Emory Report homepage  

October 27, 2008
Early gifts fuel Campaign Emory

by Maria Lameiras

Although Campaign Emory was only publicly announced on Sept. 25, the machinery driving the historic $1.6 billion fundraising effort rumbled to life more than three years ago.

Shortly after taking the job as president of Emory University in 2003, Jim Wagner marshaled leaders on all levels to examine the University’s practices and programs in order to determine what was needed to move them to the level of a world-class university.

Once those priorities were set, Emory leaders and development officers began reaching out to Emory’s top supporters and were rewarded with a number of leadership gifts that brought the campaign to a total of $838 million raised by the time Campaign Emory was publicly announced, says Susan Cruse, senior vice president of development and alumni relations. Among them:

• The Woodruff Foundation’s recent $261.5 million gift will be used primarily toward constructing a new state-of-the-art Emory Clinic, opening in 2013 to provide the best possible health care available anywhere. Over the past three years, the Woodruff Foundation also has supported a doctorate of nursing practice program at Emory and renovation of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Administration Building.

• Gifts of more than $51.5 million from the O. Wayne Rollins Foundation and Grace Crum Rollins to the Rollins School of Public Health, the Michael C. Carlos Museum, and ongoing support to the Rollins Pavilion at Emory University Hospital. The bulk of the gift, $50 million, is helping fund construction of the new Claudia Nance Rollins Building at the Rollins School of Public Health.

• The Coca-Cola Foundation has joined alumni and friends in supporting Emory Advantage, a financial aid program that provides grants to lower-income students and caps debt for middle-income students, with a gift of $3 million.

• A $6 million gift from Wendell ’80C and Mary Laney Reilly ’81C–’00T supports Emory Advantage scholarships, Emory’s Center for Humanistic Inquiry, and Candler School of Theology.

• A $12 million Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation gift is advancing promising islet cell research to treat diabetes.

• The Helene Fuld Health Trust gave more than $5 million to create the Fuld Fellowship Endowment, which allows students with degrees in other fields to train for a nursing career in service to vulnerable populations, supporting the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing and its priority of helping alleviate the nursing shortage.

• Brad Currey, an Emory trustee for 20 years, is investing nearly $3 million in several Emory schools and units. His charitable remainder trust will provide need-based scholarships to Korean students at Emory.

Although much remains to be done before the campaign ends in 2012, Cruse says an enormous amount of work has already been accomplished as a part of Campaign Emory.

“It is like putting on the wheels of the train while it is already running,” Cruse says. “The launch was just taking the campaign to a broader constituency, showing that we have the momentum and we have what it takes to move the campaign forward.”

To read more about Campaign Emory’s priorities by school and unit, visit www.campaign.emory.edu.