Fundraising exceeds $500 million
USU celebrated the end of a seven-year-long fundraising event Friday night with an announcement from University President Stan Albrecht: The campaign raised $512,861,412.
When the campaign was announced to the public in 2007, the goal presented was $200 million dollars.
Tim Vitale, director of Public Relations and Marketing, said reaching even that goal was uncertain in the beginning since this was USU’s first campaign of this kind. Consultants said to start with a more attainable goal.
“Consultants didn’t think that we were ready for a $100 million dollar campaign and the president said ‘We’re going to do that,'” Vitale said. “He said $200 million and we hit that goal a year later, and the president said we’re doubling the goal to $400 million.”
Vitale said when the announcement was made that the president was doubling the original goal in the middle of an economic downturn, he joked it was probably the worst move he could have possibly made. But alumni, friends, donors and foundations came through and the larger goal was exceeded.
Kent Clark, the former social vice-president of development, was heavily involved in the campaign for the first five years and said he was amazed when the president announced such a spectacular goal.
“When we went public, we had raised a little over one $100 million dollars against a $200 million dollar goal. That’s about what you’d expect when you go public with a campaign. You expect to take three or four more years to finish that goal,” he said. “Astonishing.”
The campaign’s slogan, “Honoring Tradition, Securing Our Future,” exemplified what Ross Peterson, the former vice president for advancement, said: the administration’s focus has been on how this campaign will affect students now and in coming years. Peterson was brought back to USU by President Albrecht specifically to help with the campaign.
“The one thing we wanted to emphasize a lot was about students and things that you could do that would benefit students,” Peterson said.
This includes the 24 new buildings funded for USU campuses statewide and more qualified faculty members with fellowships, professorships and state-of-the-art facilities. One of the largest amounts of the money – more than $28.4 million – will go to scholarship endowments.
“I think the students are now in a position where they can do what they need to do to have a quality education,” said Albrecht’s wife, Joyce Albrecht. “New labs, new buildings, new scholarships – it just changes the whole face of the campus.”
Joyce said of all of the developments that have arisen out of this campaign, the 200 new scholarship endowments, perpetual scholarships available to many students year after year, have the most potential for shaping the lives of students.
“It is the access that some students now have to come to this university that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to have,” she said. “A lot of them come, but then they have to drop out and work and then save money. With these retention scholarships, they can stay in school, graduate sooner and get on with their lives.”
University advisers encourage students to express their gratitude by writing a letter to the people who sponsored them and their education. Joyce said hopefully, the relationship established with the donor who supported them will inspire them to give back at some point.
“Usually when they have the opportunity to meet the donor that helped them get the scholarship, they want to be like that donor someday,” she said. “They want to give back, they want to have that same satisfaction that the donor has in making a difference. It’s a wonderful story of how it’s just a big circle.”
Brandon Lee, a pianist and new alumnus who finished both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at USU, said he would begin by giving back through his performing. He said since he came from a single parent family where he began supporting the family at the age of fifteen, he never could have accomplished so much with his education without the support of scholarships.
More than 53,700 donors contributed to the campaign. Marc Bingham, the donor for whom the USU Vernal Campus is named, said he decided to contribute because he knows his money is really going to help make a difference in people’s lives. He said it’s difficult to know where to spend his money since money doesn’t buy happiness unless you earn it.
“If you don’t go to bed tired, you won’t appreciate it,” he said. “It’s easy to make money, but it’s really difficult to make a difference.”
Bingham said he knows the students who receive scholarships really work hard for them and he knows his gift is appreciated and well used.
– abhendrix@pentaracorp.com