Fundraising and Soliciting Gifts Policy - Northern Michigan University

Purpose:

The NMU Foundation (the Foundation) is the official gift-receiving agency of Northern Michigan University (NMU). Accordingly, all solicitations, including social media and new technologies, requesting funds or in-kind gifts for any university-related purpose should be done in collaboration with the Foundation.  This collaboration is essential in order to:

• Avoid duplicate mailings and solicitations;
• Protect donor lists;
• Prevent over-solicitation of specific major donor prospects;
• Ensure state funds and property are not misused;
• Guarantee that NMU remains within its legal bounds in all solicitation efforts;
• Ensure proper reporting and receipting;
• Meet donor needs, expectations and rights;
• Create the best possible environment to generate the most private funds for NMU.

Applicability:

All University faculty, staff, students, and volunteers.

Policy:

The Foundation must be contacted prior to a fund raising mailing, solicitation or event being planned that uses university name or marks, resources, employees or facilities. All applicable fund raising activities should follow Foundation fund raising guidelines and all materials related to the fund raising effort should be sent to the Foundation for review and feedback in advance of the solicitation.  All gifts to NMU must be processed through the Foundation to insure proper recording and receipting.

Unless granted written permission from the President, any university faculty, staff or volunteer involved in solicitation or fund raising activities that do not directly benefit Northern Michigan University are not viewed to be acting on behalf of the university.  Therefore they are strictly prohibited from using the university name or marks, resources, employees or facilities free of charge.  Non-compliance to this policy will result in a hold on all departmental funds managed by the Foundation until the cost for the use of university resources, facilities and/or staff is reimbursed to the university by the violating department.

Student organizations conducting fund raising must receive prior approval from the Dean of Students, but are exempt from also receiving prior approval by the Foundation if the project goal is under $1,000.  Student fund raising projects conducted as a part of academic programming, curriculum or service learning are exempt.

DEFINITIONS

Solicitations refer to any request for money or donations through any method, for a university-related purpose, either existing or pending establishment.  In addition to traditional methods, these may utilize social media and/or other new technology means, non-governmental funds or in-kind gifts from alumni, friends, businesses, corporations or private foundations.

Social media and new technologies refer to the use of web-based and mobile technologies used for communication and interactive dialogue. These would include Web 2.0 technology that allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content, including (but not limited to) blogs (e.g. Tumblr) and microblogs (e.g. Twitter), collaborative projects (Wikipedia), content communities (e.g. YouTube, Flickr), social networking sites (e.g. Facebook, MySpace), virtual game worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft) and virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life).