Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part series about OU’s efforts to deal with the economic crisis. Today’s article addresses the economy’s impact on university donors.

With Wall Street’s wild ride during the past few months, many are less able — or less willing — to make charitable donations as economic uncertainty grows and savings shrink.

A study by the Center on Philanthropy predicted a drop in charitable giving over the next quarter, prompting concerns from universities whose donors may be closing their wallets just as schools’ financial needs increase.

Defaults on previously pledged donations have forced some schools to stop construction or development, but OU administrators say the university’s fund-raising efforts are in better shape than most, even if some of OU’s most high-profile donors have experienced high-profile losses during the last few months.

Some donors have become slower to commit to projects, but none have reneged on outstanding commitments, according to Tripp Hall, vice president for development.

“Our default rate is zero,” he said.

Big commitments

Aubrey McClendon, chairman and CEO of Chesapeake Energy Corp., revealed in October he had been forced to sell most of his stock in the company, losing billions of dollars in the process.

The announcement came just five months after OU announced that McClendon donated $12.5 million to a variety of university athletic and academic programs, and Chesapeake made a donation of $2.5 million to the Mewbourne College of Earth and Energy.

But OU President David L. Boren said neither Chesapeake nor McClendon have missed scheduled payments on their gifts, which are multi-year pledges. McClendon is actually ahead of schedule.

Boren declined to give specific numbers but said the amount of money McClendon has already paid on his pledge is “counted in the millions, not the thousands,” and amounts to more money than McClendon was scheduled to have donated at this point in the year.

Boren said it was possible, however, that the timing of future payments would be renegotiated.

“We certainly have not written off any pledges from Chesapeake or the McClendon family, and we have every confidence that those pledges are good pledges that will be honored,” Boren said. “It could be that we’ll have to change our timetable, and we’re willing to do that.”

OU’s donors — and OU’s own finances — have weathered the economic downturn much better than those of some universities.

Investments made by T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire businessman who donated $165 million to Oklahoma State University in 2005, have lost $1 billion this year because of market losses.

OSU, which had reinvested Pickens’ donation in a hedge fund he controls, suffered as well. The school was forced to halt work on an athletic village and an indoor practice facility that were supposed to be financed by the Pickens’ donation.

Pickens has since donated an additional $63 million to the university for the completion of the football stadium that bears his name, but no date has been set for completion of the other projects.

Small donors

OU administrators say one of the key contributors to the robustness of university fund-raising has been a dramatic increase in the number of donors courted by the development office.

More than 100,000 individuals are on the university’s donor rolls, up from about 17,000 just 14 years ago, Hall said.

During economic downturns, an extensive donor network can help protect universities from sharing in the suffering of one or two large donors.

“I’d rather have 50 people give me $1 million than to have one person give me $50 million,” Boren said.

The OU Outreach program, which solicits small donations from alumni by phone, has reached thousands of alumni, almost 27 percent of whom have donated to the university, according to data from Hall.

The average pledge is $103.42, up from $83.03 last year, putting the program on track to reach or surpass its total of $1.8 million raised last year.

Good numbers

At the end of September, donations during the 2008 calendar year were outpacing 2007’s, but Boren said he didn’t expect the trend to continue.

He said OU’s budget was not built on the assumption that private giving would remain at the record-breaking levels of last fiscal year, so the university operating budget won’t be in danger even if giving drops this quarter.

Although Boren and Hall expect the pace of donations to slow as the economic trouble stretches on, they are optimistic that donors will continue to give what they can.

“People want to be involved,” Hall said. “No one has said, ‘No’ [to a request for a gift]. Some people are saying, ‘Can we visit after the first of the year?’ But no one has said, ‘No.’”