His efforts, coupled with the rest of the institute's outreach, met an unexpectedly positive response.
"It was a tremendously good year in the context of people responding. We raised more money than we ever anticipated and from a broad range of people," he said. The institute received over 500 transactions last year in amounts ranging from $25 to $100,000.
The institute also changed some of its programming to shift costs elsewhere, with friends of the IGL chipping in to share the financial burden. The Intellectual Roundtable, a conference traditionally held on campus by the IGL group Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services' (ALLIES), was hosted for the first time at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
In moving the conference off campus, the institute evaded steep costs. The National Defense University sponsored the SIMULEX exercise during the event, in which students acted as policy makers responding to a fabricated scenario. This simulation might otherwise have come at a $50,000 price tag for the IGL, Teichman said.
Student fundraising and innovation also helped the Institute combat the downturn. Every year, Tufts' chapter of Theta Delta Chi at 123 Packard Ave. holds a "Mustachio Bashio" event, a fundraiser from which proceeds are traditionally donated to the V Foundation for Cancer Research.
Last year, however, brothers donated the roughly $1,400 they raised to Building Understanding through International Learning and Development (BUILD), a student-led IGL initiative focusing on sustainable development in rural Guatemala.
"I'm glad that we could provide a social atmosphere within the Tufts community while supporting a good cause and our Tufts community," said junior Marcus Cheek, a brother at Theta Delta Chi and former BUILD team leader.
BUILD is one IGL-sponsored group that has weathered the recession. The group was able to end the last fiscal year with a $1,800 profit thanks to external and university donors, as well as a $10,000 prize awarded to it through 100 Projects for Peace, a competition in which undergraduates at colleges nationwide are asked to design a grassroots peace-oriented project.
The group will direct its surplus to its three-year sustainable development plan in Guatemala, which has a projected budget of $30,000, according to BUILD program co-coordinator Mike Niconchuk.
Niconchuk, a junior, was optimistic that the group would be able to find money to support this program in its entirety.
"If we have another large-scale development project, there will be a rush to figure out where we're getting funding from, but as BUILD's reputation grows and as the actual project on the group is seen as on par with the work done by actual professional development [organizations], we think that we will be able to access more official and constant funding sources," he said.
Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC), a class run through the IGL that Teichman teaches, has been less fortunate. The program, which traditionally hosts an annual symposium in the spring, has had to rely on student creativity and continued donor generosity to stay afloat.
Facing shrinking funds, students revamped last year's EPIIC symposium. Students scaled back costs by making the symposium carbon-neutral and by inviting local as opposed to international intellectuals to speak during the event, thus cutting down on airfare and transportations costs for guests.
"This year, the EPIIC symposium is entirely under water, but we have figured out a way to compensate [for] that. That's because other donors have stepped up," Teichman said.
Though EPIIC class fees have increased since the downturn, scholarship money provided by the IGL has also increased. Teichman maintained that no students were prevented from participating in the course because of the fee hike.
