Fundraising Tops $1.5 Billion, Sets Single-year Record
Posted on July 29, 2005For a second year in a row, Carolina has set a record in fundraising, bringing in $192.5 million in gifts and private grants in fiscal year 2005.
The University remains ahead of schedule in its $1.8 billion campaign to help make Carolina the nation’s leading public university. Known as Carolina First, the campaign had raised $1.51 billion as of June 30. The campaign was launched on July 1, 1999, and ends on June 30, 2007.
UNC alumni have given almost $582 million. Corporations and foundations have almost matched that, providing more than $571 million. The balance has come from friends of the University and other organizations.
“We’re getting great support from across the board,” said Paul Fulton ’57, a UNC trustee and co-chair of the Carolina First Campaign Steering Committee. “The campaign is more than meeting our expectations, which attests to how much people love the university and understand its dire need to meet the present competitive environment. We’re deeply grateful.”
Through June 30, gifts to the campaign had created 148 professorships and 505 scholarships and fellowships as well as added more than $600 million to Carolina’s endowment. The drive has funded research, created programs and initiatives, and helped pay for the renovation and construction of campus facilities.
The 2005 mark of $192.5 million breaks Carolina’s single-year record of $192.4 million, set last year. This total counts only cash and assets received outright. Including pledges and deferred gifts, commitments totaled $244.8 million, topping 2004’s $236 million. Private funds and investment income provide some 20 percent of UNC’s annual budget.
Initiatives supported by the campaign include the Carolina Covenant, which enables students from low-income families to graduate debt free, and a clinical genetics research center. The center brings together researchers, physicians and medical faculty to explore the relationship between genetics and diseases and transfers new treatments from the laboratory to patient bedsides.
Among the facilities benefiting from private support are an addition to the nursing school and renovations to Memorial Hall.
Major gifts this past year included $3 million from Charlie Loudermilk ’50, chairman and CEO of Aaron Rents Inc., to expand executive education facilities at the Rizzo Conference Center, part of Kenan-Flagler Business School.
Gifts from individuals also included $600,000 from former U.S. Ambassador Anthony S. Harrington ’63 and his wife, Hope. Harrington is the immediate past chair of the General Alumni Association’s Board of Directors. That gift completed a $1.6 million endowment fund to support the Institute of Latin American Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Among foundation gifts was $2.37 million from the Gary W. Parr Family Foundation in New York to establish the Parr Center for Ethics in the department of philosophy. Gary W. Parr ’79 is deputy chairman of Lazard Freres & Co LLC in New York, and the Parr Center is considered the public face of the University’s commitment to ethics. Also, a $7.1 million pledge from the Ithaca, N.Y.-based Triad Foundation will fund the Roy H. Park Fellowship program in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication from 2005-06 through 2009-10.
Bank of America Foundation gave $900,000 to the Carolina Covenant, as well as $100,000 to the Center for Banking and Finance in UNC’s law school. Pepsi Bottling Ventures LLC was another major contributor to the Carolina Covenant, providing $1.5 million. And the James M. Johnston Trust of Chevy Chase, Md., gave $2.1 million to student aid programs.
Foundation gifts also included one from the Crown family of Chicago, which established an endowed professorship in honor of the late Sara and E.J. Evans of Durham, N.C., longtime leaders of civic and Jewish causes. The Sara and E.J. Evans Distinguished Professorship, based in the department of political science, aims to enhance the University’s study of Israel and the Middle East in conjunction with the work of a new Carolina Center for Jewish Studies.
Fulton, former dean of the Kenan-Flagler Business School, chairs the Carolina First Campaign with Mike Overlock ’68 of Greenwich, Conn., and Charles M. Shaffer Jr. ’64 of Atlanta.
