The University of Oregon administration is hoping that the wealthy donors who pushed the Legislature to cut the school loose from state oversight will make it rain this fall — and not the kind that some say never falls at Autzen Stadium.

The UO’s vice president for university advancement, Michael Andreasen, has given UO President Michael Gottfredson and the new UO Board of Trustees some reason to hope that buckets of cash will materialize.

“Over the fall and into the early part of 2014, I’ve been talking to some of those folks — with the (UO) president,” he told the officials recently as he outlined a capital campaign scheduled for rollout in October. “And they’ve assured us that, ‘Yes, this is the time to make the ask.’?”

Andreasen said more than $1 billion will be necessary to accomplish all that the university has on its agenda. The last big campaign, under former UO President Dave Frohnmayer, raised $853 million over an eight-year period.

“We have to dramatically exceed that” in four years, Andreasen said. “Our intention is to do so.”

One billion dollars might not be enough, former UO President Robert Berdahl told Board of Trustees President Chuck Lillis during a meeting last week.

“I’d say a minimum of $2 (billion),” Berdahl said.

“Someplace between $2 and $3 billion,” Lillis said. “We’re not fishing for bait here.”

The success of the campaign rests on the generosity of “a handful of folks,” Andreasen said. “The truth is, 5 percent of the donors raise 95 percent of the money.”

Promises made

A small and unnamed group of wealthy constituents told lawmakers in 2012 that if they passed a bill that abolished state control of UO and instead created an independent governing board, wealthy donors would produce an influx of money.

State Sen. Mark Hass, a Beaverton Democrat, said during the legislative debate that he’d talked with donors and could not “overstate the potential philanthropic opportunities” for the university.

Behind the scenes, a powerful alumni group formed a political action committee called Oregonians for Higher Education Excellence to nudge the Legislature into action.

Members include Nike’s Phil Knight; the UO’s former athletic director, Pat Kilkenny; Columbia Distributing CEO Edward Maletis; and Lillis, who made his money in telecommunications.

Group members said they were frustrated by the state’s unwillingness or inability to provide its universities with at least a stable budget.

The Legislature passed Senate Bill 270 last year, which launched a drive to independence for Oregon universities. This July 1, the UO’s new, 14-member governing board officially takes the reins.

Now the expectation is that Knight and the other donors, as one Oregon newspaper columnist put it, will “write checks with more zeros than a no-hitter.”

UO officials say they need a cash infusion — and a redoubled endowment — in order to maintain the university’s place in the exclusive Association of American Universities.

“It’s something the board needs to concern itself with,” Berdahl told the trustees. “Continued membership is by no means assured.”

The 62-university association is comprised of the top research institutions in the country. Members are voted in or out by a two-thirds vote of university presidents. The presidents meet in secret.

In recent years, the association jettisoned the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and Syracuse University.

“It’s very tough to gain admission. If you lose it, it’s going to be virtually impossible to gain it back,” Berdahl said.

One big problem, in the association’s eyes, is that the UO hires less expensive adjunct instructors rather than bringing in tenure-track faculty.

It’s a matter of money, Gottfredson told the trustees. For a decade, the university has lagged in hiring.

“We’re down 200 to 250 tenure-track faculty,” he said. “That’s a big number and it sets us apart.”

Expected hires

As a defensive move, the university hopes to embark on a program of hiring new, top-of-the-line faculty.

It identified 10 promising research areas on campus that it calls “clusters of excellence” — and it proposes adding acclaimed faculty to each in order to boost the programs to national preeminence.

“We said, ‘What could we add to, with the hiring of two to five faculty, something we’re already good at, that we could be better at, that would achieve national prominence?” UO Provost Scott Coltrane told the UO Board.

Some of the answers: Energy and Sustainable Materials, Center for Genome Function, Sports Products Initiative, and Volcanology.

The university has about $1.5 million to launch one or two of the clusters, and it’s hoping that donors will help endow faculty for the rest.

“There’s a very good chance” with the cluster approach, Lillis said. “You have the best group in the country because these are such discrete research and teaching opportunities.”

A second prong of the fall campaign will be to raise scholarship money for Oregon students.

Follow Diane on Twitter @diane_dietz . Email diane.dietz@registerguard.com .