San Diego is starting to feel like home for our newest Vice Chancellor – External Relations Debra Neuman and her family. Neuman joined the UC San Diego team last summer, moving here from Georgia where she was Senior Vice President, External Relations at CARE USA, one of the world’s largest humanitarian organizations fighting global poverty. As Vice Chancellor – External Relations, she now manages fundraising, University Communications and Public Affairs, as well as relations with donors, alumni, local and state governments. She also serves as the president of the UC San Diego Foundation. In this interview, she talks about her priorities for External Relations, the university’s upcoming 50th anniversary, and how the global economic decline is impacting fundraising.

Neuman: Like many who come here from outside California, I was keenly aware of the UC system and its tremendous education value but — hard to believe now — I wasn’t aware of UC San Diego. Once I started investigating, I discovered an incredible gem — the nation’s seventh best public university and sixth in the nation for research and development, perched on a spectacular mesa in one of the most beautiful communities in the world.  With its 50-year track record of producing some of the nation’s most brilliant undergraduate and graduate students, spawning innumerable entrepreneurial start-up companies, nurturing Nobel Prize and other award-winning faculty members and researchers, and fostering an extensive community of passionate donors and advocates, everything attracted me to UC San Diego.

Neuman: An important part of raising any institution’s profile is developing a clear and consistent message system that allows all parts of the institution to articulate what makes it unique. Based on work started before I arrived here, we have the fundamentals of such a system in place with our “Local Impact, National Influence, Global Reach” platform, and it’s gratifying to see how many departments — both academic and administrative — are creatively adapting it to tell their stories. That’s just the beginning, however. This year, we plan to launch UC San Diego’s first significant external marketing campaign and, over the coming years, we will leverage every opportunity available for local, national and international media placements; continue to build support among local and state elected officials; seek the help of loyal donors to introduce us to their networks; and build our presence in communities with strong pockets of UC San Diego alumni to engage them more with the university.

Neuman: Great organizations share a common thread. They bring the best and brightest people together to solve important problems that make a substantive difference in the world. The greatest organizations are also masters at attracting loyal supporters who embrace their mission and vision. Key to achieving and sustaining this support is developing creative ways to illustrate our impact to supporters and helping them engage with us in ways that are mutually beneficial. While that’s the core mission of External Relations, it actually takes the active participation of all parts of the campus community. 

We have many examples of programs that connect donors and community members to campus, but one of the most critical opportunities we must seize is that of building support among UC San Diego alumni. With over 123,000 alumni, we have reached critical mass and are poised to begin a new era of alumni engagement. Over the past year, we have re-engineered our Alumni Affairs group and have developed a broad range of new programs that hold great promise for developing thousands of long-lasting supporters from this community. Check out the Web site for our Alumni Association here to get a better idea of what these programs are about.

Neuman: We begin 2009 with mixed emotions. On the one hand, we celebrate and are grateful for the enormous progress UC San Diego continues to make in research, discovery and education.  UC San Diego’s reputation and rankings have never been higher. On the other hand, we are very concerned about the depths of the global financial crisis and the uncertainty it brings.

Our endowment, like most others, has experienced great volatility and serious decline during the last few months of 2008. Similarly, the UC systemwide budgetary resources, and accordingly all campus units, are under great pressure due to the financial crisis and the impact on State of California revenue. We know that our donors have experienced similar declines in their portfolios, and we are concerned about implications for support from corporations, foundations and individuals in 2009.

Forecasting what might happen over the next 12 to 24 months in this economic climate is difficult, but if past recessions are a guide, many nonprofit institutions can expect receipts to go down. We need to be realistic about short-term expectations and, like other campus units, we are making contingency plans to respond to recessionary pressures. At the same time, we should avoid drastic responses and recognize that the strongest institutions become more aggressive during economic slumps, while weaker ones drop out of the market completely.

Finally, and most important, we must maintain strong communication with all levels of donors, redouble our stewardship efforts and stay in touch with loyal supporters who have stopped giving. In a recent article on this topic, The Chronicle of Philanthropy explains: “Experts say it is far better to keep in touch, because those donors are more likely to resume giving to organizations with which they have an unbroken relationship.”

Neuman: UC San Diego’s 50th anniversary represents a great opportunity to generate excitement for fresh development opportunities, lay the foundation for our next campaign and build our base of support among students, alumni, donors and other friends. It will also be an important time to celebrate and strengthen 50 years of partnership with the San Diego community and develop a strong, clear message about the university’s strategic vision for the future.

Although Nov. 18, 1960 has been identified as “Founder’s Day,” when the Regents voted to name the upper campus UC San Diego, our anniversary will not be celebrated as a single event. Instead, with leadership provided by an Executive Committee that I co-chair along with Senior Vice Chancellor — Academic Affairs Paul Drake, Vice Chancellor – Student Affairs Penny Rue and Academic Senate Chair Dan Donoghue, we look forward to engaging our community of students, faculty and friends in the design of a full year of creative and engaging events, seminars, and other activities tied to the academic calendar year, starting with a 50-day countdown in the Fall of 2010 and ending with Commencement 2011. We’re currently working to develop a 50th anniversary Web site. You will soon be able to find a link to the anniversary information on UC San Diego’s homepage.

Neuman: While East and West Coast denizens like to debate which coast is superior, there’s one thing we share in common — proximity to, and love of, the ocean. Having grown up on Long Island and having spent most of my life near large bodies of water, I love being near the Pacific Ocean. My husband was a scout swimmer in the Marine Corps, went to boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego and actually trained at Camp Matthews, which was the original heart of the UC San Diego campus.  Being back here nearly 50 years later is like coming home. Our son, Josh, is now on his own, but he loves the Southern California climate and topography, and is delighted to visit whenever he can.  

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