Release date: Oct. 5, 2001
Contact: Jan Gleason, Assistant Vice President, 404-727-0639, or jgleaso@emory.edu

Emory Receives $297.8 Million In Gifts In Fiscal Year 01

Emory University received 31,854 gifts totaling $297.8 million in contributions between Sept. 1, 2000, and Aug. 31 of this year. This amounts to 3,502 more gifts and some $205 million more than last year.

Based on last year's numbers, the nearly $300 million total should put Emory among the top 10 university fundraising efforts in the country when figures are released later this fall. "As Emory reaches for its position among the very top echelon of the world's great research universities, the need for the financial resources to support its aspirations becomes ever clearer and greater," said Emory Board of Trustee Chairman Ben Johnson, managing partner in the Atlanta law firm of Alston & Bird. "It's heartening to see the community of support for the university and its highest aspirations grow and broaden so dramatically."

"I take great pride in this increase in the number of gifts, especially in this time of economic turmoil," said Bill Fox, senior vice president of Institutional Advancement (IA). "It indicates a strong belief in what Emory is doing. People like to participate in excellence and see their money well-spent and well-used. We have a good record of using money as we said we would."

Fox should know during the past five years Emory has received more than $1 billion in gifts, and in the 10 years he has been at the IA helm, the university has received more than $1.5 billion in gifts and pledges. That figure places him among the elite of the higher education fundraising chiefs whose efforts have resulted in more than a $1 billion for their institutions.

Fox himself is quick to point out it's certainly not all his doing. "At no time in Emory's history have as many deans, faculty, and senior administrators been as fervently involved in fundraising as they are today, and that is making a great difference in our efforts," he said. "IA coordinates the fund-raising process, but no one can tell the story of their school better than the deans. And we have a superb fundraising staff."

"This is the second-best fundraising year in our history," Fox added. "The total for this year has only been exceeded once, and that was in 1997."

Fox said the $297.8 million represents actual dollars received by the university during the fiscal year and does not include pledges and planned gifts that will come to Emory over time. Included in this year's amount are gifts from the Whitehead Foundation, the Evans Foundation and the Woodruff Foundation. "Emory continues to benefit from the generosity of Robert Woodruff and the foundations he and his family members established," said Fox.

Among those making gifts were 28,230 individuals, up 12 percent from last year. "The range and level of gifts show that it took many people to make this banner year possible," said Fox. Of these donations, 19,781 came through the Annual Fund solicitation of alumni, parents and friends. At $3.4 million, a record year, the Annual Fund is a small percentage of the overall contributions, but those gifts are unrestricted to the budget and given primarily by alumni.

Some notable gifts during the year include:

• Andrew J. McKelvey made a $2,000,000 initial gift on a $20 million pledge to support lung disease research and transplant and to establish a endowed faculty chair in lung transplantation.
• The Marcus Foundation gave $2,833,334 on a $4.5 million pledge to create a research fund for vascular diseases and to establish an endowed faculty chair in vascular medicine.
• Jane Fonda gave $2 million to establish The Jane Fonda Center at Emory University to advance knowledge and training for healthy infancy, childhood and adolescence.
• The Avon Products Foundation gave $5.3 million for breast cancer research.
• The Alaska AIDS Vaccine Ride, organized by Pallotta TeamWorks, generated $1,172,395 for Emory to support research toward the development of an AIDS vaccine.
• The Carlos and Marguerite Mason Trust gave $500,000 on a $1.5 million pledge to support transplant tolerance research.
• The Wallace H. Coulter Foundation gave $4,400,000 toward a $7 million pledge to name the department of biomedical engineering.
• Approximately 60 nursing alumni gave $200,000 to name the Alumni Auditorium in the
Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing.
• A gift from Jack and Lynn Stahl for the Marian K. Heilbrun Music and Media Library, named in honor of Mrs. Stahl's mother.
• The Ford Foundation: a $707,000 pledge to establish a fellowship program in Islam and human rights at the law school.
• Anonymous donor gave the Goizueta Business School $650,000 to fund a fully endowed MBA scholarship for Latino/Hispanic students.
• Ida Boers, a former staff member of the Pitts Theology Library, provided a gift of $1,000 to help make the art of 100 16th century European woodcuts available to Internet users through a project of the Kessler Reformation Collection at Pitts which involves digitizing woodcuts.
• The John H. and Wilhelmina D. Harland Foundation provided a $120,000 grant over three years to the Health Care Ethics group at the Center for Ethics for the project, "Improving the Care of Children at the End of Life." These funds allowed the Center for Ethics to partially fund a pediatric ethics fellow to do research in this area, and to initiate a statewide pediatric end of life care working group for health care workers in the state of Georgia.
• $2,283,000 for the Donna and Marvin Schwartz Center for Performing Arts, from alumni, parents and friends, corporations and foundations.

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