UCLA Breaks Fundraising Record

UCLA will announce today that it garnered $3.05 billion in gifts and pledges in its recently completed 10 1/2-year fundraising campaign, the largest donations total ever in American academia.

The tally surpasses the previous national record for a university fundraising drive, $2.85 billion, announced in 2003 by crosstown rival USC.

UCLA’s effort dovetailed with an increasingly widespread assessment, often emphasized by campus Chancellor Albert Carnesale, that leading public universities need to step up their fundraising to compete against top private universities for the best professors and students.

Carnesale and other public university leaders also have cited an intensified need to attract private donations to help cushion the schools against volatile state funding for higher education in California and elsewhere.

Carnesale acknowledged that UCLA’s total donations were pumped up by the length of its drive, which was several years longer than most university campaigns. USC’s drive lasted 9 1/2 years.

He pointed out that a few leading private universities, including USC, have roughly matched or outpaced his campus’ annual fundraising levels over the last decade. Still, he described UCLA as the fundraising leader among public universities, and noted that its annual gifts and pledges have roughly tripled since the early 1990s.

The donations total “enhances and underscores our optimism about the future of UCLA,” said Carnesale, who as UCLA’s leader for nearly nine years has overseen most of the campaign. The proceeds, he said, can’t fully offset lagging state funding in recent years. Still, the drive “does help to explain why despite the tough budget situation, UCLA continues to be one of the top universities in the country,” Carnesale said.

UCLA’s campaign was quietly launched in 1995 and officially announced in 1997, with a goal of raising $1.2 billion over seven years. The goal was later raised twice, up to $2.4 billion, and the drive was extended by three years to the end of 2005.

Although university fundraising suffered for a couple of years following the dot-com collapse, the drive largely coincided with a time of strong philanthropy toward universities. That trend has benefited Southern California’s top three research universities -- UCLA, USC and Caltech, which is about $300 million shy of reaching its goal of raising $1.4 billion by the end of 2007.

UCLA officials said its donations have been spread widely around the campus, although the largest chunk, $784 million, is earmarked for medical research and patient care.

Among other things, the money has been used to provide more than 30,000 scholarships and fellowships to undergraduate and graduate students, to endow 124 new professorships and to build the Gonda (Goldschmied) Neuroscience and Genetics Research Center; the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Center and the Glorya Kaufman Hall, which houses a dance center.

Funds from the campaign, along with state and federal money, also are being used to pay for UCLA’s new hospital, the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, which is due to open early next year.

The largest donors named by UCLA are entertainment executive David Geffen, who pledged $200 million to the medical school; and Leslie Gonda, an aircraft leasing magnate, and his wife, Susan, who gave $45 million for the neuroscience and genetic center bearing their name. Henry Samueli, co-founder of Broadcom Corp., and his wife, Susan, gave $30 million to the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

UCLA said most of the gifts and pledges generated in the campaign, $2.22 billion, already have been received in cash.

However, university officials declined to say how much of the $150 million pledged for the new medical center by friends of former President Reagan has been collected. UCLA spokesman Phil Hampton would say only that financial commitments “are being met on schedule.”

A leader of the $150-million medical center donors group was Michael Ovitz, a former Disney president and once a leading Hollywood power broker, who personally pledged $25 million. He could not be reached for comment. University officials said the donor group included an anonymous contributor who made two pledges totaling $100 million for the medical center.

Alexander “Sandy” W. Astin, founding director of UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute and a member of the faculty since 1973, said that the look of the university’s campus has been substantially changed by the fundraising campaign. He said much of the money has gone into a steady stream of building projects -- drawing complaints, at times, from people on campus trying to walk around the ongoing construction work.

On the other hand, Astin said, the donations, by ostensibly making the university less dependent on state politicians, could give university leaders greater freedom to guide UCLA’s future.

“A lot of private money comes with strings attached, like public money,” he said. “But because of the diversity of funders in the private philanthropic field, you do tend to get more autonomy for the university, and that’s a healthy thing. That’s what has made American universities world leaders.”

Thousands of small donations also figured in the campaign. UCLA said the drive was funded by more than 225,000 donors -- including 93,000 of the more than 300,000 living UCLA alumni.

Although the big campaign is over, major fundraising won’t stop. UCLA is in the midst of a separate five-year effort, announced in 2004, to raise $250 million to fund more endowed chairs for professors and to provide new fellowships and scholarships for graduate students. UCLA said it already has raised $143 million in that campaign.