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The Campaign for Berkeley
Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What is The Campaign for Berkeley?
A. The Campaign for Berkeley is a major fundraising effort to raise $3 billion in private support from alumni, parents, friends, and the extended UC Berkeley family around the world. It will benefit students and faculty through substantial new endowment funding, which will provide for faculty chairs, fellowships, and scholarships, as well as through increased funds for research, instruction, and facilities. The campaign seeks to reach its goal by June 30, 2013.

Q. For what will the campaign raise funds?
A. Funds will support Berkeley’s students, faculty, and programs with strengthened endowment, capital, and current-use funding. This funding will be used to attract and retain the world’s most talented and accomplished faculty, expand opportunities for exceptional students, support creative collaborations to address global challenges, and strengthen the campus’s core mission to serve the greater good.

Q. How much money has been raised so far?
A. Since the “quiet” phase of the campaign began on July 1, 2005, nearly $1.3 billion has been raised. This total represents 276,745 gifts and pledges from 154,020 unique donors. It includes the largest gift in Berkeley’s history — $113 million from the Hewlett Foundation to endow 100 faculty chairs. Nearly $484.3 million in gifts and pledges have been raised for Berkeley’s endowment in the quiet phase of the campaign.

Q. Why does Berkeley need to raise private support?
A. Private support is critical if Berkeley is to remain the nation’s preeminent public teaching and research university. The campus’s elite private peers, with substantially larger endowments, are competing with Berkeley for the nation’s best students and professors. Through the financial generosity of Berkeley’s alumni, parents, and friends, the campus can grow a more competitive endowment that will offer more scholarship and fellowship funds for exceptional students as well as additional endowed chairs and research funds to attract and retain the best faculty.

Q. Doesn’t the state provide enough funding for Berkeley?
A. The State of California has been a committed partner with Berkeley since the creation of the University of California. In the past two decades, Berkeley’s state funding — which represents about a third of the campus’s annual budget — has remained relatively robust and constant when adjusted for inflation, and the campus’s endowment has grown to $2.9 billion as of 2007. However, during that same period endowments at the campus’s private peer institutions exploded. For example, in 2007, Harvard University’s endowment reached $34.9 billion and Stanford University’s $17.2 billion. To preserve Berkeley’s academic preeminence and global leadership for future generations, the campus will need to rely on the continued commitment of the state and, at the same time, aggressively build its endowment.

Q. These are tough economic times. Why launch a campaign now?
A. Berkeley fuels and energizes California and the nation through intellectual discovery, innovation, and service. A healthy Berkeley provides innumerable benefits to the economy. The campus has never been afraid of a challenge, particularly when the stakes are so high. Its previous major fundraising effort, The Campaign for the New Century, also began during tough economic times. That campaign went on to raise $1.44 billion, the most ever by a public university at that time.

Source: UC Berkeley University Relations.

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