Brandeis enjoys best fundraising year ever

University raises record $90.4 million in cash gifts

Despite an uncertain economy and ongoing turmoil in the financial markets, Brandeis just concluded its best fundraising year ever.

In the fiscal year that ended on June 30, Brandeis established new standards for both cash received ($90.4 million, breaking last year’s record of $89.4 million) and new pledges ($72.8 million, topping the 2006 mark of $65.3 million). Gifts from alumni totaled more than $25 million, bettering the 2006 record of $19.7 million.

Brandeis has set new cash records in each of the last three years and now raises more than four times the amount it did in 1994, when Jehuda Reinharz, PhD '72, became president and charted a new era of philanthropy at the University.

Additionally, the Board of Trustees voted to extend The Campaign for Brandeis for another five years and increase the goal to $1.22 billion, making Brandeis the youngest private university or college in the United States ever to launch a billion-dollar fundraising effort. The Campaign reached its target of $770 million in cash and pledges 14 months ahead of schedule, and has raised nearly $800 million to date.

“We are gratified that our donors – both longtime supporters and those making their first gift – recognize Brandeis’s special place in American higher education,” Reinharz said. “We are a nonsectarian, Jewish-sponsored University with the intellectual might of a world-class research institution but the feel of a small, liberal arts college.”

Recent gifts have funded student scholarships and fellowships, endowed chairs for faculty, and financed capital projects that have transformed the campus. Ongoing projects include the $154 million Carl J. Shapiro Science Center, which is scheduled for occupancy in early 2009.

“This fundraising record is a testament to the deep feelings our alumni, friends, trustees, and members of the Brandeis National Committee have for this University,” said Nancy Winship, P '10, P '12, the senior vice president of institutional advancement at Brandeis. Some other highlights of the University’s record-breaking year:

-- Brandeis received a $15 million pledge from Donald Soffer (Class of 1954), the largest ever from an alumnus.

-- Robert Sillerman (Class of 1969) made a $10 million outright gift, the largest by an alumnus.

-- During the year, the number of alumni who have made gifts of between $1 million and $16.5 million to The Campaign for Brandeis grew to 35.
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