Aligning on impact: Reframing the value of academic research for donors

• With higher education research funding in flux, institutions are exploring new funding models, including philanthropy.
• Donors seek impact-driven giving. Colleges, universities, and research institutions must reframe research success to highlight broader outcomes that align with donor interests and institutional mission.
• By centering real-world outcomes and demonstrating how research addresses urgent challenges, institutions can strengthen donor relationships, expand engagement opportunities, and secure long-term investment in their research enterprise.

Higher education research has long been the source of remarkable innovation and cutting-edge discoveries that change our understanding of ourselves and our world. However, for a sector steeped in innovation and creativity, there’s been little to no change in recent decades in the way we talk about research or define what a successful research program looks like.

At the same time, the funding landscape for academic research has changed dramatically. With federal funding no longer ensured, colleges, universities, and research institutions are exploring alternative solutions, such as partnerships with global universities, state-level funding, and for-profit opportunities. Private philanthropy is also under consideration for the funding mix, with university advancement teams facing increased pressure to bring in additional funding from a shrinking donor pool.

While philanthropy alone won’t fill the gaps — in 2021, philanthropic funding for university and nonprofit research was one-tenth the size of federal funding — it is expected to grow significantly in the coming years.

This shift calls for new ways of demonstrating the value of academic research to potential donors. Traditional success metrics have focused on quantitative indicators, such as the annual National Science Foundation Higher Education Research and Development (NSF HERD) survey, which ranks universities on total research and development (R&D) expenditures. Other oft-cited figures include the number and size of secured competitive research grants, publications and citations, patents and start-ups, or prestigious awards given to top researchers.

While important, such success metrics were not designed with new audiences in mind. Over time, researchers have honed the story of why their work matters — but if they want that story to resonate with a broader group of private funders, a fundamental shift in the narrative is necessary.

Sophisticated donors and donor families consider their giving to be both a gesture of goodwill and a thoughtful investment. The days when loyalty drove donors to give to a particular institution are dwindling; instead, today’s donors give through institutions to make an impact on the issues they care most about.

Outside of medicine, few research enterprises have made a concerted effort to position research as worthy of donor investment. However, donors can be motivated to support the discoveries and outcomes that research makes possible. Savvy donors are ready to invest in research if universities can explain to them why it matters. Focusing on impact and real-world outcomes helps shift the perceived value of a college, university, or research institution from abstract theory toward ground-breaking solutions to human challenges. This adds the benefit of chipping away at academia’s “ivory tower” reputation.

When made effectively, the value proposition for research is expansive and can encompass a wide variety of donor interests and motivations. Donors who have historically given to support the student experience may be interested in investing in opportunities for undergraduates to engage in faculty-led research. Another donor might be passionate about addressing grand challenges such as climate change, public health, or urban renewal, any of which might be advanced by the work in progress in labs across campus.

In whatever form it takes, prioritizing impact helps to position a donor as an active partner with the institution, working collaboratively to move the needle on a concrete issue in a meaningful way.

Before research institutions can determine which metrics and messaging will resonate most with donors, they must clarify their own definitions of success and weave them into a broader narrative that aligns with the institution’s mission. Other countries already emphasize this broader approach in their research funding infrastructure:

• In the United Kingdom, the Research Excellence Framework (REF) engages subject-matter experts to assess the quality of higher education research to determine how funding is allocated. As part of this process, each institution must submit case studies demonstrating “the impact of their research on wider society.”
• In Canada, the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) requires all proposals to include robust performance measurement plans that demonstrate how the research project is “relevant to the institution’s overall strategy for global excellence.”

Though the U.S. lacks a formal and comprehensive federal review process, some American institutions have already begun the challenging but exciting work of placing their research enterprises in a broader context. Land grant institutions are particularly well-positioned to do this. They all have established programs explicitly focused on relevant state issues, such as land conservation, water quality, or climate-resistant agriculture. Other public and land-grant institutions have begun partnering closely with leaders in their office of government relations to develop research proposals that align with the institution’s mission and the priorities of the state legislature.

Such framings highlight research as a core pillar of a university’s service mission and an essential step toward solving some of the most complex, deeply entrenched issues facing our world. These interdisciplinary grand challenges are just the sort of problems today’s large-scale donors are most interested in solving, making this framing a benefit for advancement offices, research enterprises, universities at large, and the communities that benefit from their discoveries.

The audience-centric, impact-focused approach described here has been used by fundraising professionals at other organizations for decades, often to transformative effect. Now is the time for the research enterprise to explore the same path.

Reframing the value of research for donors requires hard work and introspection on the part of academic and institutional leaders, but it is imperative that we begin this work soon. Across all areas of academia, it is time for innovative thinkers from all disciplines to crystallize their value proposition and articulate their impact. This new approach will determine what the research landscape looks like today and in the years to come.