The University will launch a five-year, $1.75 billion fundraising campaign Nov. 9, administrators and trustees confirmed yesterday.
The campaign, the University's first since the completion of a $1.14 billion capital campaign in 2000, will support the major stated initiatives of President Tilghman's administration, including the creative and performing arts neighborhood, the engineering school, the neuroscience institute, financial aid, international outreach and campus life issues.
"All of us who have been involved in this see this as a tremendous opportunity to make Princeton an even better university than it is," Tilghman said in an interview. "A hallmark of Princeton is that it has always been striving to be better."
The worldwide campaign will be led by Bob Murley '72 and Nancy Peretsman '76, both of whom serve on the University Board of Trustees. Murley said that the University has been preparing for this campaign for nearly four years, with two years of planning followed by a two-year "quiet phase" — the period of preparation before the official launch of a campaign — during which time the University secured around $500 million in pledges for the campaign.
"We have a wonderful development team assembled," said Murley, vice chairman of the investment bank Credit Suisse. "When it comes to alumni support and enthusiasm for annual giving and capital giving, Princeton is an elephant among mice. Princeton is the standard against which many universities measure themselves. It's in a class unto itself."
The logistics
The Daily Princetonian first reported the plans for a capital campaign in November 2005, when University Vice President and Secretary Bob Durkee '69 confirmed that the University was in the planning stages of a campaign and noted that conversations began shortly after Tilghman took office in 2001.
Tilghman announced last spring that the University would launch a capital campaign this fall to supplement the University's $14.8 billion endowment. The campaign will run from its launch in November this year to Reunions 2012. Durkee also confirmed that University presidents often embark on major fundraising campaigns halfway through their tenures.
Durkee also said that, as with all Princeton fundraising drives, the campaign's goal includes Annual Giving contributions. The 2006-07 Annual Giving campaign raised more than $49 million, the highest total in the University's history.
Princeton will join 28 other colleges and universities each currently seeking to raise more than $1 billion, according to data from The Chronicle of Higher Education. Thirteen of those institutions are attempting to raise more than $2 billion, including Stanford, which is seeking a record-breaking $4.3 billion for a campaign that began this year and will end in 2011.
Several news sources have reported Harvard is in the quiet phase of its own capital campaign, and observers expect the school to announce a $5 billion campaign sometime in the near future. Its last capital campaign, which ended in 1999, raised $2.6 billion.
Princeton's last campaign, launched in 1996 in commemoration of the University's 250th anniversary and concluded in 2000, had an initial goal of $750 million. Like most capital campaigns, the most recent campaign surpassed its goal, raising $1.14 billion.
Within the Ivy League, Princeton falls in the middle of the range of campaigns. In addition to Harvard's forthcoming campaign, Columbia and Cornell are seeking $4 billion to support their undergraduate and large graduate and professional programs. Yale announced a $3 billion capital campaign last year, and Brown and Dartmouth are seeking to raise $1.4 billion and $1.3 billion, respectively.
Major campaigns are also being conducted by Johns Hopkins, which has raised nearly $2.8 billion for a $3.2 billion campaign scheduled to end next year, and the University of Virginia, which has raised $1.36 billion of a $3 billion effort scheduled to end in 2011.
Tilghman said that smaller size of the University's campaign is due to the size of the alumni body, since Princeton has no professional graduate schools. "We would not expect to have a number that's even close to the numbers being raised by those colleges," she said.
Despite the University's smaller size, campaign leaders stress the effort will keep Princeton among the nation's best universities.
"I have a deep respect for the University and its place in the world of higher education," Murley said. "I believe that Princeton is the top of the leader board, and I want to do everything I can to help it stay there."
How to fundraise
Though there were originally three campaign co-chairs, John Wynne '67 decided to scale back his involvement with the effort.
"Mr. Wynne has taken on a major leadership position on the University of Virginia's board, so at Princeton he has moved to the position of co-chair emeritus," Durkee said in an email. "He will remain active in the Princeton campaign, but not in the co-chair role."
Peretsman said that capital campaigns are a chance for the University to reevaluate its needs and reach out to the entire alumni body for support. "It gives you an opportunity to take stock every decade or so and see what we can do better," she said, adding that 10 years ago, when the last capital campaign was launched, "things like neuroscience didn't exist."
"We've been approaching some of our most loyal, dedicated, capable donors," Tilghman said. "The most important thing that we have been doing in the past two years in addition to the Table of Needs ... is developing the key group of volunteers who are going to lead the campaign."
The Table of Needs is a priority list compiled by the University outlining the major projects for which significant funds are required.
She added, "A lot of planning is about building the volunteer army," noting that volunteers are recruited to focus on specific regions, classes, or projects on the Table of Needs.
Peretsman said that the average age of University alumni was also taken into consideration while planning the campaign, adding that the median class of alumni graduated in the early 1980s. "That's a very different alumni body than 10 years ago," she said. "Who's involved in the campaign has to represent that group as we fill leadership positions."
All of Princeton's campaigns occur over a period of five years to coincide with a major Reunion for each graduating class, which occur once every five years and are traditionally a time for increased donations.
Murley, who served as the national Annual Giving chair from 1992 to 1995, said that officials spend a great deal of time on setting the right financial goal for the campaign.
"There's always an intersection that exists between the needs that the University has, and what the capacity and capabilities of the donor pool is," he said. "After a very, very careful assessment of the Table of Needs and the degree of donor support that we believe we will have, that intersection coalesced around $1.75 billion."
One of the campaign's goals will be to better engage the University with the rest of the world by expanding study abroad programs and bringing foreign faculty to campus.
"The world's changed so much," said Peretsman, executive vice president and managing director at the investment bank Allen and Company. "There's a sense that the world is so much smaller. We have to make sure that our undergraduates have an experience that connects them to the world at large."
Murley said that direct requests by the students are responsible for the University's focus on the creative and performing arts in this campaign.
"That component arose in large part from overwhelming demands of our student body," he said. "We weren't fully satisfying the growing needs of our students and their desires in the performing, creative, and visual arts. There was a belief that Princeton was frankly not where it wanted to be in terms of having those offerings for our students. It was very much student driven."
— Princetonian staff writer Rachel Dunn contributed reporting to this article.
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