The Capital Gifts Campaign To Date
THE Capital Gifts Campaign for Dartmouth's 200 th Anniversary Development Program passed another milestone at mid-June when it was announced by Charles J. Zimmerman '23, national chairman, that pledges and gifts to the campaign had exceeded seven and a half million dollars, some 44% of the $17-million goal. Receipt of several pledges and gifts of $1OO,OOO coupled with a large number of pledges and gifts received from areas recently organized for special gifts solicitation has increased the campaign total by more than one million dollars during the past month.
The mid-June report showed that a total of over 3,000 Dartmouth alumni, parents and friends, plus a number of corporations and foundations, had made pledges and gifts to the capital campaign.
On the facing page will be found a progress report showing the range of gifts needed to reach the $17-million goal and the number and amounts received within these various ranges through mid-June. It is readily apparent that the campaign is doing very well in some of the lower ranges, although some of the large, key pledges are lacking. The Leadership Gifts Committee is continuing to canvass prospects from whom the needed gifts in the upper ranges may be obtained.
Chairman Zimmerman termed campaign results to date "most encouraging, and added, "It is our continuing aim to make every effort possible to impress upon the people and foundations who have the capacity to make the decisive gifts the importance of their realistic participation in Dartmouth's future."
"Since last January," Mr. Zimmerman reported, "we have had organized campaigns in 44 areas throughout the United States, extending from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon. Alumni, parents and friends have responded to the capital campaign challenge in a truly amazing and dramatic fashion. At the present time we have received reports on approximately 60% of the prospects in these areas. Eight out of every ten alumni contacted have made a pledge or gift to the campaign, and we expect that this pattern will be followed among the remainder of those alumni who have not yet been seen this spring or on whom we have received no final reports."
To date the Capital Gifts Campaign has received one anonymous gift of one million dollars, a gift for $500,000 from the Spaulding-Potter Charitable Trusts, one contribution of $350,000, one of $250,000 and one of $200,000, eight of $1OO,OOO, eight in the range of $50,000, and thirty in the range of $25,000. These 51 pledges or gifts represent 58% of the total recorded thus far.
Cash contributions, included in the over-all figures, total almost $3 million from 1,500 contributors, nearly 40% of the amounts pledged.
Included in the Capital Gifts Campaign total is $307,000 in pledges and gifts raised by the Class of 1933 in its special Combined Memorial Fund-Capital Gifts Campaign conducted under the chairmanship of Donald F. D'Arcy '33. About half of this total will be used to establish the permanent 1933 Class Memorial Fund.
Some 2,500 alumni and parents in all parts of the nation are serving as campaign leaders and workers in the 44 areas during the leadership and special gifts phases of the campaign. "To these alumni and parents," Mr. Zimmerman said, "belongs much of the credit for our record to date and for providing an example of the finest in Dartmouth leadership and work."
During the second phase of the Capital Gifts Campaign, scheduled to begin in early September and to run through June go, 1959, the Trustees Committee on Development and the National Steering Committee plan to follow up in as effective and wise a manner as possible with the leadership and special gift prospects who have not yet been contacted. Combined with this special effort will be a general canvass among approximately 80% of the Dartmouth family on an organized, regional basis. Campaign leaders expect that 85 areas throughout the United States will be organized for the general campaign with personal calls by committee members to be made on some 30,000 alumni and parents in these areas before the campaign ends on June 30, 1959.
The campaign regional offices in Boston, New York and Chicago, which were opened last January, will remain open and fully staffed through next June. From these three field offices teams of staff members will work out into areas within their regions starting in early September. As area campaigns are completed (usually about three months), the staff men move to other areas to begin local campaign activity there. It is expected that most areas where campaign activity starts in September will be completed by December and that the areas reached in late fall or early winter will be completed by the end of June.
Campaign leaders estimate that more than 5,000 alumni and parents will be called upon to serve as area chairmen, team captains, committee members and campaign workers during the next year. Included in this group, it is hoped, will be some 2,100 alumni who have served this past spring as Class Agents for the 1958 Alumni Fund.
At a meeting held this past month the Alumni Fund Committee recognized that the task of raising capital funds for Dartmouth will require the full cooperation and undivided efforts of all alumni and restated its previously announced policy that "there will be no formal Alumni Fund Campaign in 1959."
While emphasizing that "there will always be an Alumni Fund" and the fact that the Alumni Fund would remain open for gifts, the Committee recognized that the Capital Gifts Campaign was seeking from all alumni and parents far more than a normal Alumni Fund contribution.
A random study of some 500 alumni who had pledged or given to the Capital Gifts Campaign this spring revealed that the total of all gifts by these alumni to the Alumni Fund through 1957 amounted to $320,000 and that this same group had given $76,605 to their class Memorial Funds, a combined gift total of $398,805 over a period of many years. This same group has already made pledges or gifts to the Capital Gifts Campaign totaling $554,850 with almost all of the pledges payable over a three-year period only. Of the 500 alumni studied 302 have pledged more to the capital campaign than they have given to the Alumni Fund or to a combination of the Alumni Fund and their Class Memorial Fund over all the years since their graduation.
Because the Alumni Fund is being coordinated with the Capital Gifts Campaign, alumni who make pledges or gifts to the capital campaign will receive Alumni Fund credit for contributor and regularity purposes both in 1958 and 1959 and in any subsequent years in which pledge payments are being made.
Active solicitation for the Class Memorial Fund program will also be in suspension in 1959 under a policy approved by the Class Gifts Committee, the Alumni Council and the Class Memorial Fund chairmen last year. The Classes of 1934 through 1937 will have their permanent Memorial Funds established at their 25th reunions on the basis of the largest previous Class Memorial Fund, with the gifts for this purpose coming from undesignated contributions made by class members to the Capital Gifts Campaign.
In summarizing the results of the first year of activity on Dartmouth's two-year capital gifts effort, Chairman Zimmerman wrote: "Alumni and parents have given unstintingly of their time, energy and resources in support of this first, all-out Capital Gifts Campaign in Dartmouth's history. The record thus far is further proof of the unusual degree of loyalty and enthusiasm which has been one of the truly great strengths of Dartmouth and an example for all other colleges and universities. At no other time in the College's long history has this degree of loyalty been so clearly demonstrated as during the past year in response to the challenge of the capital campaign.
"The heartwarming results achieved to date have set a high standard for the many alumni, parents and friends who will be contacted for their assistance on the campaign during next year. With only a small percentage of alumni contacted to date, it is abundantly clear that our potential is still high and that the response by all members of Dartmouth's family during the next year will make the Capital Gifts Campaign another successful chapter in Dartmouth fund annals."
Campaign Progress Report Size of Gifts Needed to Raise $17,000,000 and Results to June 18, 1958 Number In the Number AmountNeeded Range of Total Received Pledged1 $1,700,000 $ 1,700,000 — —1 1,000,000 1,000,000 1 $1,000,0002 750,000 1,500,000 - - 4 500,000 2,000,000 1 500,0004 250,000 1,000,000 3 808,0876 100,000 600,000 8 895,0008 50,000 400,000 8 422,04312 25,000 300,000 30 798,57050 15,000 750,000 16 246,344100 10,000 1,000,000 36 363,302150 7,500 1,125,000 16 123,332200 5,000 1,000,000 72 354,728300 3,000 900,000 219 557,671325 1,000 325,000 761 857,0191163 gifts totaling: $13,600,000 1,171 $6,926,096Numerous gifts under $1,000 3,400,000 1,956 576,943$17,000,000 3,127 $7,503,039
From the Atlantic to the Pacific: Capital Gifts Campaign working dinners in Philadelphia (left) and San Francisco.
