Bill Hall is on the verge of pumping a lot of money possibly millions of dollars into higher education lobbying in Kansas.

Hall, president of the Hall Family Foundation in Kansas City, Mo., is leading an effort to finance a public relations blitz to convince Kansans especially legislators that state colleges and universities need more money.

Television commercials could start appearing by the end of the year.

“I don’t think it’ll have any impact on these elections, and it will be difficult to make an impact on this (2003 legislative) session,” Hall said. “We’re looking more long-term than that.”

Hall is chairman of Citizens for Higher Education, which began as part of the Civic Council of Greater Kansas City. The group of Kansas City-area business leaders started investigating the possibility of a public relations drive about a year ago.

Now, the education group has results of a study comparing Kansas higher education funding with that of other Big 12 schools, and results of a survey of Kansans’ attitudes toward colleges and universities.

Those findings will be the cornerstone of the campaign, Hall said. He declined to release the results until he presents them to the Kansas Board of Regents on Oct. 16.

Economic benefits

Citizens for Higher Education plans to form a nonprofit corporation to raise at least $1 million for the effort.

The goal, Hall said, will be to show Kansans the educational and economic benefits of strong colleges and universities.

“I think what we’d like to do is convince the people of Kansas of the value of higher education,” he said. “If they’re supportive of higher education, their representatives will be supportive, too.”

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Though the effort started in Kansas City, Hall said he hoped it would spread to businesses across the state. The Board of Regents gave him permission last month to contact college and university presidents about identifying potential donors.

“We wouldn’t be pleased if it wasn’t both statewide and representative of all the different levels of higher education,” Hall said.

Plans call for the initial phase of the campaign to last three years. The length and scope of the project will depend on how much money is raised.

“It’s a very, very difficult time to raise money around the state to run a campaign like this,” Hall said. “Some of the people who would be some of the strongest supporters might not be able to give much now. We have plans for a full-blown campaign or a lesser campaign.”

‘They’ll help us’

The Hall Family Foundation is the philanthropic arm of Hallmark Cards. However, Bill Hall is not related to Joyce C. Hall, who founded Hallmark.

Regent Deryl Wynn of Kansas City, Kan., said he thought the public relations drive could make a major difference in higher-education funding.

“They’ll help us in Topeka,” Wynn said. “It’s the same sort of grass-roots, groundswell reaction that usually leads to significant change in the Kansas Legislature. The Legislature has to be convinced the public wants to support higher education.”

The effort should emphasize all post-secondary education including community colleges and technical schools and not just universities, Wynn said.

“The student who wants to be a barber, in my mind, is no less important than the student who wants to be a nuclear physicist,” he said.

Janet Murguia, executive vice chancellor for university relations at Kansas University, compared the effort with a media event last spring in Wichita, where business leaders and the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Industry endorsed tax increases to support colleges and universities.

“It’s always compelling when you have someone making a case for investments in your budget that’s not yourself,” she said. “It gets the attention of legislators.”