After an impressive run of gathering pledges, Utah State University has doubled its fundraising goal to $400 million as part of a multiyear comprehensive campaign.
With both mega-pledges from major philanthropic foundations and modest gifts from more than 36,000 individuals, USU surpassed its initial $200 million goal in the spring, about a year into the campaign.
University officials remain concerned the nation's economic downturn and turmoil in the stock market - the fount that produces much of the foundation wealth forwarded to universities - will complicate this next phase of the campaign.
"It will be tougher. We go into this knowing this will be more of a challenge, but also that we can make it work," USU President Stan Albrecht said. He formally announced the new fundraising targets, along with an 18-month extension of the campaign to July 2012, at a major alumni event Wednesday night in Salt Lake City.
While the first phase of the campaign was geared toward facilities, scholarships and endowed chairs, Albrecht hopes most of the money raised in the second phase will nourish the endowment for the land-grant institution established a century ago in Logan. At $130 million, USU's endowment is less than a fourth of the University of Utah's. "We need to build the endowment, which ensures the college's future, into perpetuity," the president said. He was pleased that many of the donors thus far, 14,260 or about 40 percent, were giving to USU for the first time.
"The significance of first-time donors is we are reaching out to those we haven't been involved with in the past," Albrecht said. "They'll form the basis of giving to USU for the next several years."
USU fundraisers plan to zero in on alumni, who remain a relatively undertapped source of giving.
"While our numbers are impressive, it represents only 13 percent of known living alumni," Albrecht said. He noted that the University of Washington garnered pledges from 40 percent of its alumni in its recently completed fundraising campaign.
The university met its initial $200 million goal in March and has since brought in another $25 million in pledges, such as $3.2 million from the late David Sant to establish engineering scholarships. The 1962 graduate and telecommunications leader had already underwritten the construction of the Sant Engineering Innovation Building.
Other big alumni donors include commercial real estate developer DeLoy Hansen and Deloitte Touche Chief Executive Jim Quigley and his wife Bonnie.
USU's comprehensive campaign has already reined in eight-figure gifts, including a record-setting $26 million Huntsman family donation for the business school and $25 million from the Emma Eccles Jones Foundation for early childhood education.
