Fisk Turns to Seasoned Fund-raiser to Reverse its Fortunes
University no longer pinning its financial future on sale of priceless art.

By Reginald Stuart

Financially troubled Fisk University, plagued for years by weak and inconsistent fund raising, has recruited a seasoned institutional specialist to help reverse its fortunes and help it try to catch up in the all important fund-raising game.

Dr. Sulayman Clark, who quietly joined the Fisk staff in early April as vice president for institutional development, got his start in fund raising in the mid-1980s as a special assistant to the president of Hampton University. He has since helped other schools craft ambitious ideas and raise millions of dollars for their endowments as a member of the executive teams at Morehouse College, Tuskegee University and, most recently, North Carolina Central University.

“[Clark] is a seasoned fund-raiser, somebody the [Fisk] president ought to pay attention to,” says Ted Easler, president and CEO of The Easler Group, a Georgia-based fund-raising consultant to colleges and universities. “I hear a lot about the sale of the artwork, but I don’t hear and read about them raising money by traditional means.”

Easler’s art reference was to a controversial proposal by Fisk to raise some instant cash — about $7 million — by selling two one-of-a-kind works in its priceless 101-piece Stieglitz Collection. The two paintings are “Radiator Building – Night, New York” by Georgia O’Keeffe and “Painting No. 3” by Marsden Hartley (see Diverse, Feb. 22). The collection was given to Fisk by O’Keeffe in the late 1940s to enhance the university’s art education program and to expand its public reach in the city. O’Keeffe imposed strict restrictions on the gift, including a requirement that the collection never be sold.

The paintings are estimated to be worth more than $20 million each. However, the school struck a deal during the winter with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, N.M., to sell the O’Keeffe painting to the museum for $7 million. In exchange for the bargain price, the museum would withdraw its court petition to block the school from selling anything else in the collection.