University's Capital Campaign Totals $1.44 Billion

The University has announced that The Campaign for the New Century ended with a final fundraising total of $1.44 billion--a figure that delights us all. In fact, this is the most ever raised by a public university, and the most by any university without a medical school.

In announcing the end of the campaign Chancellor Robert Berdahl observed that "...Berkeley has achieved an unprecedented success in American higher education....For Berkeley to remain the most distinguished public research university in the world, we need to leverage the success of the campaign into establishing traditions of private giving for generations to come."

The campaign was launched publicly in 1996 with an original goal of $1.1 billion, but the goal was adjusted to $1.4 billion when it became apparent that the original one would not be sufficient to meet all the campus' needs. The $1.44 billion represents more than 500,000 individual gifts.

A dramatic rise in the value of Cal's endowment, from $700 million to more than $2 billion, will be an enduring legacy of the campaign and will strengthen the resources available to future generations of students and faculty.

Key to the success of the campaign was a percentage increase in the number of alumni who supported the University. At the beginning of the campaign, approximately nine percent of Cal's alumni made gifts to the campus; now about 14 percent are giving (each percentage point represents approximately 5,000 additional donors).

University volunteers and staff initiated the "quiet phase" of the campaign in 1993 and succeeded in raising almost $500 million prior to the public announcement of the campaign in September 1996. At a press conference prior to the campaign kick-off event in Doe Memorial Library, former Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien underscored the importance of the campaign to Cal's future and made clear that Berkeley's excellence is dependent on the generosity of Cal's friends and alumni: "...we are challenging the private sector to invest in Berkeley for the public good. We are encouraging them to help create the new public support network we need to continue as a world center of scholarship and opportunity."

The Library was a featured priority of the campaign and is benefiting from the generosity of its donors, which now number more than 6,000. Specific Library goals included increased support for Library collections and new facilities for the Music Library and the East Asian Library.

Stay tuned. The next issue of this newsletter will feature a final report on the success of the Library's efforts, and how private support is making a significant difference in the Library's collections and programmatic efforts.