Black Colleges Need More Alumni Support

ETTRICK, Va. -- Black colleges are refreshing outdated efforts to solicit former students, adding specialized staff, crafting personalized "asks," improving campuses and increasingly using Internet outreach to augment shrinking state and private funds with alumni dollars.

They're targeting a wider base -- more blacks are graduating -- and younger alumni who've moved into a broader range of careers from what are no longer mostly teachers colleges.

In one example, administrators plan computer network upgrades allowing for more targeted online giving at Atlanta's prestigious Morehouse College, where alumni contributions dipped from about 3.1 million dollars in 2006 to 1.3 million dollars last year.

The measures are commonplace at some mainstream institutions, but they represent a major investment at the nation's more than 100 historically black colleges and universities, where resources often are stretched.

It foreshadows an expected slowdown in levels of state higher education funding, which averaged a roughly 8 percent increase nationwide in the past fiscal year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Meanwhile, predominantly white universities are pushing harder to attract high-achieving black students. Often, it's with the type of scholarships alumni dollars fund.

Since 2006, the United Negro College Fund -- which represents 39 private historically black schools -- has granted more than 8.1 million dollars to 29 member schools for projects that include increasing alumni support.

Founded to serve blacks amid segregation, the colleges have kept tuition low to help underprivileged students. The colleges have historically been reluctant to ask former students, already paying off loans, to give more money; black alumni, meanwhile, haven't always had the income of graduates from predominantly white schools.

Among black colleges' top resources, say some, is the loyalty alumni feel to these schools known for opening their arms to all.