After Dr. Larry Earvin became Huston-Tillotson University president, he crafted an annual black-tie gala to raise scholarship funds. Despite the country’s economic doldrums, Earvin’s event this year netted proceeds pushing the cumulative total since 2004 to more than $1 million.
When Beverly Hogan became Tougaloo College president, she urged alumni to make charitable donations supporting the school. One of Hogan’s recent initiatives has Tougaloo automatically collecting $20-a-month minimum contributions from each graduate signing up for bank-account drafts.
Hogan and Earvin are among leaders of private historically Black colleges and universities whose fundraising skills have helped their institutions survive and thrive in their niches.
Regardless of their constituencies, the overwhelming majority of U. S. private schools are tuition-dependent.
“It’s always hard for small, minorityserving institutions to educate low-income students,” says Dr. Michael Lomax, United Negro College Fund president.
More than 50 percent of students at UNCF schools like HT and Tougaloo have families whose annual income is $25,000 or less, Lomax says.
Many of these schools are lesser known among the general public than the wealthier Morehouse and Spelman colleges, which boast endowments that are at least four times more. But fi nancially modest schools play as big a role in producing Black professionals. More than 40 percent of Black doctors and lawyers in Mississippi, for instance, are Tougaloo graduates.
