Major building donations at Penn remain strong despite economy

Getting a donor’s name on a Penn building isn’t any easier now than it was a few years ago, contrary to recent reports.

Bloomberg.com reported last week that naming a building “is cheaper these days in the wake of the financial crisis.”

Yet according to Penn President Amy Gutmann, at least at Penn, buildings are “long-term projects, which tend to be unaffected by economic swings.”

Vice President of Development and Alumni Relations John Zeller agreed. “We haven’t seen any recent evidence of a so-called ‘better deal,’” he said.

Gutmann explained that Penn always has a list of two to five building projects that “need prospective donors” — which currently includes a planned college house on Hill Field — but say that those have not been affected by the economy.

Both Gutmann and Zeller emphasized that naming rights are unlikely to be the main reason for a donation — in fact, the purpose of the building is often directly linked to fields of study the donor wishes to promote.

“People give to capital projects because of what happens within those buildings, not simply for naming purposes,” Zeller said.

Furthermore, multiple factors are considered when picking a building’s name, including overall cost and other naming opportunities within the building, according to Gutmann.

Several decades after a building is constructed, Zeller said, there are discussions about renovations and maintenance. Sometimes this results in the renaming of a building, as occurred when Fisher Hall was renamed Fisher-Bennett Hall.

“Naming a facility involves much more than just finding a lead donor who will allow their name to be used on that facility,” University trustee James Riepe — for whom Riepe College House was renamed in 2005 — wrote in an e-mail. “To my knowledge, there has been no change in Penn’s policy with regard to the ‘naming’ of a facility.”

Joe Hederman, a senior consultant at fundraising consulting firm Meier Jost & Associates, also disagreed with the idea that it is now easier for a donor to get his or her name on a building.

He noted that with his nonprofit clients, he determines “an appropriate amount of money for naming rights,” and if they cannot find a donor for that sum, they will “keep the naming right as an asset” for later on.

“Anybody who is making it easier,” Hederman said, “is thinking short term instead of long term.”

John Martin, president of MGI Fund-raising Consulting, shared the same opinion. He said he is “not sure how [Bloomberg.com] made the claim” and also said he knows of institutions “that are waiting until later to name.”

Martin suggested that building naming has dropped off because “philanthropy has fallen off over the last few years,” on top of the economic downturn.

He added, like Zeller, that a naming opportunity is rarely the primary motivation for a large donation — it is typically the way an institution honors an individual, rather than being the reason a donor would donate.

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