NEWS RELEASE, 7/22/99 UC Berkeley reports banner year for fundraising: gifts total $221.7 million

By Jose Rodriguez, University Relations

BERKELEY--The University of California, Berkeley, reported its greatest year ever for fundraising, generating $221.7 million in support from alumni and friends in the 1998-99 fiscal year ending June 30, 1999. The banner year propels UC Berkeley closer to its $1.1-billion goal in the Campaign for the New Century, a capital drive designed to help the campus continue to attract, support and retain the best faculty and students. Since it began, the campaign has raised slightly more than one billion dollars. The $221.7 million raised is significantly higher than the record of $188.9 million set three years ago. It represents 71,063 contributions - a new benchmark for the campus. Since the campaign began in 1993, the percentage of alumni who give to UC Berkeley has increased by 50 percent. "One of the most heartening aspects of this campaign is the tremendous response of alumni and friends," said Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl. "We are creating a new tradition of giving to our campus that will help sustain and extend Berkeley's margin of excellence in the new century." Major contributions in the 1998-99 fiscal year, including gifts from corporations and foundations, are as follows: o $50 million, the largest gift ever received by the UC Berkeley campus, made anonymously. Designation of this gift is pending. o $16 million in a trust from William Power for the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute. o $5 million in an anonymous stock gift for the University Library Endowment Fund for the Humanities and the Bancroft Library. o $5 million from the Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud Charity Foundation for capital purposes and an endowment at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. o $4.5 million in a deferred gift from Frank Schlessinger for Cal athletics. o $4.32 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for the Health Policy Research Program in the School of Public Health. o $3.5 million from the estate of Helen Wills Roark for the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute. The campaign helps faculty and students directly through increased professorships, fellowships and scholarships, with new endowments ensuring benefits well into the new century. Gifts raised in the campaign so far translate into 23 distinguished professorships, 50 faculty chairs, 120 graduate fellowships and 247 undergraduate scholarships. The unrestricted Chancellor's Millennium Fund, a $50-million component of the drive, is helping Chancellor Berdahl restore the strength of the University Library, is creating Chancellor's Chairs for new faculty, and is expanding the statewide K-12 outreach efforts of the Berkeley Pledge. In the remaining year and a half of the fundraising campaign, alumni volunteers in regions throughout the United States and overseas will redouble efforts to raise funds for such priorities as the University Library collections, the new East Asian Library and Studies Center, the new Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library, and infrastructure needs in chemistry, physics, the neurosciences and bioengineering. As a public university which has seen its share of state support dwindle - from more than half of the campus's budget in 1985 to a third today - UC Berkeley, through the efforts of its faculty and staff, has worked diligently to forge stronger connections to its alumni and friends around the world. Peter E. Haas of the Class of 1940 was chair of the Chancellor's Campaign Cabinet, which raised initial gifts and laid the groundwork for the fundraising effort. Once the Campaign for the New Century was launched publicly in 1996, leadership was passed to alumni co-chairs F. Warren Hellman ('55), John F. Hotchkis ('54), Carl J. Stoney Jr. ('67, JD '70, MBA '71) and Nadine M. Tang (MSW '75).