Cal Lutheran Reaps Dividends From Creative Fund Raising : Thousand Oaks: School banks on Elvis impersonator and others, plus detailed studies of donors to raise $1 million a year.

An Elvis impersonator, the Dallas Cowboys and Peanuts cartoonist Charles M. Schulz have all pitched in.

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The president of the Thousand Oaks university does his share, too, lightheartedly auctioning off his job for the day to a big contributor.

But appearances to the contrary, raising money for Cal Lutheran University is serious business.

“Once you get them in, then you’re trying to build them up,” said George Engdahl, the vice president in charge of fund raising. “When you bring in an alum at the $25 level, you’re on the bottom rung of a pyramid that leads ultimately to an estate gift.”

The key to all this, he said, is detailed, computerized records on donors. “It’s called a prospect tracking system,” Engdahl said, glancing at the computer monitor flickering on his desk. “If you don’t have a good file, you can’t do anything.”

The university mounts sophisticated investigations, combing libraries and public records to find out what property potential donors own and what cars they drive. Engdahl said that before he asks someone for money, he knows where the person went to high school, what his parents did, who his favorite professor was, what other charities he gives to, what his interests are and how much his house is worth.

The research pays off. Cal Lutheran raises more than $1 million a year in annual contributions and recently concluded a five-year, $15-million capital campaign that doubled the school’s endowment.

The university opened in 1961 and has traditionally lacked the old, wealthy alumni that make fund raising easy. As a result, it has been forced to resort to more creative methods.

A black-tie auction of vacations and, yes, a chance to be president of the university for the day usually raises $30,000 to $45,000, Engdahl said.

When the Dallas Cowboys had their summer training camp on campus, university officials snared them to host a dinner for donors to the university. Undergraduates staged elephant races to raise money in the 1960s.

And Nancy Reagan, Gov. Pete Wilson and cartoonist Schulz have all been pressed into service as attractions at the school’s annual benefit banquet at the ritzy Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles, where dinner can cost a donor $1,500.

It’s cheaper to see Elvis impersonator Raymond Michael Hebel, a Moorpark resident and 1975 Cal Lutheran graduate, perform in the campus gym. But the last of 1,200 $5, $10 and $25 tickets for that show, scheduled for Saturday, recently sold out.

While flashy special events draw most of the attention, they also require lots of work and are expensive to stage, fund-raising officials said. Quiet solicitations based on hours of background research bring in most of the money, officials said.

“I’d rather go call on 10 guys for $10,000 each than work on the benefit banquet. It drives me nuts,” Engdahl said.

But alumni who volunteer hours of time organizing the special events disagree.

“It’s friend raising as much as fund raising,” said Dave Watson, a Thousand Oaks stockbroker who graduated from Cal Lutheran in 1978 and heads the committee that stages the benefit banquet.

Hebel said his concert builds campus spirit in addition to raising money for scholarships and the performing arts department.

“I think we’re a fun attraction,” he said. “It’s as big an event as homecoming.”

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Whether they give their money by writing a check after a quiet solicitation or by buying a ticket to a heavily hyped shindig, Cal Lutheran donors say they are happy to pay back the university.

“I got so much push and enthusiasm from the college,” said Hebel, whose professors sewed his first costume and financed his first performances as an Elvis impersonator in 1972. In return, he waives the $5,000 he usually charges for a concert.

“Cal Lutheran was a significant part of my life at a very formative time,” said Watson, who estimates that he and his wife, Ann, also a graduate, have given $25,000 to the school over the years. “I believe in what they do.”

Watson said he was not surprised to hear about the university’s detailed background checks on potential donors.

“It doesn’t offend me,” Watson said, reasoning that the information is necessary for university officials deciding how large a gift to solicit. Otherwise, he said, fund-raisers might ask for too little and insult the potential donor or ask for too much and scare away the prospect.

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The computerized research can go only so far. Engdahl said the fund-raisers stick to legal methods and use only public records and information collected in surveys of alumni. Some people, such as entrepreneurs who own private companies, are hard to size up financially, he said.

At least one major donor said the school’s records, while accurate, have their limits.

Karsten Lundring, chairman of the university’s board of regents, is one of the few people to have seen his own computerized prospect-tracking system file. He said the university did not know his annual income but had made estimates based on salaries of people with similar jobs in the same industry. The file did include records about the property he owns.

“They knew quite a bit,” said Lundring, who said he gives “substantially” to the school--6% of the money he earns running a financial services firm.

Engdahl, a 1965 graduate lured back to the school last year from a job as fund-raiser for the Chicago Symphony, said the computer records are useful for writing and sending mail solicitations, as well as for helping university officials set priorities.

“You’re always focusing on your top 100 prospects and you’re constantly strategizing on your top 25,” Engdahl said.

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Engdahl talks about “cultivation” of donors the way a gardener might talk about growing a state champion tomato.

“What you’re trying to do is listen,” Engdahl said. “You’re always trying to match the needs of the prospect with the needs of the institution.”

In the best case, the cultivation results in a major gift, like a combined $4 million that two sisters left the university in their wills. Or the $1-million gift that recently established the university’s first endowed chair, the Gerhard and Olga Belgum chair in Lutheran confessional theology.

Because tuition covers only about 82% of what it costs the university to educate a student, the technical underside of fund raising--all those computerized records--translates into real help for students. That, donors said, is the reason for employing all these creative and investigative tactics to raise money.

“I had a great experience there as a student,” Lundring said. “I want to help others have the same kind of experience I had.”