Kent State is beating the drums to build up donations.

The university has added eight employees to its 70-person alumni relations and development staffs, with the goal of raising about 50 percent more money a year.

That may sound ambitious, but Gene Finn, vice president for institutional advancement, said it is well within the university's ability.

''We're adding staff who will reach out to alumni who have never heard from Kent State since they left,'' Finn said. ''We're a big institution with a lot of opportunity.''

The university raised a record $28.6
million last year, up from the $20 million or so of just five years ago. But last year's total pales next to the goal — up to $40 million a year, which KSU can reach ''very comfortably,'' Finn said.

That is just about what KSU's neighbor, the University of Akron, raised last school year.

That all-time UA high of $41 million was 26 percent more than the previous year, and it marked the second year in a row that the university set a fundraising record.

At Kent State, UA and many other universities, the money is going into endowments that are used to improve facilities and fund scholarships and professorships in the face of declining support from the state.

For Kent State, that means launching the public phase of its $250 million Centennial Campaign in fall 2009. That is almost twice the $130 million the university raised in its first campaign five years ago.

But it's also more modest than campaigns being conducted at other universities at the same time — UA, which announced the public phase of its $500 million campaign last fall; Miami University, which is seeking $500 million by 2010; Princeton University, $1.75 billion by 2012; and Columbia University, $4 billion by 2011.

The problem for Kent State is that it has not been reaching out to its 185,000 alumni, Finn said.

So now it is targeting them as it seeks to triple the 7 percent of former students and graduates who now contribute.

''We're going to be cultivating everybody'' he said, ''and re-engaging as many alumni as possible.''

That may be a challenge for everybody in coming years: The rate of growth of college fundraising is expected to slow to 5.3 percent this year from the 7.2 percent of last year, according to the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.