Put your competitive spirit and need for speed to work on May 20.

That's the day Rush Hour Karting in Garner will conduct a fundraising event to support American Red Cross relief efforts in the wake of the April 16 tornado outbreak across North Carolina.

Cold weather puts many outdoor activities on hiatus, but that doesn't mean participants stop preparing for next season.

Many area recreational sports organizations keep busy through the winter by planning and conducting benefit events to raise funds to pay for equipment, facilities, travel, entry fees or any of the many expenses affiliated with their activities.

Here are three fundraisers coming up over the next three weekends:

From the weekend...

N.C. Central University is ramping up its fundraising efforts with the opening of a new call center and a renewed emphasis on finding private donors.

The details.

These are trying times for university fundraisers tasked with separating alums from their money.

In economic downturns, folks are less likely to give their money away; at UNC Chapel Hill, that reality is leading the university's advancement operation to tweak its strategies a bit. Private giving to the university is down 8 percent from last year.

In a report to campus trustees this morning, advancement chief Matt Kupec highlighted a few areas where his operation is shifting its focus.

Among them:

• Focusing efforts on getting alums who have already donated money to give again. 

• Focus on "expendable" gifts, rather than endowments. This means looking for gifts the university can spend now, rather than gifts that create endowments intended to last for decades or more. 

• Work harder on cultivating relationships with alums, the idea being that when the recession recovers, the university must pounce.

"When this thing does turn around, we want to be first in line," Kupec said. "It's going to pay off."

About a half-year ago, university officials were contemplating UNC-CH's next massive fundraising campaign. Then, the bottom fell out of the nation's economy.

"Things have gotten worse," Kupec said. "Fundraising across America has gotten very difficult."

The economy may be in the tank, but isn't stopping the state's universities from asking their alums for money.

So says the Triangle Business Journal, which reports that while private giving may drop a bit in hard economic times, universities don't stop pushing for those donations. 

Around these parts, universities are always raising money. We write about the big campaigns. And the really big campaigns. And the not-as-big-but-still-important campaigns.

Which gives us just enough confidence to say that if we were ever going to try to raise money for a university, we wouldn't do what Framingham State College did recently.

To summarize: In an attempt to make light of the poor economy, this small, Massachusetts college fired off letters to 6,000 alums that read in part:

"With the recent economic downturn and loan crisis, it has become even more important for Framingham State College to receive your support. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

 

As the local paper noted,  the word "blah" was used 137 times.

As one alum noted: "It just doesn't seem like something from a legitimate university." 

Peace College will unveil a $30 million capital campaign this morning that will focus largely on raising funds for expansion and renovation to its facilities.

The small women's college was a junior college until just 13 years ago, and a campus official told me this week it is still trying to get its infrastructure in line with the needs of a modern, four-year institution.

A $30 million campaign would top the college’s previous best, a $15 million effort that concluded in 2000. The college has been in a silent fundraising phase for more than four years now and is alreadly two-thirds the way to its goal.

The campaign’s top priority is a $3.7 million renovation and expansion of the Lucy Cooper Finch Library. The library project will add 2,200 square feet and a technology revolution of sorts with the addition of a “learning commons” with computer stations and other workspace.

Peace will also offer, for the first time, a bachelor’s in science degree next year and is updating science laboratories in preparation. In all, more than half the $30 million Peace hopes to raise will be spent on renovation and new construction.

“This campaign is a lot about bricks and mortar and refreshing our campus,” said Michael Magoon, Peace College's vice president for development and alumnae affairs.

Read more about the campaign in today's News & Observer.

Charlie Nelms gave his second convocation address as N.C. Central University's chancellor this morning.

In it, he largely recounted the university's accomplishments over the past year, while also announcing a new fundraising push.

This morning, UNC's public health school will be renamed for Quintiles CEO Dennis GIllings and his wife, Joan, who have pledged $50 million. That's the largest single gift to the university from an individual or family, and as I reported today, the gift makes some folks at the school a bit uneasy.

But while some students and faculty have criticized the gift and what they think may give the Gillingses unreasonable access or control over academicsand planning at the school, university officials have vigorously defended the gift, noting that it has been properly vetted and will receive plenty of oversight.