To universities, gathering donations is an art. Ivy league
universities are especially adept at convincing their alumni and
other stakeholders to contribute money to their cause. Stanford
University now showed that a targeted campaign can in fact raise as
much as $6,2 billion (€4,7 billion) within five years.
Back in 2006, Stanford's President John L. Hennessy announced a program called "The Stanford Challenge" which was meant to
channel university endowments into projects answering pressing
global issues related to areas like health, sustainability, arts
and education. The plan was initially to collect:
- $1.4 billion for multidisciplinary initiatives. Among them
three transformative initiatives designed to make groundbreaking
advances in human health, environmental sustainability and
international peace and security
- $1.175 billion for initiatives to improve K-12 education,
strengthen Stanford's undergraduate programs, reinvent and enhance
graduate programs and engage all students in the arts and the
creative process through exhibitions, performances and
research
- $1.725 billion in core support and annual giving to sustain
Stanford's breadth of excellence in teaching and research
Ultimately, the campaign organizers exceeded their $4,3 billion
target by $1,9 billion. $250 million (€188 million) of these funds
are now designated to flow into scholarship financing. Creating a
campaign on this scale appears hardly possible at a European
university.
In the U.S., it is rather common for alumni and other
stakeholders to donate money to universities. Nevertheless, this
initiative remains interesting from the point of view that it
bundled Stanford's fundraising effort into one program with a
common vision and strategy. Accordingly the campaign's co-chair
commented that "a core strength of Stanford is its ability to
function as one university and not just a collection of separate
schools and institutes."