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Campaign Arizona creating leadership team

Campaign Arizona - UA's fundraising effort - is in the process of creating a President's Leadership Team to aide the university in raising the amount of donations the university gets each year.

Originally named the Capital Campaign and later re-named Gift Campaign, the newly named Campaign Arizona has not set a goal amount.

The leadership team will be comprised of about 50 high-profile alumni, corporations and other public figures.

University of Arizona President Peter Likins is traveling across the country to meet with UA alumni clubs and other potential members of the leadership team.

"I let them know that we are in the planning stages of a campaign," Likins said. "At this stage, I'm not knocking on doors asking them for checks."

Likins has visited Denver, Boston, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas, Washington D.C., Chicago and San Antonio, where he met with UA alumni and San Antonio Spurs guards Steve Kerr and Sean Elliott.

Future trips will be to Seattle, Portland, Ore., Los Angeles and Las Vegas, Likins said.

Likins is accompanied on each trip by a different faculty members who provide information on their specific department's needs.

"We're showcasing the faculty to show the overall vision of the institution," said Dana Wier, vice president of the UA Foundation.

The trips that Likins takes are sometimes followed up with a visit from one of the UA's deans.

The UA Foundation is also working to create a database for the entire university that will keep track of who has been asked for donations and who has donated money.

"(The UA Foundation) is designing a database infrastructure on past contributors, one common database," Likins said.

In the past, individual colleges received donations and have their own databases of contributors. By having one coherent strategy, the UA will not need to ask for funds twice from the same source.

In addition to creating a database, officials are compiling a list of projects that could be completed with donated funds.

"We very broadly solicited ideas about purposes we should serve," Likins said. "Its kind of a menu, a very substantial menu."

A potential donor who has an interest in a university college or program can refer to the list of projects their funds could make possible, Likins said.

The UA has raised $75 million each of the past two years, and if the university continues to raise that amount, "over seven years you have over $500 million," Likins said.

The campaign's structure is expected to be unveiled Oct. 6.

"October sixth we'll have a grand celebration," Likins said. "We'll have it in the stadium, bring in a thousand people and put on a show."