Antioch College Closing?

Effort to save college faces trustee deadline next week

Villagers can help Villagers who wish to help the alumni effort to save the college may participate in a variety of ways. First and foremost, those who wish to make a donation should do so as soon as possible by filling out a pledge form online at www.Antiochians.org, or by calling Risa Grimes at 800-411-6780. Alumni board members encourage villagers to put signs in their yards showing visiting trustees villagers’ support for saving the college. New yellow signs can be picked up at Sam and Eddie’s Open Books and Unfinished Creations. The Yellow Springs community is invited to join alumni board members on campus for dinner in the Antioch cafeteria on Thursday, Oct. 25 at 6 p.m. The gathering of community members, students, alumni and staff will celebrate the outpouring of support for the college. The cost of dinner will be $6. RSVP to the office of alumni relations by Sunday, Oct. 21, at 769-1200. Other events are being planned and will be in next week’s News. To view the schedule for the entire weekend of meetings between the alumni board and the University Board of Trustees, visit www.antioch-college.edu/alumni/.

By Diane Chiddister

Attorney Rick Daily of Denver is a busy guy. First, he has a law practice to tend. And right now he also serves as the executive director of the Antioch College Alumni Board, and as such, he is one of those leading the effort to save the college.

In an interview last week, Daily, who was waiting to catch a plane to go raise money, estimated that he puts in about 70 hours a week on Antioch business, on top of his work. Yes, his law practice is suffering. So why does he do this?

“Antioch transformed my life,” he said, adding, “Someone has to do it.”

Catherine Jordan of Minneapolis, another alumni board leader, puts in about 30 to 40 hours per week on the effort to save the college, on top of her job as CEO of Achieve Minneapolis, an educational consulting business. Her relationships are suffering, she sleeps little, but, as she sees it, she has no other choice.

“I couldn’t not take this on,” Jordan said in a recent interview. “Antioch is such a part of the fabric of my being that I can’t imagine not doing it.”

These Antioch alumni, and many others like them, provide continual inspiration to Risa Grimes, the college’s director of development, who has also hit the fund-raising trail in recent weeks to save the college.

“This is an amazing story,” Grimes said last week about the alumni effort. “Every day I’m blown away by the quality of work coming out of this.”

Consequently, she said, “I’m hopeful.”

Deadline soon
The efforts of Daily, Jordan, and many other alumni are all aimed toward one goal: the meeting of the Antioch University Board of Trustees, which will take place Oct. 25 through 28 in Yellow Springs.

After the trustees announced in June the college would suspend operation in 2008 due to financial exigency, the alumni fought back. Many mobilized at their June alumni reunion and began raising money, and at a special joint alumni/board meeting in August in Cincinnati, the alumni board representatives came armed with $8 million in cash and pledges. They sought the opportunity to raise enough funds to keep the college open, with the stipulation that the college sever ties with the university and develop an indepedent board.

After hearing in Cincinnati, testimonies for the college from Antioch alums, faculty, staff, students and villagers, the trustees agreed to give the alumni board a chance to develop a viable business plan, and to raise enough money to keep the college open, by their October meeting.

Two months have passed since that time, and the deadline looms. According to Daily, he is “relentlessly hopeful,” about the alumni effort.

“I think we have vision and the will to make this happen,” Daily said last week from Denver. “There are plenty of like-minded people out there. We’re unstoppable.”

To Jordan, what’s been most inspiring is the outpouring of support since the June reunion. While alumni have not actually met together since that time, there have been “thousands” of e-mail communication and many phone calls to organize the effort, Jordan said. Overall, hundreds of people are deeply involved.

“We’re embodying something that has real heart and soul,” she said. “This will not die. We will persevere.”

Daunting task
Still, the alumni know well that their task is daunting. Although the trustees have not named an exact amount that the alumni must raise, the alumni hope for about $100 million over the next four years, to gain financial stability for the college, according to Grimes.

In the immediate future, they will need anywhere from $6 to $12 million in this fiscal year, Daily said, and while they have already raised $13 million in pledges since June, a portion of that amount will not be available until 2010. The alumni group estimates that it needs to raise $25 million in 2008, which includes about $13 million that the university has said is owed for past debts.

In the past few weeks, a team of alumni board members and staff has crisscrossed the country, making personal visits to prospective donors. The fund-raising effort was spearheaded by alumnus Matthew Derr, a professional fundraiser from -Massachusetts who visited the campus several weeks ago to devise a plan and “did a year’s worth of work in a week,” according to Grimes. The fundraising plan identifies 103 possible donors who will be asked to make donations of $100,000 or higher.

“The important news is that Antiochians have plenty of wealth,” Grimes said. “They’re not all social workers. They’re bright and accomplished.”

However, asking for big gifts in no way minimizes the need for small ones as well, according to Grimes, who urges everyone who may someday give to Antioch to do so now. Across the country this weekend, alumni are holding special Antioch events to help raise more money. Alumni are also focused on finishing a sustainable business plan for the college, Daily said.

In early October, the alumni board met with Antioch University Chancellor Toni Murdock and University Chair Art Zucker to review the business plan to date.

“We asked for hard questions and we got them,” Daily said. “And we think we can handle them.”

Also at that meeting, the university agreed to share more detailed financial information necessary for the alums to create a viable financial model for the college, according to Daily.

The fundraising effort also benefits from Grimes’s talented and dedicated staff, who are also on the road making contacts, she said. Most of the college’s fundraising effort is being supported by the monies raised by the alumni since June, and about $700,000 has been raised so far for travel, Daily said.

The fund-raising efforts are in full swing now, and involve hundreds of alums. However, they got a late start due to difficulties and misunderstandings with the university administration, including the sudden departure of former Antioch College President Steve Lawry, the mysterious lockdown of the college’s development offices and an unexpected move of the development offices to a new space. But while those events have made a difficult effort more challenging, they will not dampen the alumni efforts overall, Daily said.

“Do we have obstacles in our path? Yes, we do,” he said. “But they’re insignificant. We have a clear path and we know what to do.”

One of the obvious challenges faced by alumni is that the college cannot recruit new students until the trustees lift the suspension that was imposed last summer. Even in the best case scenario, if the suspension is lifted next week, the college cannot start recruiting new students until then.

“We’ll go dim a bit next year,” Daily said. “We’ll have a small entering class. But we’ll keep the college open.”

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com