Capital campaigns are not just about raising a lot of money -- they are about raising a lot of money for specific academic priorities. That is a major lesson learned from Cornell's last record-setting $1.5 billion campaign, which ran from 1990 through 1995.

"We learned how very important it is to set campaign priorities that align with strategic academic goals," said Laurie Robinson, Cornell director of development, who served as director of staff and volunteer development during the 1990s campaign. "We succeeded by making a very deliberate effort to raise gifts for the endowment."

The planning, training and the focus worked. Cornell exceeded its $1.25 billion goal, offsetting significant reductions in government support for higher education at that time. But, according to Robinson, Cornell fund-raisers understood that it was "entirely possible to meet your overall dollar goal and still miss the mark." So they made sure that didn't happen.

When completed, the campaign had pushed Cornell's endowment to $1.75 billion, 27 percent of which was attributable to gifts made during the fund raising. That translated to a 91 percent increase in endowed faculty positions; a 99 percent increase in endowment per student; and a 114 percent increase in the number of endowed student-aid funds. Just as remarkably, by the end of 1995, 78 percent of total contributions had been received in cash.

Robinson said a key to that kind of success was largely due to thorough and tireless efforts "to explain to potential donors exactly how the endowment worked, over and over again," she said.

"When you are asking someone for $2 million to endow a professorship, you really need to make a case for making a gift in perpetuity and prove why that's a good investment," Robinson said.

Another important lesson learned: The best donors for a new campaign are donors who were discovered during the last campaign.

"That's put us in a very good position for this campaign," she said.

Robinson said Cornell has a tradition of running successful campaigns -- and she should know. She also served for part of the university's 1975-80 capital campaign as an associate director for Cornell's upstate regional office for alumni affairs and development. That campaign raised $250 million -- which was as daunting a figure in the pre-Reagan-era economy as $4 billion is in our own time.