RADFORD -- While the state is cutting Radford University's funding, President Penelope Kyle is trying to bring in more money from businesses and private donors.

Shortly after the board of visitors authorized Kyle to deal with the $2.5 million budget cut Gov. Tim Kaine mandated last month, Kyle announced a $100,000 donation from Pennsylvania-based Genesis Rehab Services. The money will go toward a motion analysis lab for the school's doctor of physical therapy program -- a program that plans to admit its first students next fall.

And Kyle expressed a determination to get more donations like that.

"We don't have nearly enough staff," she said.

So the university is advertising four new positions in the development office.

The existing staff's goal is to raise 11 percent more than they did last year. The administration has assigned each member of the fundraising staff a personal goal.

"This isn't campaign mode," Kyle told the board. "This is day-to-day, bread-and-butter fundraising."

The next big campaign will likely be connected to the university's centennial in 2010. Smaller campaigns are going on already.

Admission to the brunch opening the $22.5 million Douglas and Beatrice Covington Center for Visual and Performing Arts this weekend is $30. It costs $250 to reserve a whole table. A seat at Saturday night's black tie gala goes for $175. A table there costs $1,500.

"It caused a little stir in the community," Kyle said. "Because our community has been used to coming to our events free of charge.

"We have to start a new philosophy here: pay as you go."

There will probably be a more casual fundraising gala to celebrate the reopening of the Dedmon Center sports complex next semester, Kyle said. When new seats are installed in the Dedmon next summer, there will probably be another seat-naming fundraising drive.

"That building is chocked full of naming opportunities," Kyle said.

A line of projects will require fundraising after the Dedmon Center is done.

"You're going to see construction on this campus for the 10 to 15 years," Kyle said.

The state has committed to giving the university $34.2 million toward the cost of a College of Business and Economics building and permission to add at least $10 million to that from private sources. Kyle said in April that $44.2 million is "just the beginning" of what she wants to spend on that building.

Radford also got $1.5 million from the state to begin planning a College of Science and Technology building.

The university also got the legislature's permission to spend $114 million on other projects: new residence halls, a fitness center, a parking deck, an addition to the Hulbert student center, land acquisition and smaller projects. Radford is authorized to fund about $90 million of that through debt.

In the short term, the university has to deal with a 5 percent cut in state funding. Since more than 76 percent of the university's budget is tied to personnel, the cuts will affect staffing -- but the university says there won't be any layoffs. Some empty positions will remain open for a while. Others will be eliminated. The faculty buyout that takes effect at the end of this semester will help, too.

Personnel adjustments will provide about a third of the necessary savings. The rest will come from cutbacks in discretionary spending, increased efficiency and money from the state Radford will get for holding tuition increases down.

"You're never happy with a budget decrease," board Rector Thomas Fraim said. "But we're fairly happy with where we are and how we're dealing with it."