U-M fundraising marks another record year

Updated 10:00 AM September 24, 2007

U-M fundraising marks another record year

By Nancy Connell

Fundraising reached new records for the 2007 fiscal year and for The Michigan Difference campaign, Vice President for Development Jerry May reported Sept. 22 to the Board of Regents.

Donors made record gifts amounting to more than $300 million in FY '07, enabling the University to exceed its goal for The Michigan Difference, the University's $2.5 billion campaign. The University reached The Michigan Difference goal in May, 18 months before the campaign ends.

May said the University always has relied on private support to leverage the state's public investment and maintain high quality programs and a first-class education for its students.

In FY '07 more than 120,000 donors contributed to the University including more than 61,000 alumni. During the multi-year The Michigan Difference campaign, which began counting July 1, 2000, more than 315,000 donors have participated, including nearly 14,000 faculty and staff members who have contributed $114 million to date.

The campaign will continue through next year because some areas still have unmet needs, May said. He noted that virtually every gift to the campaign is designated by the donor to a specific purpose, and private gifts, therefore, do not replace state support, which provides operating funds for the University.

May said President Mary Sue Coleman helped emphasize the top priorities of need-based financial aid and endowed faculty positions by creating the President's Donor Challenge. The one-for-one match for need-based undergraduate financial aid helped raise about $17 million, with a total impact of $34 million since last October. To date the campaign has raised $395 million dollars for both need-based and merit-based financial aid, for undergraduate and graduate student support, resulting in a total of 2,032 undergraduate scholarships and 1,143 graduate/professional fellowships, with a total value of $1.36 billion. Of the total of 3,175 undergraduate and graduate scholarships, 1,000 were added during the campaign.

The president's contribution of $500,000 for each $1.5 million from a donor for an endowed professorship created 20 new endowed positions in only eight months. A total of 169 new endowed professorships have been funded by the campaign, bringing the total to 437, an increase of 62 percent.

A new President's Challenge to encourage support for graduate and professional students, begun Sept. 1, will match donor contributions for graduate and professional student financial aid on a two-for-one basis, with every two dollars from a donor receiving a one dollar match.

The campaign has raised $731 million dollars for the endowment, toward a goal of $800 million.

May cited specific examples of the impact of gifts on the University's ability to offer a superb education:

• Donors Penny and Roe Stamps created a distinguished visitors program, a family scholarship program, a visiting professorship and the Work Gallery and undergraduate studio space in the School of Art and Design, Penny Stamps' alma mater. They also funded a student commons in the Ross Academic Center in Athletics, and contributed toward the Stamps Auditorium on North Campus. They broadened their giving to create the Stamps Scholars Program — financial aid for students from six schools: LSA, nursing, music, Art and Design, kinesiology and engineering.

• Joan and Sanford Weill's $5 million gifts helped create the new building of the same name to house the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. For faculty and students alike this new building means classrooms, seminar rooms, a computing center, group study rooms, the latest audio visual equipment and collegiality, the ability to collaborate with colleagues in close proximity after years when faculty offices were spread across campus. The Weills later made an additional $3 million gift to endow the deanship of the Ford School.

• The Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute was funded with a $5.25 million gift from the Graham Foundation and Donald and Ingrid Graham and additional support from the provost's office, to encourage multidisciplinary research and education in environmental sustainability and leverage the high quality programs involving 300 faculty and 400 courses already underway at Michigan. To date, six 2007 Graham Fellows have been named and five teams have received multidisciplinary Seed Funding Grants.

• Gifts from Mary Meader and the late Edwin Meader of $10 million made it possible for U-M to create the Depression Center in the Rachel Upjohn Building, the only comprehensive center in the nation dedicated to research, education and treatment of depression and bi-polar disorder. The Meaders' lead gift drew support from others who had witnessed the destruction of this disease, including Wally Prechter who created a Heinz C. Prechter Bipolar Research Fund to tackle this disease from the research side because of the impact it had had on her family, and retired CBS correspondent and U-M alum Mike Wallace, who joined the advisory group because of his experience with the disease.

U-M fundraising marks another record year

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