Rutgers sets fund-raising record
Rutgers University raised a record $187.9 million last school year, most of it earmarked for specific programs and projects, the school announced Wednesday.
Rutgers University raised a record $187.9 million last school year, most of it earmarked for specific programs and projects, the school announced Wednesday.
The bulk of the money - about 60 percent - came from "a surge in donations" received at the end of the university's 71/2-year "Our Rutgers, Our Future" fund-raising campaign, the university said in a news release. The campaign to raise $1 billion ended Dec. 31, 2014, exceeding its goal by $37 million.
The 2014-15 record surpassed the previous year's total by 26.6 percent. In the 2013-14 year, the Rutgers University Foundation received $148.4 million, a record at the time.
"Thanks to the growing generosity of our donors, Rutgers University has greater resources to support our outstanding students, groundbreaking faculty research, and new classrooms, labs, and other world-class facilities," Robert L. Barchi, Rutgers' president, said in a statement.
Of the $187.9 million, $107.3 million was explicitly designated for the Rutgers-New Brunswick campus. Nearly $6 million was earmarked for Rutgers-Camden, and Rutgers-Newark raised $16.7 million.
Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, which includes most of the university's medical, nursing, and dental schools, but not the nursing school at Rutgers-Camden, raised $45.2 million. General donations for universitywide projects totaled $12.8 million.
Most of the Rutgers-Camden donations went to scholarships and other student-support programs. About eight in 10 Rutgers-Camden undergraduate students receive financial aid, and the campus prides itself on its support of first-generation, nontraditional, and minority students.
"Our donors are recognizing the good work we do with our students, and they recognize the need to help our students graduate in a timely fashion, and we're seeing a lot of our donations invest in that," said Mike Sepanic, spokesman for Rutgers-Camden.
For Rutgers, private donations will continue to grow in importance, said Nevin E. Kessler, president of the Rutgers University Foundation, who expects to set new philanthropy records over the next several years.
"The interesting way to look at it is from the perspective of the growth of private gift fund-raising to Rutgers over a 10-year period," Kessler said.
In the 2005-06 year, Rutgers raised $66.7 million. Counting that year and the most recent record, the university raised an average of $120.5 million each year over the last decade.
"This amount of money compared to a $3.6 billion budget does not appear to be significant, but what's significant about this money is that it's private money, and that it can be used at the discretion of the leadership of the institution to support the areas that were directed by the donors," Kessler said.
"It supports things that we don't have the tuition revenue and the state funding to support, and that's the important story here, that in a climate where those revenues are not growing significantly, the private gifts fund-raising numbers are growing significantly."
About 7.8 percent of the donations, $14.7 million, went to Rutgers athletics, the university said. Athletics gifts rose 18.1 percent from the year before.
The $187.9 million also includes a $1 million donation from Rutgers-Camden law school alumnus James R. Maida and his wife, Rutgers-New Brunswick Graduate School of Education alumna Sharon O'Mara Maida. That money is funding a pro bono and public service law program at Rutgers Law School, the newly merged Camden and Newark law schools.
Other major donations and pledges to Rutgers-Camden include a $600,000 bequest to seed an endowed scholarship fund for the honors college and $50,000 to establish a scholarship for the business school.
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