UNCF Gray’s Way
With Billion-Dollar Bill Gates Coup, ‘Bottom-Line’ Bill Gray Affirms His Stature and His Leadership Style
FAIRFAX, Va. — When software tycoon William H. Gates III made a $1 billion pledge earlier this month to fund scholarships for minority college and graduate students in science, engineering, math and education, he turned to the United Negro College Fund to administer the massive gift.
In doing so, Gates delivered a gilded endorsement that instantly quells any doubts that this organization that began in relative obscurity more than five decades ago today has become a behemoth to be reckoned with in the evolving American higher education landscape.
The software mogul’s announcement also may prove to be the crowning achievement in the career of William H. Gray III, the former Baptist minister turned rainmaker, given Gates’ deliberate, contemplative approach to giving away a chunk of his massive fortune. He is not one to just toss money at any old group.
Gray, president and chief executive officer of The College Fund/UNCF, single-handedly orchestrated the donation — which is the single largest philanthropic gift to date in the history of American higher education.
It is testimony to Gray’s salesmanship skills and ability to open doors that he arranged an audience with Gates and his wife, Melinda, while traveling with them in Alabama.
“Between Montgomery and Demopolis, we discussed their concern with the challenges of access to higher education for minorities,” Gray says, recounting his discussions with America’s wealthiest couple.
The coup offers further proof Gray has a Midas touch for fund raising, soliciting unheard of sums of money that have propelled the UNCF from a modest charity into the nation’s wealthiest Black nonprofit — one that outstrips even such well-known groups as the NAACP and the Urban League.
“This gift represents a substantial change from where we, as a nation, began this century — when minorities were denied access to higher education and opportunities to participate in American life,” Gray said during a news conference to announce the Gates Millennium Scholarships Program.
“It’s an extraordinarily big responsibility to administer all that money. It’s a sign that UNCF will be here for quite a long time,” says Stacy Palmer, editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, a Washington, D.C.-based biweekly trade newspaper that tracks nonprofit organizations.
A Tough Task Master
Nearly everyone agrees the credit goes to Gray. But the charismatic former Philadelphia congressman’s success at turning the UNCF, founded 55 years ago to raise funds for private Black colleges, into the darling charity for everyone from Manhattan’s elite to Microsoft’s co-founder to middle-class White Americans, has not come without a price.
Gray has numerous critics. Former employees cast him as a man who rules with an iron fist, one whose brash, aggressive and occasionally tyrannical management style make him an insufferable boss who runs roughshod over those who work for him and the organization.
Others complain that the UNCF operates under a cloak of secrecy, releasing only that information that paints the group in a favorable light, and that Gray keeps its 39 member institutions on a tight leash, tolerating no criticism. Because it is private, the UNCF does not have to disclose certain financial information.
Indeed, one is hard pressed to find anyone within the UNCF inner circle willing to publicly voice their criticisms of Gray, who has been known to reward UNCF boosters who were loyal supporters with lucrative, UNCF-secured contracts. Preferring not to take chances, observers note that he leaves little to chance and that he tends to surround himself with those whose strengths he knows he can count on.
Some fellow higher education advocates contend Gray and the UNCF have grabbed more than their fair share of the spotlight — and donations — given UNCF’s constituency. Some also fault Gray for playing fast and loose with facts and figures, making it seem the UNCF helps far more students than it does.
Although The College Fund/UNCF’s 39 member institutions enroll a mere 3.4 percent of all Black students attending the nation’s 3,500 colleges and universities, Gray still is considered the most powerful advocate for African Americans in all of higher education.
The College Fund represents all but a handful of the nation’s historically Black private colleges and universities. Its member schools account for 25 percent of all students attending the nation’s 118 historically and predominantly Black institutions.
Gray “makes no distinction between the colleges he represents and the other Black colleges that don’t belong to UNCF,” says one critic who requested anonymity because the person still has to work with Gray on occasion. “The public is confused. They don’t know that he only speaks for 39 Black colleges. It is important that the country invest in all its institutions.”
A Competitive Reputation
Gray and his supporters dismiss such complaints by pointing to The College Fund’s record under his eight-year tenure.
The UNCF last year ranked as the second-largest education nonprofit in the United States — ahead of the National Merit Scholarship Corp., according to an analysis by The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Observers say Gray has molded the UNCF into an organization that wields power and influence far beyond what its founders ever envisioned. It’s now considered as influential in the halls of Congress and federal agencies as it is in Fortune 500 fund-raising circles.
“Here is a group with a critical mission. The UNCF is the most visible organization in Black higher education today,” says Dr. Arthur Levine, president of Columbia University’s Teacher’s College. “And Bill Gray has given it a greater sense of direction, visibility and power. That was an important thing to have happen in this country — particularly with the number of Black colleges feeling hard hit both demographically and economically.”
Dwyane Ashley, executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Fund and a former aid to Gray, says that his former boss “decided that the UNCF would become the voice of Black higher education and Gray would go out and sell the institutions. He saw far ahead where the organization should be.”
The UNCF last year raised $139 million. Its imprint can be found on everything from higher education policy and research, both here and abroad, to government contracting to providing schools with technical assistance. It even offers scholarships now for Black students who attend traditionally White institutions as well as for White students who attend historically Black colleges and universities.
Some wealthier UNCF institutions, like Spelman College in Atlanta, that don’t need the group’s fund-raising muscle anymore, remain in the UNCF fold because of other perks — such as student scholarship programs, faculty research and development initiatives and eligibility for participation in government-sponsored, UNCF-administered research programs.
The programs run in the hundreds — everything from the IBM Faculty Fellowship Program and the Prudential Faculty Development Program to the UNCF-John Heinz Environmental Fellows Program and the Henry C. McBay Research Fellowship.
UNCF-administered initiatives funded by the federal government include the UNCF-Department of Defense Infrastructure Development Assistance Program and the UNCF-Department of Environmental Education program.
“As the president of Spelman College, I never even gave [leaving the UNCF] a second of a thought,” says former Spelman College president Johnnetta Cole. “I couldn’t imagine that Spelman would pull out of the UNCF. For at least two reasons: No. 1, From a purely selfish standpoint, I think it would have hurt Spelman. I think people would have said, how dare she, how dare Johnnetta Cole [and Spelman] feel that they are so above any other historically Black institutions.
“No. 2: In the most sincere sense of collectivity, it was Spelman’s responsibility to remain there. A rising tide can lift all boats. And so whatever Spelman was able to accomplish it is because we were associated with UNCF.”
Evoking Confidence
Driving up to UNCF’s national headquarters in a shimmering high rise here in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Fairfax, Va., — one of the richest counties in America — it is immediately apparent that this is no ordinary charity.
It boasts a tony address, next door to Mobil Oil Corp.’s world headquarters. Ceiling-to-floor glass doors greet visitors as they approach a reception area, seemingly designed to eliminate the belief that this is anything but a top-shelf operation.
Inside this rent-free office space provided by a major Washington, D.C., federal contractor, Gray oversees a staff of 211 employees. Compare that with another Black higher education organization, the National Association for Equal Opportunity, in Higher Education, know as NAFEO, which has only 28 staff members and until recently was housed in an aging, unrenovated school building.
No question about it, Gray runs a tight ship inside these well-appointed quarters that could hold their own with any corporate setting across America. The staff is hard at work, never quite knowing when their no-nonsense boss might pop in on their work space to check up on them.
That the UNCF now is charged with managing a $1 billion scholarship initiative over a designated period of 20 years is seen as a validation of its record in handling fund-raising campaigns, and scholarship and research programs, observers say.
In its 1998 fiscal year, the UNCF administered more than $9.2 million in scholarship funds. In addition to scholarships, the UNCF doled out another $60 million to its member schools for capital and operating expenses.
Under terms of the Gates Millennium Scholarships Program, the UNCF will manage $50 million annually. The program will fund scholarships for 1,000 new students each year, starting next fall, eventually helping 20,000 economically disadvantaged students who can choose any college, not just UNCF member schools.
The program will offer support for four years of undergraduate work and for graduate students. Support will be provided to students in math, science, engineering, education and library science. The Hispanic Scholarship Fund and the American Indian Scholarship Fund will assist UNCF in promotion and candidate recruitment.
“The impact is going to be tremendous. I can see [the program] doubling the numbers of minorities getting Ph.Ds and master’s in certain fields,” says Dr. Isaac M. Colbert, graduate student dean at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Colbert believes the program will help stimulate efforts by college outreach programs and K-12 school systems to ensure there will be sufficient numbers of minorities ready to take advantage of the scholarships.
“The responsibility will be on us to have the kids ready,” Colbert says.
Not everyone is as thrilled. Rodney Jackson, founder and director of the National Conference on Black Philanthropy, says that it is “a generous gift, and it’ll probably have an impact on increasing minority representation in math and science fields.
But he adds that “the emphasis is on the wrong end of the educational spectrum. I would rather see the support go to the improvement of primary and secondary math and science education of minority students. Too many African American and Hispanic students are not getting the preparation they need to pursue math and science education at the college level.”
Impressive Growth
Though the Gates pledge brought a fresh round of media glare to the UNCF, with front-page stories in national newspapers and spots on all three major network news shows, the organization has sought high visibility since it was founded in 1944 by then-Tuskegee Institute President Dr. Frederick D. Patterson.
Yet the 1990s have represented a decade of phenomenal growth for The College Fund. Perhaps most significant has been the organization’s expanded fund raising and program administration activities.
The College Fund’s most recent capital campaign drive, Campaign 2000, yielded $280 million over nearly five years — the largest amount ever raised by a consortium of historically Black institutions.
In addition, the Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment last year gave the UNCF a $42 million grant to help member colleges with capital needs, student scholarship money, faculty training and curriculum development. The award stunned the American higher education community because, at the time, it represented the largest single grant the foundation had awarded to any educational group.
“Forty million dollars is an attention getter,” says Dr. Humphrey Doermann, former president of the Minnesota-based Bush Foundation, a leading provider of funds for higher education initiatives. Doermann is co-author of a forthcoming book on Black private colleges.
“UNCF has been at the center of the strongest network of any group of private colleges in the country,” Doermann says, adding the cooperation within that network even surpasses that of Ivy League schools and the Midwestern private college networks.
Levine notes that a little less than two decades ago, many higher education experts feared that private Black colleges might become extinct, much like private women’s colleges and universities.
“Bill Gray and the UNCF have managed to improve the climate dramatically and make Black colleges much more visible and more attractive to students because of the money he has been able to raise.
“There is a lot of money out there today. In fact, this country is awash in money right now because of the emerging economy and Wall Street,” he says. “Bill Gray makes an attractive target for some of that giving because of his background. Here’s a guy who headed the House budget committee.
“So he comes through not just as another academic asking for money — but as someone who has experience in the world of finance, government and business,” Levine says.
In addition to funds raised in support of its members’ basic needs, the UNCF under Gray’s leadership has raised impressive sums to fund designated programs — known in the philanthropic community as “restricted gifts” or “restricted funds.”
Usually designated for scholarships in specific fields, for curriculum improvements or for faculty training programs, restricted gifts have rolled into the UNCF in part because philanthropists and foundations have become more selective about the use of their donations.
“Bill Gray has taken fund raising to a new level,” says Dorothy Yancy, president of Johnson C. Smith University. “There is an energy and aggressiveness about him when he talks about Black colleges. He’s been able to go into board rooms and convince people to contribute who hadn’t contributed before.”
Yancy cites the $1 million her university received through the UNCF from the Lilly Foundation as an example. The grant has allowed Johnson C. Smith to jump-start renovation of its administration offices in an historic building where plumbing and wiring sorely needed updating.
But Yancy says it was difficult to raise money for the project until the university got the Lilly grant. “Once we got the Lilly money, we got more encouraging calls to help us renovate the building,” she recalls.
Another bonus, she says, was the technical advice from the UNCF that the college received in preparing the proposal. “We’ve never gotten technical assistance like that before,” she says.
“Gray has diversified the sources of support” for UNCF colleges, says Dr. Shirley A.R. Lewis, president of Paine College. Grants from foundations like Lilly and the Mellon Foundation have been a “Godsend for a small, private, tuition-driven college like Paine,” she says.
Nevertheless, some college presidents are concerned about the growing trend toward restricted giving.
“I know donors are more inclined to give restricted gifts,” says Lewis. “But we must articulate the need for unrestricted funds. UNCF is our most valuable source for unrestricted funds.”
The trend toward restricted funds coupled with The College Fund’s behemoth-sized presence in the marketplace pose a bitter situation for others who are attempting to raise money for Black college students.
“When we go out and meet with potential donors, the first thing they say is, ‘We gave to UNCF,'” Ashley says. Still, he adds, Gray and The College Fund have paved the way.
Gray has “already made a case for Black colleges,” he says. “So, we just educate them about the [61] public Black colleges.”
