The President's Statement

Following is the full text of President Dickey's statement mailed last month to the entire alumni body to announce the decision by the Dartmouth Trustees to undertake a capital gifts campaign.

To ALL WHO CARE GREATLYABOUT DARTMOUTH:

I make this report to you in behalf of the Board of Trustees.

Its principal purpose is to advise you o£ a decision by the Trustees. The Board's action has deep significance for this institution and we want you to have both precise and full information about it. The decision is recorded in the following language:

"Believing that Dartmouth College should begin its third century of service in 1969 with the resources needed for pre-eminent effectiveness, and having conviction that this effectiveness requires new capital funds and additional annual income beyond the capacity of Dartmouth's existing resources and present fund-raising program, the President is, therefore, authorized to announce a 200 th Anniversary Development Program to provide the necessary additional resources. Further the Board specifically authorizes as a first step in this Program a solicitation of capital funds for plant and salary purposes, from alumni and friends, such campaign to be under the direction of the Board of Trustees acting through the Trustee Committee on Development."

This historic step was taken neither lightly nor in haste. Two years ago a Trustees Planning Committee was given the assignment of examining critically and creatively all areas of the College. The aim of this undertaking is to celebrate Dartmouth's 200 th anniversary in 1969 by using the years between now and then to bring everything about Dartmouth - from her purpose to her performance - to preeminence.

The Trustees Planning Committee has been hard at work. The planning studies now embrace all aspects of the College and while the work of transforming plans into reality is barely begun Dartmouth is again at grips with the business of building a better today out of our aims for tomorrow.

Let there be no misunderstanding. This is not an effort born of weakness. It could not be. In the most literal sense Dartmouth leads from strength. This is so because, at every critical period during the College's long life, others have had the courage and foresight to build strength upon strength for the future.

For some years now Dartmouth's requirements and resources have been studied by groups drawn from alumni, trustees, faculty, staff, students, parents, Hanover residents and outside consultants. The best present judgment of the Board of Trustees is that between now and 1969 Dartmouth will need upwards of twentyfive million dollars of capital funds for plant and other purposes plus other resources to provide three million dollars more annual income.

The top plant priority is the HopkinsCenter, a group of buildings planned in honor of the President-Emeritus, Ernest Martin Hopkins, to meet Dartmouth's most acute needs for a theatre, a lecture and music hall, galleries, studios and workshops for the creative and craft arts - all tied together with an educational purpose and social facilities to serve the year around fellowship needs of the entire Dartmouth family. Other plant projects include new classroom and medical school buildings, the extension of existing classroom, office and library facilities, an auditorium-arena combination for convocations, commencements (such as last June!), large concerts, and basketball, along with more adequate swimming pool facilities. The detailed story of these projects and of their place in the total context of a more wonderfully fulfilled Dartmouth will be coming to you in the months ahead.

The Trustees and the Development Council are clear that Dartmouth cannot rely solely on existing resources and programs to meet her requirements, particularly the capital for plant needs, between now and 1969-70.

A private college in America today depends for its life upon three different kinds of giving: (1) annual income gifts to help meet current operating costs; (2) bequests to build endowment and (3) capital gifts to build and replace plant.

Our development program has great strength in the area of annual, widespread participation giving, notably the Alumni Fund. In the area of endowment, mainly through the Class Gifts and the growing Bequest Programs, we are building up durable strength. We have never had a comprehensive capital gifts campaign and we have had no major plant gifts during the past quarter century. The studies of the Trustees Planning Committee and its Advisory Committee on Plant Planning make clear that progress on the plant front is now imperative.

The experience of other institutions indicates that Dartmouth's physical development today depends upon comprehensive appeals for capital gifts and that such appeals will not weaken but actually will compound the strength of our traditional fund-raising activities. Accordingly, our effort will be twofold: first, on the longrange basis through 1969 to protect and advance the basic programs of annual giving for operating expenses and bequests for endowment, and second, to launch an intensive two-year campaign next fall principally to provide capital for immediate priority plant projects plus fresh funds for initiating new faculty salary advances. Such a campaign must, of course, be carefully integrated with our existing programs - Alumni Fund, Class Gifts and Estate Planning. The difficulties and delicacies of this problem are not small and will not be minimized, but you should know that the Alumni Council, the Development Council, the Trustees, staff and professional consultants are now one in the conviction that what must be done can be done and done well to Dartmouth's total advantage.

I especially want to emphasize that the Capital Gifts Campaign will not in any way affect the normal operations of our regular programs through the summer of 1957. The 1957 Alumni Fund remains the prime job at hand.

The present schedule calls for the Capital Gifts Campaign to begin next October. You will share my gratitude and confidence in knowing that this great effort will be led by Charles J. Zimmerman '23, President of the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, former Chairman of the Alumni Fund and present Chairman of the Trustees Committee on Development.

As the sooth Anniversary Development Program and its Capital Gifts Campaign go forward we will keep you closely informed. Early next fall we expect to publish the first report of the Trustees Planning Committee. This report will bring you a comprehensive view of a prospect for Dartmouth that is worth the kind of effort and generosity men and women give because they really care. We shall do our utmost from here out to draw on the ideas, energies and resources each of us can contribute to assure that what is done will be both best for Dartmouth and the best from each of us.

The cost of making "no little plans" is great —its reward is greatness. I cannot describe the task we face more straightly and more concretely than I did to the men of the College at Convocation a year ago: "Fifteen years of stimulated aspiration, particularly from positions of strength, will require more asking, more giving of more, and above all greater understanding of the mission of liberal learning than has ever before been called for by the College."

I suppose it boils down for each of us to this - the day for accepting Hovey's challenge to "dare a deed" is happily at hand.

President Dickey with Charles J. Zimmerman '23, who will lead the Capital gifts campaign.