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UK Reaches $1 Billion Mark

Overwhelming support and generosity displayed by UK alumni and friends has enabled the university to exceed its $1 billion campaign goal. Currently surpassing $1,020,000,000, the campaign will continue through the end of 2007, and celebration plans for this fall are underway. Mike Richey, Associate Vice President for Development and Chief Development Officer remarks, “Reaching and surpassing the $1 Billion goal several months in advance of the scheduled end of the campaign is a tribute to the alumni and friends whose gifts have made this achievement possible. It is also a wonderful reflection on the excellence of this institution.”

UK reaches billion–dollar milestone in fund–raising

By Art Jester

AJESTER@HERALD-LEADER.COM

Herald-Leader

• BY THE NUMBERS

Call it the UK Billion.

The University of Kentucky's first universitywide fund-raising campaign has officially pulled in $1.022 billion.

That amount, announced yesterday when the UK Development Council met at Keeneland, surpassed the $1 billion goal several months ahead of the nine-year campaign's scheduled conclusion Dec. 31.

It is the first time a Kentucky college or university has raked in $1 billion during a fund-raising campaign.

The milestone puts UK among a select group of universities nationwide. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, 31 universities had completed campaigns of $1 billion or more as of 2006; 22 others were still conducting billion-dollar drives.

The achievement is noteworthy because UK has been seriously raising private money for only 40 years or so, less than half the time of numerous top-ranked universities and colleges.

UK President Lee Todd said the $1 billion-plus gives UK a big push toward becoming a Top 20 public research university, as mandated by the General Assembly in its higher education reforms of 1997.

"We've been raising money for a multitude of priorities, and we've created a new base of donors," Todd said of what is officially named "The Campaign for the University of Kentucky Phase II: Dream. Challenge. Succeed."

The campaign began in 1998 under then-President Charles T. Wethington Jr. with a $600 million goal.

Todd replaced Wethington in 2001. Three years later, with more than $600 million in hand, Todd decided to extend the campaign through 2007 and raise the goal to $1 billion.

To date, the campaign has had 122,746 donors, of whom about 56,000 have been alumni.

Todd said he was amazed that the campaign weathered economic downturns and stock market shakiness caused by the dot-com bust, 9/11 and the Enron scandal.

Key to the campaign's success was UK's $208 million share of state "Bucks for Brains" money, which was used to match many donor contributions.

"The big thing that did it was Bucks for Brains," Todd said. "People like to see their money doubled. That allows you to get donors when they just need to be convinced they're doing the right thing."

The $1 billion will have many uses campuswide.

One of the biggest effects will be bolstering UK's ability to recruit and retain outstanding professors. Donations matched by Bucks for Brains will help create more than 85 faculty chairs and 190 endowed professorships.

The money will also add books and electronics for UK's libraries, increase scholarship and fellowship funds for students, enhance numerous academic programs and renovate or add facilities.

In its nine years, the campaign has helped UK's endowment grow from $219.7 million to $831.8 million.

Campaign chairman James Stuckert of Louisville said Bucks for Brains was "one of the best investments the Commonwealth of Kentucky has ever undertaken."

Stuckert said the outpouring of alumni donations reflected "great loyalty and feeling for the university."

In addition, he praised Todd's leadership and said UK's Top 20 plan had created a "new dynamic on campus, new enthusiasm."

Paul Chellgren, a campaign steering committee member, called Bucks for Brains an "enormously powerful incentive" whose "benefits are perpetual and growing."

Todd, Stuckert and Chellgren said they hoped the legislature will appropriate a new pool of Bucks for Brains money, now that the fund has run out.

A nationally renowned fund-raiser with Kentucky ties called UK's $1 billion "incredible" and an "extraordinary accomplishment, given it's the first comprehensive campaign for UK."

Rick Nahm, president of the Cranbrook Educational Community in suburban Detroit, said UK's achievement is especially notable because it has not depended on "one or two or three extraordinarily large gifts" that "artificially inflate a campaign."

Nahm was a vice president at the University of Pennsylvania, a large Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, when he masterminded its $1.4 billion campaign from 1987 to 1993. At the time, it was the second-largest amount any U.S. university had raised.

Nahm, also a former vice president and fund-raiser at Centre College in Danville, said UK had built a broad base of donors that "positions the university well for the next campaign."

He said that 85 percent of the "people who have made a major gift are the people most likely to make a new major gift" in a subsequent campaign.

He called UK's total of 122,746 donors a "very significant accomplishment" that would have been "unheard of a decade ago, at UK or beyond the Ivy League."

Donations by the numbers

· UK received 639,148 gifts from 122,746 donors and $200 million from state matching fund.

· A look at some key contributors to UK's effort.