8:30 – 10:30 a.m., Seymour Union, Room 220
Attendees
Voting Members
Mike Andriatch
Steve Barber
Jennifer Blood
Denise Copelton
Frances Dearing
Scott Haines
Tim Henry
Tom Hernandez
Sara Kelly
Stephanie Learn
Nautica Queen Murray
James Onley
Kathy Peterson
Heather Raczkowski
Logan Rath
Elizabeth Thorpe
Non-Voting Members
Thomas Chew
Eileen Daniel
Keith Davis
Crystal Hallenbeck-McPhall
Ian Harper: Co-Chair
Mike Harrison
Rachael Killion
President Macpherson
Paul Montanaro
Elliot Weininger: Co-Chair
Melissa Wight
Guests
Priya Banerjee
William Ruiz
Bonnie Swoger
Regrets
Voting Members
Lorraine Acker
Mike Andriatch
Susan Butler
Jana Craft
Sara Kelly
Theresa Martinez
Jamie Spiller
Robert Wyant
The meeting was called to order at 8:31 a.m.
Approval of the Minutes
Dr. Weininger asked the committee to review the September 18, 2025, meeting minutes. Ms. Murray motioned to approve the minutes; Ms. Blood seconded the motion. Members voted to approve the minutes. Therefore, the minutes were approved.
Announcements
None at this time.
Overview of Advancement and the Foundation
Mr. Andriatch provided an overview on Advancement and the Foundation. The following questions, answers and discussion points occurred during the presentation:
- Appreciation was extended for the presentation.
- The question was raised regarding if donors are feeling a call to action due to the higher education environment right now. It was stated that the political climate does put certain people in certain places. We are seeing more people investing current dollars instead of long term because they are afraid of what is going to happen down the road. Then there are people who have their 401ks doing well so they want to do their planned gifts now. So, we are seeing it on both ends.
- The question was raised regarding whether we are being proactive in managing race-based scholarships given the current political climate. It was stated thinking back to the early years in the Foundation around the late 1970s, we started some smaller scholarships back then. The $5,000 ones that supported women, supported people of color and some national original scholarships. You aren’t allowed to specify that a scholarship is for example for a female. This is based on the laws. Things changed a few years ago where we could modify our agreements to indicate preference given. When the Harvard case happened in 2023, most people look at that as admissions based but it impacted scholarships too. We had to start making those changes. Last November we got a notice that we had to look at all of our race based, gender and national origin scholarships. We had about 20 that we had to make modifications to and that was just the legality of the situation. We had to modify those and talk to the donors and relations of deceased donors who started those funds. One of things that we wanted to make sure stayed with the funds was the intent of the donor or their interest. So, if donor was involved in women’s causes, we make sure it is in the bio so people are looking at the whole story, but we can’t say the scholarship is only for women. We have gone through the process, and it was painful at times, but we have gotten through it. A lot of other schools have not gotten to the point that we are. It was added that when the Office of Civil Rights is involved, we really need to make sure we are doing everything that we can. The important thing is that these scholarships are open to all. It is not that these scholarships went away, they are now open to all. As an organization, we have to follow the federal laws that are in place.
- The question was raised regarding if any donors have taken any of the funds back due to the change in criteria. It was stated that just one and if that is the case we have to give the scholarship back. We just give them what they gave. It was added that typically we find another non-profit to give that money to so that it supports their cause.
- The suggestion was made to ask individuals with old insurance policies to consider our institution as a beneficiary. It was stated that we do that. We just had one that is going to end up being $1.25 million.
- The question was raised regarding when an individual indicates a donation in their will, at what point is the donation considered booked? It was stated that there is certain criteria, if you are 45 years old and it is put in your will, we can’t count it at all. You have to be around 65 in order for it to be booked. It was added that what we have also seen is that people who have pledged in a previous campaign and their investments are doing better than they anticipated, revisiting and looking to see if there is potential to give more. In addition, it was added that in that case part of that will go to the former campaign and part of it goes towards the new campaign.
- Confirmation was requested regarding two years ago, $7.2 million was set aside that will be used to fund scholarships in the future and take some pressure off of the budget and it has grown by $1.8 million. It was stated that it was $5 million one year and than another million in one fund and another one is $300,000 every year and it has gotten up to $1.2 million. So, you put those together that has gotten to $7.2 million.
- The question was raised regarding what the plans are to continue to grow this fund and to disperse it. It was stated that in terms of growing it every year, on the Foundation side we put $300,000 of unrestricted every year regardless. If we decided to do more, we could. From the reserve side that is an annual conversation. It is at least going to go up $300,000 each year. In terms of how we are going to use it, we have basically said in Cabinet let’s let this grow and see where it goes. All of that $8.9 million, if we needed to use it, we could pull it out right now.
- The question was raised regarding in terms of at what point do we start using the funds for scholarships. It was stated that we talk about it every year if the fund is ready now to use but we are at the phase where we want it to grow larger so that it will have a bigger impact.
- The question was raised regarding if there is a target number that the fund will reach before it is used towards scholarships. It was stated that it is the next president’s decision but right now the ultimate goal is to grow it to the point that it would cover the total cost of scholarships every year.
- The statement was made that 25-30 percent of universities in the United States have students manage part of the Foundation about 1-5 percent. They consider it an asset class. This is something we should consider for the future because this gets students buying in. It was stated that is a good conversation to have. Right now, on the Foundation Board, we have a Finance and Investment Committee that reports out to the students but maybe getting them more aligned with the committee.
- The question was raised regarding if Alumni Connection has gone away and if we are getting a new tool. It was stated that the tool has gone away. We just did the database transition that has taken everyone’s time over the last year. We do have a mentoring program that we are working with Thomas’s team on. We just found that the tool was expensive with how it was utilized. It was added that the Career Design Center is always looking to see how we can get students connected to alumni outside of the connections that faculty already have.
- The question was raised regarding how we compare to our peer institutions’ endowments. It was stated that our endowment is smaller than most. We couldn’t start fundraising until the late 1970s and we didn’t have a strong operation until the 2000s. Our annual fundraising dollars are strong compared to our sister schools. It is hard to get caught up on the endowment side, so we are always going to lag behind. It was added that SUNY does an annual report on fundraising so we can see what each school does annually. That is what they are tracking mostly more than the endowment side because they want to see the current activity. This report does not include the endowment.
SUBOA Update
Mr. Harper provided an update from the State University Business Officers Association (SUBOA). The following questions, answers and discussion points occurred during the presentation:
- Appreciation was extended for the presentation.
- The question was raised regarding whether there is going to be a change in the investment in international student enrollment due to the federal government’s changes or will it be business as usual? It was stated that it will be business as usual. There was not a discussion around international students. It was just around the changes in enrollment at University at Buffalo (UB) and University at Albany.
- The statement was made that due to the impacts on Medicaid, the State is going to have to pay much more to maintain it which means there will be less funding for other things such as cybersecurity. It was stated that is absolutely the biggest issue and that is why they put in that callback for this year’s budget. If it doesn’t happen this year because most of the Medicaid funding changes are down the road, but it will come into play because New York State has been a very generous supporter of Medicaid. So, the state is going to have to make some difficult decisions. Does it reduce the support for Medicaid, or does it take the money from elsewhere? The impact figures have been figured to be around $3-10 billion on SUNY. All of the messaging around next year’s budget is a belt tightening budget. One of the biggest advocacy pieces for next year is for another year of the union negotiated raises to be covered by the state. We have only had those covered by the state for the last couple of years and it is unusual. It is pretty likely that will not happen next year. When that happens, we have to pay those raises ourselves and that is the way we have almost always had to do it. Which leads into where we are in our structural deficit conversation. They will come out with formula for allocating out those cuts.
- The question was raised regarding if there are any other strategies to get Tuttle renovated, especially with the many times, we have done studies to renovate Tuttle and the amount of time and resources it takes to complete these studies. It was added that we were told that it is the worst building in SUNY. It was stated that in terms of alternative approaches, we are happy to have conversations on that. We haven’t been told that the renovation is not going to be funded. I am still optimistic that we will find a path to do the renovation. It was added that in October there is a President’s meeting and President Macpherson will be speaking to Bob again regarding the Tuttle renovation. What happened this past year was that there were 39 projects that got delayed primarily because of the hospitals. The hospitals in downstate and upstate have been working on not a sustainable budget. Their buildings are not great. They were talking about shutting down a hospital in downtown. Politically that doesn’t work very well. They have diverted a lot of funding to that area.
- The question was raised regarding if there is a guess on the timeline of the mid-year budget cuts. It was stated that the guess was sometime in September and since that has come and gone, the guess is now sometime in October. It was added that it will probably not be before the President’s meeting which is in the middle of October.
- It was stated that we need to remember that we are in a pretty good situation. We are in a better situation than a lot of our sister schools. This is why we have built our reserves and why we work on a balanced budget. There are hard times ahead and we are well placed to weather those hard times.
- The question raised regarding the reserves and the Foundation reserves being separate. It was stated they are separate and never between shall they meet.
- The question was raised regarding the best way to respond to faculty who are questioning why there are budget cuts when we are recruiting these big classes three years in a row, and we are bringing tuition revenue. It was stated that I would respond in two ways. First, we have had a very high structural deficit, so the focus has been to bring that deficit down as much as possible and we have made good progress there and the enrollment numbers have helped. Second, is to prepare for the future and what could potentially come down the path, and we have just talked about what the state budget could look like going forward. There is an element about being cautious about that and to see how it plays out. We have tried to make investments where we can. There is far more demand than supply and we have tried to prioritize at the Cabinet level. It was added that we recently looked at the number of faculty that we had, and the number is 302 but if we look at the number for 2025 it is back up to 336. There are investments being made in the number of faculty that we have on campus, and we have made other investments in things that are trying to help alleviate the workloads for other individuals. For example, the investments in mental health in mental health support and case support to try to shift some of the burden from faculty advisors over to trained professionals. We won’t alleviate everything, but we have made a lot of investments. As far as budget cuts to individual departments that may be happening at a school or division level and what we need to look at what’s happening at that point if there is a different priority in that division that may have been directing some of those budget cuts. The Provost is looking very carefully at the overall divisional budget to see where things can be reallocated. Yesterday we made a decision that there was a membership that we have had for a couple of years, and we don’t need that membership anymore so those funds can go back into the budget a support different things. There may have been some individual department budget cuts but there have also been some strategic investments we are trying to make like experiential learning and other opportunities that we are still offering to people. I would ask people to take a wider picture, but it is really hard when you can’t do one that you want to do that you could do before. I know departments are struggling and we should really have a conversation about that. In addition, it was added that the SUNY system does look at various financial metrics. Some institutions are in the “penalty box” and from a financial standpoint they are not sustainable. They are not far from here geographically. They go through a fairly torturous review every two weeks. They are going through what their financial actions are to get back on a more even keel from a financial perspective. There is an institution where there is no travel permitted. These campuses are called focus campuses. It was added that we should encourage faculty to attend meetings such as these, especially the ones on the financial model.
- It was stated that the money for experiential learning for internships has been extremely helpful to the nursing students. They have to pay $6 a day for clinical just for parking and then there is gas, and they go all over the place. It is really affecting the students in a positive way. That is something that we didn’t have a couple of years ago, so faculty need to see that is where we are putting some money and it is very needed for our students.
- The statement was made that the fear is with the potential budget cuts, those incremental funds will go away for the Career Design Center, Graduate Studies and the mental health area and there are a lot of student services across campus that had those. My hope is that when budget cuts do come that it is not in those areas because that investment takes away from the strategic goals and the plans that they want us to make. We have given $600,000 – 700,000 to students over the last four to five years. It was added that you are wise to consider those funds as funds that might not be sustained by SUNY. That doesn’t mean we won’t sustain some of those things. We will have to make some strategic decisions about what things we are investing in. We may have to scale back or use reserves for this instead of for that. There are opportunities to do these things, but I think from a state or SUNY prospective they are probably at risk than others.
- The statement was made that the Five-year Financial Model will be presented at our December 4 meeting and there will be a Town Hall meeting later that day to present it to the campus community as well.
- It was stated that financial sustainability is also a red alert to Middle States as well. People don’t think of it that way, but it can be a lot more painful on an annual basis if we get into trouble financially
JPBC Survey
Mr. Harper announced that we will be providing a feedback survey for members to complete after each meeting, and it is anonymous. This will be located in the meeting materials folder.
Additional Items from the Committee
None at this time.
The meeting was adjourned at 10:01 a.m.