The Library’s Annual Donor Clubs

Our Donor Clubs honor influential individuals in the history of the Library and of the University. Over the years, their support of collections and programs in the Library has enabled it to grow into one of the world’s great research collections. Gifts in any amount are always greatly appreciated.

Athena
$1 - $99
A bronze bust of Athena presides over the north entrance to Charles Franklin Doe Memorial Library, dispensing—as campus legend has it—wisdom to all those who pass below her. Goddess of knowledge and wisdom in Greek mythology, Athena is an ideal library patroness, especially at a University conceived by its founders as an “Athens of the West.”

Daniel Coit Gilman
$100 - $249
The University was still in temporary quarters in Oakland when Gilman arrived to assume the position as its second president in 1871. Just 14 months later, he could report not only the establishment of the University on its permanent campus in Berkeley, but also on a number of important major gifts from individuals, including funds for the purchase of books for the Library.

Clark Kerr
$250 - $499
As president of the University of California, and UC Berkeley’s first chancellor, Kerr was admired as an elegant thinker of great intellect. His clear, logical vision of both the promise and problems of modern higher education influenced generations of political and education leaders. He initiated the creation of an undergraduate library on campus that came to pass with the opening of the Moffitt Library in 1970.

Henry Morse Stephens
$500 - $999
A beloved UC professor of history, and a key influence in encouraging the Regents to acquire the Bancroft Library in 1905, Henry Stephens loved the Library. When he passed away in 1919, he left the University his 12,000 volume library, a part of which forms the nucleus of Bancroft’s collections today.

Robert Gordon Sproul
$1,000 - $4,999
During Sproul’s tenure as its 11th President (1930-1958), the University of California rose to a position of great eminence among the universities of the world. His statement about the Library remains true today: “The Library is the heart of the University... The intellectual growth and vitality of every school and every division, of every professor and every student, depends on the vitality of the Library.”

James Kennedy Moffitt
$5,000 - $19,999
A graduate of the Class of 1886 and a UC Regent, James Moffitt was a longtime and generous donor to the Library. He established an endowed fund for collections in 1897 that remains in use today, and bequeathed the Library his personal collection of books.

Joseph C. Rowell
$20,000 - $49,999
A member of the class of 1884, he was appointed as the first full-time University Librarian in 1875. Rowell served in that role until 1919, when he resigned and became the first University Archivist, a post he held for an additional twenty years. Under Rowell's care, the library grew from a small, 13,000-volume library to over 1 million volumes in 1935, establishing it as one of the foremost research libraries in the United States.

May Treat Morrison
$50,000 – $99,000
The Alexander F. Morrison Memorial Library was made possible by a significant gift from his widow, philanthropist May Treat Morrison, both members of the Class of 1878. In contributing her husband's book collection to the Library, Mrs. Morrison acted on her belief that the books that had been the delight of her husband’s life could serve no finer purpose than to stimulate a love of reading in the students of his University.

Henry Douglas Bacon
$100,000 – $249,999
In 1879, Henry Douglas Bacon, a self-made man and prominent Oakland citizen, feeling that the library in South Hall was inadequate, gave $25,000 to the University for the construction of a separate building, subject to the State providing a similar amount. The Legislature eventually complied. Bacon also gave his book and art collection to be housed in the building.