The 'Campaign for Duke' Passes $2 Billion

Duke University's Campaign for Duke, which began in January 1996, has as of Jan. 11 reached $2,006,684,498, President Nannerl O. Keohane and campaign co-chairs Ginny and Pete Nicholas announced Thursday.

In its seven years, the campaign has provided support for faculty, student financial aid, academic programs, research, improvements to campus and community life and a variety of other areas. The Campaign for Duke ends Dec. 31, 2003, and school officials hope to meet remaining areas of need in that time.

The $2 billion total makes Duke the fifth American university to reach that level in a single fund-raising campaign, and the first outside of the Northeast and California.

"Although the Campaign for Duke has almost a year to run and several crucial priorities to fund, it has already provided strong support for Duke's most important goals and visions for the future," Keohane said. "It is truly heartening that tens of thousands of donors and volunteers have enabled us to reach this historic milestone because of their loyal efforts and generosity.

"Duke is committed to creating an environment that nurtures superb learning, teaching, patient care, service to society and discoveries in many areas of our life and our world. This is why we undertook this ambitious campaign, and why we continue to seek funds to support the key priorities in our strategic plan for every school and for the university."

The $2 billion has come from more than 225,000 donors. It includes some $661 million in new endowment. Of the campaign total, $312 million is committed by donors to be paid in the future.

Publicly announced in October 1998 with $684 million raised, the Campaign for Duke's initial goal was $1.5 billion. Slightly more than two years later, that target was raised to $2 billion when the university adopted its strategic plan, "Building on Excellence." The plan emphasized increased support for faculty and science initiatives, including a number of building projects.

When Duke announced it would raise the goal, it became one of four universities to seek a goal of $2 billion or more. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, it is now one of eight with that goal, and one of five -- along with Columbia and Harvard universities, the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Southern California -- to have reached it. Duke leaders stressed, however, that important needs remain.

"We still have ground to cover and less than a year to cover it," said Ginny Nicholas, who has been co-chair with husband Pete Nicholas of the Campaign for Duke since it began. Both graduated from Duke in 1964 and reside in Boston.

"The goal for the Campaign for Duke was set to match the university's needs with what we believed we could raise," she said. "We always understood that even $2 billion was not sufficient to meet all of Duke's needs."

Added Pete Nicholas, "While we have raised more than we thought we would, we haven't yet accomplished what we have called 'filling all the buckets,' which means funding every priority we identified at the start of the campaign. We still need to raise funds for financial aid, faculty and facilities."

Financial aid, for which $281 million has been raised during the campaign, allows Duke to be affordable to all students, Pete Nicholas said. In the current year, more than 40 percent of Duke undergraduates receive financial aid, requiring university expenditures of approximately $40 million, an increase of almost 43 percent since the start of the campaign.

Since Duke is "need blind" in admissions decisions and provides financial aid to all admitted students who demonstrate need, much of the campaign giving in this area has replaced funds that previously came from the university's operating budget. Those funds are now available for other purposes.

"We are short of our graduate fellowship goal, and even though we have reached most of the need-based undergraduate goal, it never represented our total need," Pete Nicholas said. "There are also merit-based and athletic scholarship 'buckets' to fill."

Support for faculty, Pete Nicholas said, is another important area that needs additional funding. Some $150 million has established 95 professorial chairs and supported faculty needs such as laboratory facilities. In February 2002, the Nicholases announced the Nicholas Faculty Leadership Initiative, a $25 million gift that would match 50 percent of the gifts from others for faculty support, to yield a total of $75 million.

"We haven't met our original goals, which were increased significantly after the adoption of our strategic plan," Pete Nicholas said. "Endowed professorships -- particularly the University Professorships -- are buckets to be filled, as is endowing a variety of other funds that will add to faculty resources."

While more than $325 million has been raised to "enrich the campus and community environment," Duke still has capital needs in a number of areas, Nicholas noted. "We have built and continue to build a great many facilities," he said.

Among the facilities built or renovated at Duke during the campaign are the McGovern-Davison Children's Hospital, the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies, the Brodie and Wilson recreational centers, the West Edens Link Dormitories, the Fox Student and Magat Academic Centers at the Fuqua School of Business, the Schwartz-Butters Athletic Center, the Ambler Tennis Stadium, the Sheffield Tennis Center, the Yoh Football Center and the Doris Duke Welcome Center in the Sarah P. Duke Gardens.

Other facilities, including the Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences, are under construction, while construction of still others, including the sciences center, the Nasher Museum of Art, the Albert Eye Research Institute, a second public policy building, an addition to the Divinity School and the renovation of Perkins Library, are scheduled.

Other pledges support a number of community initiatives in the Research Triangle area, particularly through Duke's neighborhood partnership initiative in Durham.

In addition to student financial aid, faculty support and enriching campus and community life, the Campaign for Duke's priorities include securing "annual and long-term unrestricted support" and "ensuring a superior academic program and advancing the quest for knowledge." During the seven years of the campaign, the needs identified in each priority have grown considerably.

More than $200 million has come in annual and long-term unrestricted support. Gifts to the Duke Annual Fund during the campaign years total more than $110 million, and about $49 million has come to the Iron Dukes to support athletic department needs.

About half of the campaign total has been directed to fund faculty research and university programs. Research gifts help support the work of Duke professors and physicians throughout the university. Programs funded include such undergraduate opportunities as FOCUS and Capstone seminars, new student life programs, as well as a range of interdisciplinary initiatives in Duke's professional schools and medical center, including the Institute for Genome Science and Policy, the Institute on Care at the End of Life and the Kenan Institute for Ethics.

Duke's Medical Center, Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, Divinity School, Pratt School of Engineering, Fuqua School of Business, School of Law, Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, University Libraries and Athletics Department have goals that are components of the Campaign for Duke. A collection of needs, called "university-wide initiatives," total $380 million.

The medical center and the schools of engineering, law, business and environment and earth sciences have reached their overall goals. The other divisions are within 15 percent of their targets.

The Campaign for Duke is a comprehensive campaign that has counted every dollar contributed or pledged to the university over the past seven years. These funds include all annual operating and endowment gifts, as well as contributions for capital needs, from private sources.