A Running Start

DARTMOUTH, taking the boldest financial step in its long and honorable history, is about to seek new funds in large amounts for large purposes.

Last month a special message from President Dickey informed all Dartmouth men of a far-reaching decision by the Board of Trustees - to launch a 200th Anniversary Development Program that will, over the next twelve years, produce upwards of $25,000,000 of new capital funds and increase the College's operating income by $3,000,000 a year.

As the first step in the program, Dartmouth next fall will launch a two-year capital gifts campaign to raise the funds needed for immediate priority plant projects and for initiating new faculty salary advances. This nationwide effort will be headed by Charles J. Zimmerman '23, president of the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company of Hartford, Conn., who is chairman of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees Committee on Development.

No exact goal has been set for the campaign, but it is hoped that this fund-raising effort, in addition to lifting the compensation level for faculty and staff, will enable the College to go a long way toward realizing the program of plant expansion and modernization that has been blueprinted by a special advisory committee and approved by the Trustees for immediate action as soon as the necessary funds become available (see box on Page 18).

This study of the immediate and long-range plant needs of the College has been made, and is continuing, as part of the stem-to-stern examination of Dartmouth's program and facilities that is being carried forward by the Trustees Planning Committee with the aim of lifting Dartmouth to new levels of excellence on every front and giving it "a running start" on its third century of national service, beginning in 1969. Proposals for plant development have been among the first concrete results of the TPC study, and since the capital gifts campaign is seeking funds largely for new buildings, the ALUMNI MAGAZINE presents in this issue (Page 16) an article written by Prof. John P. Amsden '20, chairman of the Advisory Committee on Plant Development, for the purpose of informing alumni about the work of his committee and the specific projects that have been recommended to the Trustees.

Along with Professor Amsden's article there appears (on Page 19) a listing of other TPC sub-committees and their members. This serves, as impressively as anything could, to indicate the broad scope of the Trustees' planning for the Dartmouth of today and tomorrow. As President Dickey told the students and faculty in his convocation address last fall, "The Trustees of the College have decided that Dartmouth's bicentennial should mark not merely the completion of two centuries, but rather that it should also be the culmunation of fiftèn years of sustained tained rededication and refounding, a unique period of intensive planning and development aimed at bringing this institution to a running start of pre-eminent performance when it enters a third century."

Dartmouth's preference for marking its 200 th anniversary in this spirit rather than in a mood of self-congratulation is a stirring call to all who care greatly about the College. The next twelve years of planning, and of realizing plans, bid fair to be the most exciting, the most productive, the most influential years in Dartmouth's history.

WITH the announcement of the 200 th Anniversary Development Program the Trustees now turn to the big, essential job of acquiring the dollars that will make these aspirations come true. Fortunately, the College mounts its capital gifts campaign in a position of great strength - at a time when the purpose and value of the liberal arts college are increasingly recognized by the nation, and at a time when Dartmouth, as one of the nation's historic centers of liberal learning, is demonstrating its educational leadership and is fulfilling its central purpose with steadily mounting effectiveness. In a world such as today's, Dartmouth need not be modest in proclaiming that it is worthy of the utmost support that Dartmouth men and all friends of higher education can give.

Oddly enough, the College in modern times has never undertaken an all-out campaign for capital funds. In this respect it stands almost alone among the leading colleges and universities of the country, and one could argue that success in this fund-raising effort is therefore doubly deserved. Dartmouth's emphasis in the development of financial support has long been placed upon the annual Alumni Fund, and its unique success in this field has been widely recognized, and envied, in the college world. More recently the College has successfully developed the Class Memorial Funds and the Bequest and Estate Planning program. It has enjoyed outstanding success in all these categories of fund-raising, but effective as they have been in meeting annual operating expenses and in strengthening the College's endowment, they cannot meet, as well, the urgent need to catch up with major plant require-ments—something that the Trustees have postponed for a good many years in order to give priority to faculty salaries and scholarship aid.

During the past ten years Dartmouth has conducted several campaigns for capital projects on a selective rather than an "all-out" basis. In the late forties such a campaign was conducted for the Hopkins Center, and more recently selective campaigns have produced in excess of $100,000 for both the artificial ice in the Davis Hockey Rink and the new Dartmouth Skiway at Holt's Ledge. Dartmouth's experience in these efforts seemed to indicate clearly that this technique, successful as it has been for certain projects, could not produce the million dollar amounts involved in the new buildings planned.

The question of how to raise the large sums needed to realize Dartmouth's bicentennial plans was given by the Trustees to the professional fund-raising firm of Marts and Lundy for study and advice. The answer brought back, after careful and objective analysis, was that Dartmouth had fallen behind the other ranking colleges and universities in not making a comprehensive effort to raise capital funds, that such a campaign should now be made a part of the-College's development program, and that, indeed, the alumni of the College who were anonymously canvassed understood the necessity for a capital campaign and were willing to have the Trustees go ahead with one, provided it could be done without harm to the Alumni Fund. This professional report bore out the feelings of the College's own development officers, and the Trustees at their June meeting approved the campaign in principle and at their October meeting instructed the Office of Development to go ahead with organization and detailed plans for a capital gifts campaign to begin next fall.

ACCORDING to present plans, the first year of the campaign, from the fall of 1957 to the summer of 1958, will be conducted on a selective basis. The second year, beginning in the fall of 1958, will see a general, allembracing drive for gifts in large numbers and of every size, from the very large to the modest. The months from now until next fall will be devoted primarily to establishing the national, regional and other committees necessary for the effective carrying out of the campaign.

As these preparations go forward, however, no one will lose sight of the important fact that the College's normal fund-raising programs will be conducted as usual and that the 1957 Alumni Fund, soon to open with a dollar objective of $865,000, remains "the prime job at hand." The integration of the Alumni Fund, the Class Memorial Funds, and the estate planning program with the capital gifts campaign after this year is a matter to which the Office of Development is giving the most careful attention. Discussions have already been held with the Alumni Council and with groups of class agents, Memorial Fund chairmen and bequest chairmen. Many details remain to be worked out, but all hands agree that coordination is a necessity, and that it should take place in such a way that when the Alumni Fund and the other regular fund programs are resumed in normal fashion, they will have added strength. Reassuring to the Dartmouth Trustees is the experience of other colleges that an intensive campaign for capital gifts does strengthen rather than weaken the normal fund programs for the future.

The Alumni Council, sponsors of the Alumni Fund and solicitous for its long-range success, went into this question thoroughly at last month's meeting, and concluded with a strong and unanimous expression of support for the capital campaign. This backing was expressed in the following resolution:

WHEREAS, the Alumni Council has received and considered the plan of the Trustees to proceed with a major campaign for capital funds, and the Council has learned from the President of the College why this campaign is necessary to the continuing development and vitality of Dartmouth as she approaches her third century,

Be it RESOLVED, That the Council extends to the President and Trustees of the College its appreciation and its gratitude for their careful and realistic analysis of Dartmouth's needs, and for the foresight, determination and courage shown in the decision to launch and carry through this program.

The Council heartily endorses this decision of the Trustees, and urges Dartmouth men and friends of Dartmouth everywhere to give full support to the capital campaign.

The Council further expresses appreciation for the reports of the chairmen and members of the Council committees on the Alumni Fund, Class Gifts, and Estate Planning, and endorses the efforts of these committees to develop recommendations for the effective coordination of these important and well-estab-lished programs with the capital campaign.

The Alumni Council, which speaks for the Dartmouth alumni body as a whole in many matters, adopted this resolution in the firm belief that all Dartmouth men, once they understood the aspirations of the College for a new greatness, would come forward as they always have in the past to make those aspirations a reality.