Low Morale Plagues UNC-Chapel Hill Fundraisers After Overhaul

The announcement UNC-Chapel Hill Vice Chancellor for Development Michael Andreasen delivered to a room of university deans in December 2024 blindsided many of them. 

Starting the following year, top fundraising staff would report to the central University Development Office, or UDO. Some fundraising staff would remain in and focus on various academic departments, but their bosses would report to the central office, rather than to their respective deans. The new structure, announced without consultation with most deans, was a significant departure from how fundraising had historically worked. 

But after a record-setting capital campaign ended in 2022, donations had tumbled. An outside consulting agency had recommended restructuring so that individual schools and departments weren’t all courting the same donors, Andreasen explained.

“While we have performed at a very high level, we cannot take the next step as a fundraising organization without these moves,” Andreasen wrote in an email to development staff shortly after the deans’ meeting. 

Nearly a year into the centralization, which took effect about six months after Andreasen’s announcement, donation totals are recovering and on track to mark the highest year of fundraising under Andreasen’s leadership. But many development employees are unhappy with the new structure and other changes in recent years. The development office brought in the management consultancy Gallup to conduct an internal survey, which found that employee job satisfaction dropped from a score of 3.67 out of five in the fall of 2024 to 3.38 in 2025. This metric placed UNC-CH’s development office in the bottom 11th percentile of all the workplaces in Gallup’s survey database.

Seventy of the roughly 400 employees working in development across the university, about 17.5%, have left since Andreasen took over at the start of 2023, university records show. Twenty-five of these departed employees left after the restructuring was announced in December 2024. 

Andreasen told The Assembly in an interview that that’s a typical level of turnover after a campaign, with employees leaving for promotions or retirement. But several current and former employees said they think restructuring has eroded staff morale and strained relationships with donors, contributing to the resignations.

Andreasen acknowledged in the interview that the restructuring was a lot of change in a short timeframe and that it had frustrated some staff. But he said it would improve the way university fundraising works.

“We think we can raise more money, that the generosity of our community is really not untapped, but there’s a lot of area of growth as we move forward,” he said. 

The change in development operations foreshadowed a wave of restructuring across the university. Last June, UNC-CH launched its ServiceFirst initiative, which aims to cut costs by centralizing administrative operations such as information technology and human resources to a single team that serves multiple departments. The rollout starts June 1 with the university’s communications and marketing office.

The consolidations of UDO and other departments are a key way the university is attempting to prove to state leaders that UNC-CH is managing costs, Chancellor Lee Roberts said at a UNC System Board of Governors meeting Wednesday. In turn, he hopes legislators are persuaded to provide financial support for the university’s growing enrollment; UNC System schools have not received such funds in the past two years amid long-stalled negotiations over the state budget. 

The New Approach

UNC-CH’s last capital campaign wrapped up in 2022, raising the highest total in the university’s history at more than $5 billion. The campaign, led by Andreasen’s predecessor David Routh, secured gifts from more than 100,000 new donors in addition to focusing on high-net-worth individuals.

Routh stepped down at the conclusion of the eight-year campaign, and former Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz put together a search committee for a successor. Ultimately, Guskiewicz hired Andreasen from the University of Oregon, where he helped complete a $3 billion campaign. 

But in fiscal year 2024, Andreasen’s first full year as vice chancellor, fundraising totals slumped. On paper, it was a 10-year low, although that was skewed by the fact that UNC-CH stopped including certain planned donations in the yearly totals in 2023. Donations written into wills are now counted when the donor reaches age 65, rather than the year they were pledged. But even adjusting for the new counting standards, the university brought in $410 million in fiscal year 2024, well below the five-year average of $514 million.

In a Board of Trustees meeting in March 2024, Andreasen said the transition between Guskiewicz and Roberts earlier that year may have caused some donors to wait to give. He added there is often a “hangover” effect after a multiyear campaign because both fundraisers and previous donors are tapped out. “But I’m afraid we did it at the expense of not looking to the next generation of donors,” Andreasen said at the meeting. 

The university hired the philanthropic consulting firm Grenzebach Glier and Associates as it initiated plans for its next campaign, which it has not announced. The Chicago-based firm recommended restructuring development staff to standardize efforts across the university. 

A summary of the consultant’s findings that The Assembly obtained also said that, compared to similar “high-performing public institutions,” UNC-CH relied more on donations from organizations than gifts of $5 million or more from individuals. Prospective donors who could give at those levels were “not consistently managed” or engaged by fundraising staff, per the report.

“Improved structure and strategy would allow UNC to more fully engage its highest-capacity prospects,” the report said.

Fiscal year 2025 saw a 15% increase in donations compared to 2024, to $471 million. As of May 18, cash and commitment totals for the fiscal year that ends June 30 were at $472 million, up 19% compared to last year at the same time, according to the university.

“I think it’s one of our best years in the last 10 years when you account for the new counting standards,” Andreasen said. 

Still, seven current and former development employees said in interviews with The Assembly that they thought the restructuring weakened some relationships with donors who had long worked with particular deans and their fundraising staff. Though many development staff still work in and focus on particular schools and departments, they now report to UDO, and Andreasen’s team is more involved in their conversations with donors, the employees said.

One development officer, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, said donors have told her they would rather work with a fundraiser they already know than go through the central development team.

A large donor to the College of Arts and Sciences, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their relationship with the university, said they have worked closely with a particular development officer for more than 10 years and formed a strong friendship. But this spring, Andreasen repositioned the development officer to another group of donors.

“Pulling someone out of a role where, in my opinion, she’s done a fantastic job building that community—I kind of want to stop giving money to UNC based on that,” the donor said. 

Andreasen said he does not think the restructuring has changed relationships with most donors, who he said have stayed loyal to their deans.

Former trustee Roger Perry, a longtime donor and volunteer fundraiser, said the centralization was necessary, as he saw wealthy alumni get “bombarded” by multiple development officers trying to bolster different schools and programs. Centralizing fundraising is designed to make donating as uncomplicated as possible.

“It probably could have been thought through a little better, but it was the right thing to do, nonetheless,” Perry said.

A Sensitive Situation

The restructuring prompted a heated response internally at UNC-CH. While Andreasen initially told the deans that the restructuring would happen on January 1, 2025, he moved the rollout to February after pushback from the department leaders. The new reporting structure ultimately took effect last July.

A dean present at the December 2024 meeting said this was one of the “worst-handled” administrative situations they had seen. This person, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their relationships at the university, said they were shocked that deans weren’t consulted before such significant changes were made. School leaders worried that central fundraising staff would interfere with their relationships with donors and that they would struggle to meet their own financial goals.

Some deans said they were more prepared for the change. Jeffrey Bardzell, who led the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) for about 18 months before being tapped as UNC-CH’s first chief artificial intelligence officer last fall, said UDO leaders told him they were considering moving to a centralized structure. They offered Bardzell the option for his school’s top development official to report to the central office but still focus on his school with a “dotted line” back to Bardzell, which is the structure Andreasen ultimately implemented across all of development. 

More closely aligning fundraising at the university level “struck me as a sensible arrangement,” Bardzell said, and it might help his relatively small school bring in more money. 

He said the school’s chief fundraiser was also on board because the arrangement allowed him to be less isolated from development across the university.

But, Bardzell noted, he was in a different position than many schools because SILS had only two development employees, and he hadn’t yet developed strong relationships with them or with donors at that point. To other deans, the centralized model felt like a “loss of autonomy,” he observed.

“Obviously, if you’ve invested in a relationship that might bring a donation, you don’t want somebody else to come along and take it from you or redirect it somewhere else,” Bardzell said. (Bardzell will leave UNC-CH this month to become dean of arts and sciences at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.)

Andreasen acknowledged his announcement was a “big change” for many deans.

“I wouldn’t call it a misunderstanding, but we had not had a chance to work through what we actually meant,” Andreasen said.

In October, someone sent an anonymous email to all of UDO leadership and staff, citing an erosion of trust in Andreasen’s leadership. The email—which included no identifying information but referred to the sender’s “time at UNC”—refers to a toxic work culture and “high school-like” environment, characterized by gossip and favoritism. 

“Some individuals receive preferential treatment, while others face undue criticism or veiled threats for speaking candidly,” the email states. “This fosters an environment where capable, dedicated professionals feel dismissed, undervalued, silenced, or pushed out.” 

In interviews with The Assembly, three development employees said Andreasen had hired former colleagues from University of Oregon and Michigan State University, who the employees thought were unnecessarily critical of UNC-CH staff. Two of the six associate vice chancellors for development worked with Andreasen previously. 

UDO used Gallup to survey employees in the fall of 2024 and 2025 to measure workplace performance and culture. The number of employees who reported they were “actively disengaged” at work increased from 5% to 10% between the fall of 2024 and ’25, according to survey results obtained by The Assembly. 

About 160 of the 180 UDO employees participated in the polls. The polls did not survey development staff who work within schools and units, who report to central development but remain housed in their individual departments.

In the 2025 poll, Andreasen and his team’s lowest rankings came on questions about whether they communicated a clear, consistent vision and explained organizational decisions (they received a grade of 2.47 out of five) and whether employees felt well-informed about what is happening across the department (2.7 out of five).

Andreasen told The Assembly that he felt badly that someone was frustrated enough to send the anonymous email and that he wants to create a culture where people feel heard. He said his team is looking into why more people now say they feel disengaged at work.

“This realignment, that was a lot of change in a short period of time,” Andreasen said. “And I think probably folks felt a little unnerved, a little uncertain.”

He said he isn’t concerned about turnover. “Maybe some folks decided they want to do something different or didn’t feel quite aligned with what we’re doing,” he added. “That happens, and I acknowledge that, but we certainly have hired some folks that are really excited to be here and doing great work.” 

Employees shared frustrations about how their performance is measured. They said the department now puts more emphasis on individual metrics. For example, Andreasen removed a policy in which multiple fundraisers could get credit for securing a gift. Now, gifts are attributed to one primary development employee, which current and former staffers said disincentivizes collaboration.

Andreasen said he formed a committee to decide how to best measure fundraisers’ activity, in order to set clear expectations for employees. He said he introduced some new metrics, such as measuring first-time visits with potential donors, in addition to tracking the number of formal written proposals and gifts.

“It’s become like the Hunger Games,” one employee said about the work culture. She said she and her colleagues cringe at the monthly scorecard that comes out with each fundraiser’s standings. This employee asked to remain anonymous, fearing retribution from the university.

She said leadership brought in a slushie machine last year as an office “perk” and began tracking when people swipe their IDs to get into the building, in an effort to bring more staff into the office. The employee said that when someone tries to hold the door for her, she declines so she can swipe her card.

“When you walk into that building, it’s heavy,” the employee said. “You don’t want to be there. It’s not a good environment.” 

Korie Dean contributed reporting.