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September 29, 2008
Emory launches $1.6B fundraising campaign

By Maria Lameiras

Emory University has launched Campaign Emory, a $1.6 billion fundraising endeavor designed to realize the challenging goals outlined in the University’s strategic plan “Where Courageous Inquiry Leads.” The campaign is the most ambitious in the University’s history and the largest ever undertaken in Georgia.

At a black-tie gala attended by more than 500 alumni and friends Sept. 25 on the Clairmont Campus, Emory officials announced the campaign is more than halfway to meeting its goal, having raised $838 million since beginning a quiet phase in September 2005.

Led by President Jim Wagner, University and campaign leaders highlighted an assemblage of donors whose generosity and philanthropy has transformed Emory’s people, places and programs.

Wagner called the launch a historic moment for Emory, ranking with other defining moments in Emory’s past that have led to the University’s standing as one of the top 20 national universities as rated by U.S. News & World Report.

“There have been many transformational points in Emory’s history, times when the University had the courage to reach for that next rung on the ladder. This is one of those points,” he said. “We know who we are and what we want to become. We also know that what got us to where we are today will not be sufficient to get us to where we want to go.”

Campaign Emory is designed to advance Emory’s already-strong faculty, students and health care professionals; create and bolster innovative programs; and build facilities to provide the best educational, research and patient-care environments possible.

Ben Johnson ’65C, a partner in the Atlanta-based law firm Alston & Bird and longtime chair of the Emory Board of Trustees, told the gathering: “This is Emory’s moment. We have a magnificent, daring strategic plan. We have the right leadership team. We have outstanding faculty and brilliant students in every part of the University. We are ready to step forward boldly, knowing that this will require a commitment unequaled in Emory’s history.”

During the evening, Emory Alumni Board president Crystal Edmonson ’79C highlighted stories of gifts that have helped bring Emory to its current standing and which have launched Campaign Emory in spectacular fashion.

Among those donors were Robert and George Woodruff and the Woodruff Foundation, whose $105 million gift to Emory in 1979 “was truly the moment when the University began to define itself differently,” Edmonson said. Recently, the foundation gave $240 million toward the construction of a new state-of-the-art Emory Clinic, designed to provide the best health care available anywhere.

Edmonson also praised Thalia and the late Michael Carlos, whose gifts have transformed the Michael C. Carlos Museum into one of the most prominent university museums in the country.

Emory has an amazing history of support from some of the most prominent philanthropic families in the state, Edmonson said. Continuing the legacy of patriarch O. Wayne Rollins, the Rollins family has given more than $51 million to Campaign Emory, including funds to construct the school’s new Claudia Nance Rollins Building.

Other donors also were recognized for the impact of their support — from groundbreaking cancer research and scholarships to legal services for Hurricane Katrina victims.

Wagner says there are many more stories to be told of the importance and the impact of philanthropy on the University.

“You have only to look around Emory — at the construction under way, the recruitments, our new library collections — to know that we are fortunate to have had the private support that has made Emory what it is today. But we must keep asking: Are we good enough? Should we stop here? Or continue to step past our comfort zone? At the end of the campaign in 2012, Emory will be at a different place. A better place. To do that will take vision and courage.”

Scheduled to run through 2012, the campaign will be led by trustee Sonny Deriso ’69C-’79L and will help transform Emory’s campus and catapult its programs to a higher level. The goal includes major support for faculty, students, programs and facilities throughout Emory’s nine undergraduate and graduate schools and the University’s major operating units, including Emory Libraries, the Carlos Museum, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory Hospitals and The Emory Clinic.