Reprinted from The Tuscaloosa News
By Adam Jones Staff Writer
Donations from two women to the University of Alabama pushed its major fundraising effort past the $500 million goal, a year ahead of schedule.
At the end of June, UA collected $512 million for the “Our Students, Our Future” campaign, university administrators announced.
“While we’ve met the goal, we’re still not through,” said Pam Parker, vice president for university advancement.
The $500 million goal is more than double that of the university’s last capital campaign, which ended in 1998 and raised $224 million.
UA President Robert Witt announced the major fundraising campaign in April 2006, making public an effort that began in 2002. When the campaign became public, UA had collected $299 million.
“This campaign’s success is a result of our focused intensity on campaign goals and a shared vision for the university’s future,” said Witt in a statement.
Just over 102,000 people donated to the campaign, with 108 of those giving $1 million or more. Parker said the university’s fundraiser met its goal without a mega-gift of $50 million or more, and that the largest gift was $11 million.
“I’m the proudest of the fact of the broad base of support we have received,” she said. “There hasn’t been one person that saved us. You’re talking about the Alabama family of supporters reaching into their pockets.”
For any capital campaign, a lot of time is spent courting major donors, a process that can take three to five years before a large gift is pledged, Parker said. But the last two gifts were different because the two women, who wished to remain anonymous, approached UA staff with donations totaling $17 million that they promised to leave UA in their wills.
“They came in, and we didn’t know they were coming,” Parker said.
Individual goals within the larger campaign still need funding, however, with $250 million for scholarships the largest unreached target. Through June, $203 million towards scholarships has been pledged or donated, Parker said.
The campaign ends in June 2009.
“We made a commitment to bring the best and brightest students to this university and, with today’s slowing economy, scholarship support becomes even more critical in our ability to honor that commitment,” Witt said. “We’re going to continue our momentum as we move into the last year of the campaign.”
Besides scholarships, UA hopes to add $58 million to its endowment for professor salaries, and has raised $36 million so far, Parker said. Getting donors to give to faculty salaries is more difficult because most donors were at UA as undergraduates and want to help students pay tuition or help the individual colleges under which they learned, she said.
Also, the library and the larger academic colleges are just shy of meeting their goals, she said.
“I have no doubt every division will meet its goal,” Parker said.
The campaign was able to push past its overall goal largely on a surplus in athletic gifts, according to data provided by Parker. Of the $500 million goal, $50 million was earmarked for athletic facilities such as the completed expansion of Bryant-Denny Stadium and renovation of Coleman Coliseum. Athletics raised $70 million, with the extra going to athletic scholarships and paying off debt, she said.
Donations for academic buildings, historically the focus of UA capital campaigns, are close to the $20.5 million goal, and campaigns for the addition to the UA School of Law and a new building for the Capstone College of Nursing surpassed their goals. Money for the other academic building, an expansion and renovation of the Jones Archaeological Museum in Moundville, is just below its goal, Parker said.
The recent economic downturn and rising energy and food prices haven’t hurt the campaign so far, but Parker said that doesn’t mean it won’t.
For one, most of the people giving larger gifts donate assets, while smaller gifts come from income, Parker said. It’s possible those assets could become devalued in the coming months, but the vast majority of pledges should come through, she said.
Along with a weakening economy, Auburn University ran a similar campaign until it ended in June, but Parker said Auburn’s campaign did not hurt donations to UA.
UA officials announced their campaign two months after Auburn’s administrators announced a similar $500 million capital campaign. AU’s campaign ended in June, and officials announced last month that nearly $609 million had been donated. Before Auburn set the record for giving to a state university, the University of Alabama at Birmingham set the mark when it closed its capital campaign in December 2003 with $388.7 million raised, well above the $250 million goal.
Parker joked that her staff might make a big deal out of besting Auburn’s tally as the end of the campaign nears next spring, but said she doesn’t see Auburn as competition in raising money.
“I have never worried about what Auburn does,” she said. “We’ve raised $1.1 billion for education, and I think it’s just wonderful that our citizens of this state have supported education like that. Wouldn’t it be great if we raised $1.2 billion?”