$2 Billion and Counting

On January 11, the Campaign for Duke, which began in January 1996, reached $2,006,684,498, meeting its goal almost a year before its December 31, 2003, deadline.

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 $2-billion total makes Duke the fifth American university to reach that level in a single fund-raising campaign, and the first outside 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," says Duke President Nannerl O. Keohane. "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 funds. Of the campaign total, $312 million is committed by donors to be paid in the future. When it was publicly announced in October 1998, with $684 million raised, the campaign's initial goal was $1.5 billion. Slightly more than two years later, when the university adopted its strategic plan, "Building on Excellence," that target was raised to $2 billion. 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 only 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 stress, however, that important needs remain. "We still have ground to cover and less than a year to cover it," says Virginia Lilly "Ginny" Nicholas '64, who has been co-chair with her husband, Peter M. Nicholas '64, of the campaign since it began. "The goal for the Campaign for Duke was set to match the university's needs with what we believed we could raise," she says. "We always understood that even $2 billion was not sufficient to meet all of Duke's needs."

" While we have raised more than we thought we would," says Peter Nicholas, a Duke trustee, "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 more affordable to all students. 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.

Because Duke is "need blind" in admissions decisions, providing 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," Nicholas says. "There are also merit-based and athletic-scholarship 'buckets' to fill."

Support for faculty is another important area that needs additional funding. Some $150 million has established ninety-five 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," Peter Nicholas says. ""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, says Nicholas. "We have built and continue to build a great many facilities."

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 residence hall, 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.