UNC Fundraising Leader Set to Leave After Record-Breaking Year, Staff Dissatisfaction

The head of UNC’s fundraising department is set to depart Chapel Hill and take a similar job at Columbia University in the coming months.

UNC announced on Wednesday Michael Andreasen will be leaving his role as vice chancellor for university development after more than three years at Carolina. He arrived in Chapel Hill after holding a similar position at the University of Oregon for nine years.

“Mike has strengthened Carolina’s philanthropic efforts and the way our teams work together across the University,” Chancellor Lee Roberts said in the university’s release. “We have valued his judgment and partnership and wish him well in the next phase of this long and impressive career.”

The news came one week after Andreasen presented to Roberts and the UNC Board of Trustees about the financial development efforts during the 2025-26 fiscal year, with preliminary numbers indicating a record-setting total. More than $606 million in new philanthropic commitments marks the second-most in the university’s history, according to UNC, and most in a year without an active capital campaign. It also reflected a significant rebound for Carolina, charting a 28% increase from FY2025’s total and a 40% increase from FY2024’s.

Those two years coinciding with the end of Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz’s tenure and beginning of Roberts’. While many factors played into the levels of giving to UNC, some of Andreasen’s efforts in response to the dip in donations created controversy and dissatisfaction among university development staff. A May report from The Assembly highlighted how a newer strategy of having development officers report directly to the central University Development Office instead of the deans of their respective schools caused consternation among both deans and staff. The Daily Tar Heel also reported that an anonymous email sent to its staff in October 2025 claimed that the structural changes had started to impact development officers’ relationships with donors.

Additionally, an internal survey conducted by Gallup revealed that employee satisfaction had dropped over the course of 2025. The average score of 3.38 out of 5 points put the UNC development office into the bottom 11th percentile of all workplaces in Gallup’s database, according to The Assembly.

Overall, records show that the university turned over or lost 70 fundraising-related employees, or roughly 17.5% of its workforce, since Andreasen joined UNC in January 2023.

In the short-term, UNC’s senior associate vice chancellor of development Leslie Nelson-Bernier will assume Andreasen’s role and responsibilities. A veteran at the university, Nelson-Bernier has also held senior roles at UNC Health and NC Children’s Hospital, which Wednesday’s release said gives her “an unusually broad perspective on Carolina.”

“She is a trusted partner and outstanding leader who is exceptionally well prepared to take on this role,” concluded the statement. “Under Nelson-Bernier’s direction, the development organization will carry its strong momentum forward and continue advancing the University’s mission through philanthropy.”

Featured photo via Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill.

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UNC Fundraising Leader Set to Leave After Record-Breaking Year, Staff Dissatisfaction

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