Private funds fuel progress

The Carolina First campaign, UNC’s multi-billion dollar fundraising effort, is bounding toward its ultimate goal and in doing so has lighted the way for the eventual change in the campus’s funding scheme.

Started in 1999, the campaign boldly established a goal of generating $1.8 billion by the end of the 2006-07 fiscal year.

To date, the program is a mere $300 million shy of that same goal, with the majority of it having come from private funds.

“One of the biggest challenges for us has been a public university seeking private funds,” said Matt Kupec, vice chancellor for University advancement, the campaign’s public advocate.

The success of the campaign’s private fundraising has drawn administrators’ eyes to the future source for University income: partnerships with private revenue sources.

Campus leaders hope that private companies will begin to exert an increasingly important role in the University’s funding structure in the coming years.

Administrators have warned that the amount of revenue coming from federal grant sources, such as the National Institutes of Health, will begin to decrease at institutions of higher learning, especially those in the lower quartiles of research innovation.

“We’re going to have these new relationships on the corporate side, recognizing that the federal engine for research support is really slowing down …,” Chancellor James Moeser said.

Twenty percent of the University’s total revenue now comes from grants, investment and private gifts like those solicited in the campaign.

“Campaign or not, the need for private support is going to continue on,” Kupec said.

If the University’s drive toward increased research innovation is to be successful, with major projects such as Carolina North, the funding cannot slow down.

Private donations from University alumni account for the largest bulk of the campaign donations — about $577 million thus far. Last year alone there were 110,000 individual gifts, Kupec said.

Courting alumni sources requires promoting the physical benefits of donations.

Most donors like their money to go toward scholarships and professorships to see the results, Kupec said.

But it can be difficult to encourage donations to the more subtle endeavors — such as massive capital improvement planning on campus.

The trick, Kupec says, is to draw a connection between the improvements and the benefits to students.

“So, we sell the buildings almost as the people and programs,” he said.

Drawing a correlation between the promise of visible results and the dollar amount has been a part of the campaign since its inception.

Just before the Carolina First campaign hit its stride, UNC administrators were campaigning for the N.C. Higher Education Bond Referendum, passed in 2000.

Administrators portrayed the bond as the spark that would ignite progress on campus.

Moeser promised state voters that if they approved the $3.1 billion project — roughly $500 million of which would go to UNC — the University would triple those funds through Carolina First.

That combination of private gifts and public donations has charged the University and propelled it into a period of unprecedented growth, Moeser said last week.

He called the campaign the catalyst for on-campus improvement.

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.