Campus & Community UNC receives $271.25 million in gifts in fiscal year 2009
| UNC receives $271.25 million in gifts in fiscal year 2009 |
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| Thursday, July 23, 2009 | |
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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s fund-raising efforts brought in $271.25 million in gifts in fiscal year 2009. The total represented UNC’s second highest year in history for this type of support, which accounts for money that is immediately available to the University. In commitments for fiscal year 2009, which ended June 30, UNC raised $290.4 million. Commitments include pledges as well as gifts. “Our supporters have been tremendously generous,” said Matt Kupec, UNC’s vice chancellor for University Advancement. “Despite this being a down year for the economy, they’ve shown remarkable dedication to Carolina. That attests to their belief in Chancellor Thorp’s leadership and to what our students, faculty and staff are doing. We’re very grateful.” Only fiscal year 2008’s gift total of $301 million tops the 2009 mark, and UNC was in the final months of a major fund-raising campaign – the Carolina First Campaign – that year. “Being in a major campaign always generates a great deal of enthusiasm, so – in that light, plus what happened with the economy – we feel particularly good about our numbers for this past year,” Kupec said. Highlights in fiscal year 2009 included the first major gift during UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp’s administration, which began July 1, 2008. Sallie Shuping-Russell of Chapel Hill gave $666,000 to fund an innovative new course that will feature the work of active writers who will hold a distinguished visiting professorship within the Creative Writing Program. The program is part of the Department of English and Comparative Literature in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. A matching grant from the North Carolina Distinguished Professors Endowment Trust will raise the gift’s total value to $1 million. The state fund, established in 1985 by the N.C. General Assembly, provides matching grants to recruit and retain outstanding faculty. Shuping-Russell, managing director at the investment firm BlackRock in New York, N.Y., is a 1977 Carolina graduate and member of the UNC Board of Trustees. Also in the College of Arts and Sciences, private gifts have joined state matching funds to create a $21.5 million endowment to complete a goal to double the number of students invited to UNC’s Honors Program. A $2 million capstone commitment in 2009 from the Hyde Family Foundations of Memphis, Tenn., provided the funds to reach the goal. With the endowment and more available honors courses, 10 percent of entering students in future classes will receive invitations to the program, starting with the Class of 2012. For graduate students, a $4.5 million grant from the New York City-headquartered Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will support graduate students in the departments of English and comparative literature, history, philosophy, and religious studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. The grant will join $2.76 million in funding from the University to endow the Mellon Graduate Fellowship Program. Starting in the 2009-10 academic year, the program will fund 12 fellowships in an initial five-year pilot phase, with four Mellon Graduate Fellows enrolling every other year. After that, five fellows will enroll every other year on a permanent basis. Most of UNC’s contribution will go toward the endowment via a drive to raise $2 million in private support. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation committed $22.9 million for a new project that aims to improve the reproductive health of the urban poor in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. UNC's Carolina Population Center will run the project – the Measurement, Learning and Evaluation for the Urban Reproductive Health Initiative – which will measure the effectiveness of various urban reproductive health approaches and interventions in the two regions. The grant runs for six years. In the first year, researchers will focus on getting the project off the ground in India and on developing tools for the wider project as it expands. Closer to home, the Jessie Ball duPont Fund has funded an expansion of a UNC program that will enable more North Carolina high school seniors to realize the goal of attending college. The duPont Fund, based in Jacksonville, Fla., has created a matching-grant program that will provide up to $210,000 to support new and existing partner high schools in the Carolina College Advising Corps. Entering its third year, the Carolina College Advising Corps (CCAC) helps low-income, first-generation and underrepresented students in North Carolina realize the goal of attending college. A constituent program of the National College Advising Corps (headquartered at UNC), the CCAC places recent Chapel Hill graduates as college advisers in low-income high schools across the state. If fully funded, the matching-grant program could, over the next three years, support up to 24 high schools that would otherwise lack the resources to provide full funding for one or more advisers. Commitments in 2009 also helped the University create 21 endowed professorships, as well as a total of 86 undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships. Carolina had more than 75,000 donors for the year. Development Communications contact: Scott Ragland, (919) 962-0027, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it |